Men are not, contrary to popular belief, emotional islands. But relationships are complicated, and they can get more so with age. This section covers partnerships, family, friendship, loneliness, divorce and everything in between — because how well your relationships are going has more bearing on your mental health than most men realise, and it's worth understanding why.
Relationships
A man in his late forties, financially comfortable, professionally competent, and quietly miserable, announces at the kitchen table that he's thinking about leaving it all behind for something that matters more to him. His partner does not respond the way he was hoping.
Relationships
Somewhere in the United Kingdom this Saturday, thousands of people are standing on an open terrace watching a team that has won one of its last eleven matches. It is ten degrees. It is raining sideways. But the forecast was never going to change the plan.
Relationships
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece recently asking whether therapists are partly responsible for the rise in adult children cutting off their parents. It's a good question, badly put — and the badly-put version is worth untangling.
Relationships
Becoming a grandfather is one of the more significant events in a man's later life. It is also, it must be said, one of the more bewildering — arriving with a set of emotional responses that nobody quite prepared you for and a title that makes you sound considerably older than you feel.
Relationships
The male withdrawal is one of the most reliable and least understood phenomena in relationship psychology. The man disappears into himself, or the garage, or he has a sustained interest in the middle distance.
Relationships
Most men would rather dismantle an engine, file a tax return, or watch a documentary about the migratory patterns of Arctic terns than initiate a difficult conversation. This is understandable. It is also considerably more expensive over time than the conversation would have been.
Relationships
The relationship between men and dogs is one of the oldest in human history. It is also, it turns out, one of the most psychologically significant — and one of the least likely to be recognised as such by the men most benefiting from it.
Relationships
Are you the cool dad? The one who's more mate than parent, who insists on being down with whatever the current generation is down with? This version is more common than it used to be, considerably less useful than it appears, and occasionally mortifying for everyone involved.
Relationships
Sex in long-term relationships is the most comprehensively mishandled topic in popular psychology. The shelves groan with books promising to reignite, rekindle and generally re-something your sex life. Most of them are nonsense. Here's why.
Relationships
There are approximately 4,000 licensed medications available on the NHS. Not one of them is a pint with people you like. This is, on the evidence, an oversight.
Relationships
Loneliness among men has reached levels that would, if it were a physical disease, prompt a public health emergency. Instead it gets a shrug, a suggestion to join a club, and a change of subject.
Relationships
Men are losing their friends at a rate that would alarm them if they noticed it was happening. Most don't notice until they're trying to think of someone to call and the list is shorter than expected.