Gentlemen, we need to talk

Mostly because they were never taught how, and because the definition of strength most of them inherited treats needing help as a fault. It’s not a lack of willingness. Men ask readily enough once asking is available to them and once somebody has gone first. What is usually missing is the vocabulary, the permission and a space where being honest doesn’t cost anything.

I want to start with a disclaimer.

Not the clinical kind.

This isn’t coming from a position of having it all figured out. It’s coming from someone who was, for a significant part of his adult life, a significant part of the problem he’s about to describe.

That matters. Because what follows might trigger something. It should. It triggered me to write it.

A bit of context: I’m a Registered Counsellor. I’ve been working with men for over seven years, in groups, in private practice, in workplaces, and in the kinds of conversations that happen when someone has run out of options and decided to try something different. More than 65% of the people who walk through my door are men. What I see, week in and week out, is a group of people who are struggling. Not because they’re weak. But because nobody gave them a roadmap.

This is me trying to hand you part of one.

Many of us have a visceral reaction when we hear terms like “toxic masculinity” or “male privilege.” That reaction might be defensive. It might be dismissive. Or it might be discomfort, the kind that tells you something has landed somewhere true.

I’m not here to debate labels. What I’m interested in is what’s actually going on, and what any of us can do about it.

We’ve inherited a world shaped by men who didn’t have access to the understanding we do now. Men who were modelling behaviour passed down to them, doing the best they could with what they had. That’s not an excuse. But it’s context. And context matters.

The result is a generation of men who are lost. Isolated. Angry in ways they can’t always explain. Struggling in relationships. Burning through jobs. Numbing themselves with whatever’s available. Dying by suicide at more than three times the rate of women. Seven a day.

And increasingly, showing up in rooms like mine wondering why none of it’s working.

Let me not soften this.

I’ve perpetrated behaviour that makes me cringe to think about. I’ve let my own unresolved pain show up as behaviour that hurt people around me. I’ve been on the receiving end of damaging treatment too, abused, manipulated, deceived. And I spent years swinging between those two realities without understanding how completely they were connected.

My marriage ended. My finances took years to rebuild. My body fell apart. I came close to giving up more than once.

Through all of it, I was running off a playbook I’d never consciously chosen. A version of strength that was making me weaker. A definition of what it means to be a man that left me increasingly alone.

That’s not unique. That’s not special. That’s what a lot of men are carrying right now.

What I’m no longer willing to do is pretend that carrying it alone is just the way it’s.

Here’s where I’ll be direct: some of the ways men behave online right now aren’t acceptable.

Sending uninvited, degrading messages. Treating other human beings as options in an algorithm. Abusing people for not responding the way they wanted. None of this is masculinity. It’s the symptom of something much more painful, a level of disconnection and insecurity that’s devastating to witness.

The men doing this aren’t usually monsters. They’re usually deeply lonely people who have no framework for genuine connection, and no one in their lives who has ever modelled what healthy relating actually looks like.

That doesn’t excuse it. But understanding the why is where change starts.

There’s a distinction I come back to regularly in my work: the difference between being a nice guy and being a Gentle Man.

Being nice is self-sacrificial. It’s behaviour at your own expense in the hope that someone will approve of you. Being kind is rooted in values. It knows what it stands for and it can say no without apologising.

That distinction is big enough to have earned its own post, and it has one. Nice isn’t the same as kind

The world doesn’t need more nice guys. It needs men who know who they’re. Who can be present without performing. Who can sit with someone else’s pain without needing to fix it. Who can ask for help and survive the vulnerability of it.

That kind of man is built, not born. He’s built through doing the work.

Stop justifying behaviour that doesn’t serve you or the people around you. Start getting curious about why you do what you do, not from a place of shame, but from a place of genuine interest in becoming someone you’re proud of.

Expand your emotional vocabulary. Have the conversations you’ve been avoiding. Check in on your mates, really check in, not just a “how ya going” that neither of you expects an honest answer to. Find spaces where it’s safe to be real.

I know this works because I’ve watched it work. In groups, in private practice, in one-to-one conversations with men who thought it was too late.

It’s not too late.

• Name one thing you’ve been carrying alone. Not to solve it. Just to establish that it exists somewhere outside your own head, where it has been growing unchallenged.

• Work out whose playbook you’re running. Most of us inherited a definition of strength without ever choosing it. Ask where yours came from and whether you’d pick it again.

• Widen the vocabulary. Most men have three words for what they feel and two of them are fine and angry. Add one this week. Disappointed. Ashamed. Relieved. Flat.

• Do one check-in that’s not a formality. Ask a mate how he is going and then stay quiet long enough that he has to answer properly.

• Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding. You already know which one. It has been on the list for months.

This week: pick one person and tell them one true thing about how you’re travelling. One sentence is enough.

Mostly because nobody taught them how, and because the version of strength most of them inherited treats needing help as a defect. It’s rarely unwillingness. Once asking is available, and once somebody else has gone first, most men talk readily.

It works for men when it’s practical, direct and goes somewhere. Men are practical creatures and tend to learn by doing rather than only by talking, so counselling that produces something to act on generally lands better than counselling that only produces insight.

That’s the usual starting point rather than a barrier to starting. Most people arrive able to describe how things are going and not much more. Working out what’s going on is part of the work, not a prerequisite for it.

No. Most of the men who come through aren’t in crisis. They are flat, tired, stuck, or quietly worried about how they’re behaving at home. Waiting until things are bad enough to qualify is the pattern that causes the damage in the first place.

Both matter and neither replaces the other. A mate offers connection and history. A counsellor offers a structure, no stake in the outcome and no relationship to protect, which makes some things easier to say out loud for the first time.

Start with one honest conversation with anyone you trust. It doesn’t have to be a professional. If you’d rather it were, a GP or a counsellor is a reasonable first call and costs you one appointment.

If any of this has landed somewhere, the door is open. I offer a free introductory call. No cost, no pressure, no obligation. Click the banner above or get in touch on 0422967392.

• Nice isn’t the same as kind
• How do you ask for help when you’ve never had to?
• Why men get angry instead of sad
• What actually happens in a men’s group
• The check-in