Beyond Toxicity: Rethinking Men’s Mental Health with Compassion and Curiosity

21 Apr

We often talk about men’s mental health as a crisis of deficiency. We talk a lot about toxic masculinity. About what men are doing wrong. About the emotional tools they lack.

They’re not opening up.
They’re emotionally unavailable.
They don’t go to therapy.
They withdraw. They numb. They avoid.

But what if we started from a different question?

What if instead of focusing on what men are missing, we got curious about what they’re already doing to communicate and connect—even when it looks different from what we expect? What if, instead of pathologising the absence of stereotypically “emotional” behaviour, we got curious about the ways men are navigating the emotional terrain?

As a clinical psychologist and couples counsellor in Melbourne, I work with many men who have been told—explicitly or subtly—that their ways of managing emotions aren’t good enough. Some have even been told that they are emotionally stunted, and they start questioning if they’re on the autism spectrum. They are told that they need to cry more, talk more, open up more. And while emotional openness can be healing, I also see how this narrative can feel alienating and even pathologising.

Many of them feel confused by their experience: They’ve been praised their whole lives for being steady, logical, stoic, dependable. And yet, in relationships, they’re criticised for being too contained, too shut down, too slow to open up.

They’re caught in a double bind.

Men often come into therapy with a quiet kind of grief. The grief of disconnection—from others, from themselves. But also the grief of being misunderstood. Of feeling like their strengths are invisible because they don’t look like the emotional fluency we’ve come to associate with healing.

This doesn’t mean men aren’t emotional. It means they express emotion differently. Sometimes through action. Sometimes through banter. Sometimes through hours of gaming, where community is built one small interaction at a time. Sometimes through stoic presence, or through doing something tangible to help. These aren’t deficiencies—they’re forms of care, belonging, and expression.

The Early Loss of Male Emotional Expression

Psychologist Niobe Way, in her book Deep Secrets, found that young boys speak freely about love, loyalty, and emotional closeness with their male friends—until around ages 14–15.

Then, in an effort to avoid being seen as “girly” or weak, they start to suppress emotional expression. They internalise a social script that to be a “real man” is to be self-sufficient, independent, and emotionally restrained. She posits that boys are born emotionally fluent. They crave closeness, speak of love, cry with their friends—until culture trains it out of them.

Similarly, Terry Real, a family therapist and author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It, writes about covert male depression—how men express depression not through sadness, but through irritability, numbing, rage, or withdrawal.

He notes that we raise boys to be emotionally stoic, and then wonder why they grow into men who can’t connect. Tom Digby in his book, highlights how militarised ideals of manhood have shaped how men relate to love and power.

These men aren’t emotionally broken. They’re emotionally silenced.

Relational Double Binds: When Female Partners Want Emotion… But Can’t Always Receive It

Many women in heterosexual relationships long for more emotional openness from their male partners. And understandably so—relational safety thrives on shared vulnerability.

But what’s rarely talked about is how confronting it can be when men do begin to open up.

Men who express sadness, fear, or shame may find their partners freeze, become anxious, or even react critically—not necessarily because they don’t care, but because it destabilises the dynamic they’ve unconsciously relied on.

When men are the emotionally “stable” ones, it creates a certain predictability in the relationship. When they reveal fragility, it can feel unfamiliar, unsafe, or even burdensome.

This is sometimes rationalised as “He didn’t say it the right way,” or “His timing was off, he said it when we were arguing about something else”. But what we may need to acknowledge is the likely broader discomfort with male vulnerability—especially when it comes without the polish of therapy language or tidy insight, or presented when we are expecting it to be. We want their emotional expression, but only if it fits our rules and needs.

What Does Emotional Expression Actually Look Like for Men?

Here’s what I see in therapy, over and over again:

Men who don’t talk much about feelings, and focus on showing up through action. They may not fully understand that not every emotional problem needs a solution, but more so presence and acknowledgement. Yet, perhaps for them, acknowledgement without action feels hypocritical or pointless. Acknowledgement may also feel threatening.
Men who often see conflicts as problems to be solved, not opportunities for deeper connection. Women may be able to see this a bit more readily, but struggle to articulate it as such or express their needs without frustration. The frustration can often overwhelm their male partners and provide misleading messages.
Men who process emotion through doing—working, gaming, watching sports, fixing things—not because they’re avoidant, but because it grounds them. Perhaps there is a lack of curiousity from women about how these are windows to their male partner’s world of belonging, meaning, and self-esteem. Perhaps there is a perception that these are frivolous distractions. The lack of curiousity may result in male partners retreating further into these spaces as a lone adventure.
Men who have shame spirals that never get spoken aloud, because they don’t think it is helpful to, because they don’t want to be seen as weak. However, this impacts the ways they show up in conversations and conflict resolutions.

What We Need to Build: A New Model of Male Mental Health

Yes, men can benefit from being gently re-socialised into greater emotional safety—learning to tune into their needs, engage more openly in dialogue with their partners, and at times, offer presence over problem-solving.

But we must move away from expecting men to express themselves in the same verbal, emotionally layered ways that women often do. Instead, we need to become better listeners to what is already being communicated—the love embedded in action, the care in consistency, the emotion beneath restraint. We need to hold up our end of creating curiousity and safety, and to see their value as they are, see the love and care in their existing ways of connecting, and the emotions and needs in their existing ways of communicating. It is in that space of acceptance and acknowledgement, that men will feel able to make changes without feeling they’re set up for failure or criticism.

When we approach men with curiosity and safety—not correction—we create the conditions for meaningful change. It is through recognition of their existing ways of relating, not rejection, that men begin to feel safe enough to grow. And only then can change occur without shame, without defensiveness, and without the sense that they are failing simply by being who they are.

The future of men’s mental health isn’t about telling men to “feel more.” It’s about honouring the emotions that are already there—beneath the silence, beneath the humour, beneath the surface.

It’s about offering men the same compassion we offer others who are hurting—without demanding they express it in a particular way. Healing can begin not when men become different, but when we finally see them more clearly.

We need to talk about this more. Because if we want emotional connection, we have to be willing to receive it—even when it comes clumsily, slowly, or in unfamiliar forms.

The future of men’s mental health isn’t about making men more like women. It’s about honouring the emotional worlds they already have—and giving them the language, safety, and permission to live more fully into them.

We need to make space for the many ways men already feel deeply—and support them in cultivating new ways to connect.

This includes:

• Normalising male friendships with depth and care, not just shared activity.

• Creating spaces where men can be emotional without needing to perform emotionality.

• Naming covert depression and emotional isolation not as moral failings but as outcomes of gendered socialisation.

• Encouraging values-based language: Strength as honesty. Courage as emotional risk-taking. Connection as leadership.

• Supporting women in their own emotional readiness to receive male vulnerability with compassion and steadiness.

—-

🔑 Key Takeaways: Rethinking Men’s Mental Health

• Men’s mental health is often interpreted through a female-coded emotional lens, where emotional intelligence is equated with verbal expressiveness and relational vulnerability—making male styles of relating feel insufficient or pathological. This may unintentionally reinforce a narrow model of emotionality, without recognising how men regulate and relate in different, valid ways.

• Male coping strategies (e.g. gaming, sports, banter, betting, group chats) are often misread as avoidant, when in fact they serve as meaningful forms of co-regulation, identity formation, and connection.

• We need non-pathologising, curiosity-driven approaches to men’s internal worlds. It is through recognition of their existing ways of relating, not rejection, that men begin to feel safe enough to grow without shame, without defensiveness, and without the sense that they are failing simply by being who they are.

References and further reading:

Way, N. (2013). Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection. Harvard University Press.
Real, T. (1998). I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. Scribner.
Reiner, A. (2020). Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency.
Chu, J. Y. (2004). Boys Development and the Expression of Emotional Connection in School Settings.
Pollack, W. (1999). Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood.