In this short video, I explain how men drift into loneliness one skipped phone call at a time, and what it takes to let other people know you again.
You can also send me an email
Online therapy for lonely men helps you understand why your world has narrowed to work, home and a screen, and what it would take to have people around you who really know you. We meet one to one by video, in English, for sessions of one hour with 50 minutes of therapy, at a time that suits your time zone.
I help you see the habits and old beliefs that keep you on your own. This is one of the main branches of my online psychotherapy for men. If you are curious about sitting in a circle of other men, online therapy and men’s groups looks at that step. My page on online loneliness therapy is for anyone who feels alone, whereas this one is about the particular ways loneliness hides in men.
You can start with a free 30-minute call, choose a session time, read my client policy or send me a private message.
Online therapy for lonely men is for men, wherever they live, who have lost touch with friends, family or any real sense of belonging, and who feel it far more than they let on. You may have a partner and a full diary, and still nobody you would ring at midnight. You want to understand how that happened and to have genuine company again.
Loneliness in men sits close to other difficulties. If one of these fits you better, follow the link.
You can also send me an email
These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“In my clinical experience, a lonely man almost never uses the word lonely. He tells me he is busy, a bit tired, or that he has never been much of a talker. I do not accept the old idea that men are fine without close friends. The men I work with want friendship badly. They let it go gradually, one postponed beer and one unanswered message after another. Beneath the shrug I hear ‘If I vanished, would anyone even notice?’ and, right next to it, ‘People have their own lives. I will not bother them.’ Both voices sound sensible, and both keep him alone. A man who admits he wants company has already done the hardest part.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Ethan is 38, a British accountant who has lived in Hong Kong for 6 years with his wife and their baby son. His university friends are on a group chat that went quiet last year. His Wednesday squash partner is a colleague, and they only talk shop. On his birthday the only calls came from his mother and his wife. He told himself it did not matter.
I would begin with the friendships Ethan has let slide and the moment each one went quiet. In our first video session he would likely notice that he stopped getting in touch around the time he felt he had nothing impressive to report. That gives us a real place to start.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have kept yourself busy and capable, and the quiet around you has still grown louder.
There is no correct moment to start, and you do not need a crisis to earn a session. A sense that you have drifted from people, or that nobody really knows you any more, is reason enough. No diagnosis is required, and neither are polished words. In 22 years of practice I have met many men who arrived describing a little stress, and I can tell when loneliness has hardened into a pattern that will not shift by itself.
I will help you see how the distance built up, what keeps it in place and what needs to change. The 6 questions below may help you decide.
If it has, that is worth taking seriously. Many men do not experience loneliness as sadness. It feels like routine: work, the gym, dinner, a series, bed. You still see people, but always for a purpose, a match, a birthday, a work dinner, and you come home feeling you said nothing that counted.
I would ask how long life has looked like this and whether it began with a move, a breakup, a child or a new job. That tells us whether you are in a thin season or carrying a pattern from place to place. If that is your week too, book a session with me and we will look at it.
Both can be true, because each protects something different. One part of you misses the easy friendships you had at 20. Another part has grown used to needing nobody and finds the idea of being properly known slightly alarming. So you make a plan, look forward to it and feel a quiet relief when it is cancelled.
I will not take sides between those parts. I help you hear what each is guarding: the wish for company, and the fear of seeming needy or dull. The aim is that you choose company on purpose, instead of letting the relieved part win every time.
Many men wonder exactly that and never say it. If you are always the one who suggests meeting, a slow reply can feel like proof that you matter less to them than they do to you. You start keeping count of who called last and decide not to bother next time. The hurt goes underground and comes back up as pride.
Wanting to matter to your friends is not weakness. I help you quieten the alarm that reads every silence as rejection, check the story against the facts and ask directly for what you want, perhaps ‘I miss our evenings. Shall we make it a monthly thing?’
That happens when closeness is both wanted and risky. After a night when you finally said what was going on, you wake up feeling exposed. You stop replying, become very busy and then feel too awkward to pick the thread back up. The friendship cools, and the loneliness seems confirmed.
In our sessions I slow this sequence down until we can find the moment the warmth turns into a wish to hide. Often it is shame about having needed anything. I respect that reflex, and I will also ask you to own what it costs the friend left wondering what he did wrong.
Some lonely men are not short of people at all. They are short of room. So you keep things light and retreat into the bike, the workshop or your phone. It feels like control, and gradually it becomes a wall.
Your need for space is real, and I take it seriously. I help you see what it shields you from, often an early sense that other people’s feelings were yours to manage. You learn to say ‘I need tonight to myself’ out loud before quiet turns into absence.
After years of being the provider, the reliable colleague, the partner and the father, many men find very little left that belongs only to them. You may even feel ashamed of wanting anything for yourself. That is not a defect in you. It is what happens when every role you hold faces outwards.
I help you look at who you are when nobody needs anything from you, and what kind of friendship would actually suit you. I will push back when you shrink yourself to keep the peace, and I will not hand you a model of manhood to copy.
If you recognised yourself here, a free call lets you test the water quietly, and booking a session is the direct way in if you already know.
You can also send me an email
Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
You do not need to explain your whole story in your first message.
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Understanding why you drifted away matters, and the real test is whether you send the message afterwards.
Working with me will help you understand how your loneliness came about, see the habits that hold it in place and make changes that put people back into your week. Insight that never leads to a phone call changes very little.
I take an active part, and I will challenge you when you talk yourself out of contact. Psychotherapy is my core training. Alongside it I have been a student of men’s work since 2010, and it adds to and deepens what I bring as a psychotherapist. Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, has been a central influence. What I have taken most to heart from my own practice is how much men need other men. Sam Keen’s “Fire in the Belly” describes the man who has traded his friendships for work and achievement, and I meet him often. The 6 questions below describe what we work towards.
Related reading: Why am I lonely even with people around me?, Why do I still feel lonely when I have friends? and Why do people like me but not really know me?.
I help you separate the centre of the problem from the noise around it. The empty weekends, the extra drink and the late nights online are usually results. Underneath there is often a belief that you must earn your place with people, grief for friendships that ended without a word, or a family where men never spoke about anything that mattered.
I will question explanations that keep you stuck, such as ‘people here are impossible to get close to’ or ‘I am just not sociable’. When you are ready, book a session with me and we start there.
You can learn to see it coming. Withdrawal rarely begins as a decision. It begins with a heavy feeling on a Thursday afternoon, a thought like ‘they will not really miss me’, and a message that opens with ‘Sorry, something has come up’. Once you can spot the first link, you have a choice.
I help you slow that chain down and look at what sets it off and what it costs you. We agree on small, concrete steps, such as keeping one plan a week whatever your mood, and you practise them until they hold.
Staying steady is not the same as acting cheerful or cramming the evening full. It means staying with the feeling long enough to learn what it is telling you. Many men reach for a drink, a game or more work, and the ache simply waits for the next evening.
I help you recognise the restlessness earlier and find ways to settle it that do not cut you off from people. A walk with a neighbour may do more than another hour online. This takes practice between our sessions.
It starts with knowing what you actually want: a regular evening, a proper conversation, or simply to be asked how you are. Many men learned that needing someone is weakness, so they hint, joke or wait to be invited. The unspoken wish turns into resentment, and resentment keeps you away.
I help you find words that are plain and in proportion. I push back when you fall silent, and just as firmly when you hope a friend will guess what you want. We often draft the exact message together, so sending it costs you a few minutes of nerves instead of a week of doubt.
Clearer choices come once you separate fear and habit from what you genuinely want. Should you revive old friendships back home, invest in people where you live now, join a club or a team, or try a group of men? Fear tends to say no to every one of them.
I help you look honestly at the options and at what you might be avoiding. You will get my view, and the choice remains yours. Video therapy can be a bridge here, never a substitute: the aim is people you meet in your own city, not only a face on a screen.
Lasting change has to show up in your calendar, not only in how you feel on our calls. That might mean a fixed evening with a friend, a team you commit to, more honest talk at home or getting back in touch with someone you lost years ago.
If you are a man who enjoys his own company, that is not the problem, and we will not turn you into someone else. The goal is a life where solitude is something you choose, rather than somewhere you end up.
You can also send me an email
You do not need to explain why you are on your own. We start with what your weeks look like now.
When you begin, I listen closely, help you name what is actually missing and give the work a clear direction early on. I do not need a neat account of why your friendships faded.
This is a focused strand of my online psychotherapy, structured one-to-one work on your inner life and your relationships. If the loneliness lives mainly inside your relationship and your partner will take part, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. If you already expect a steady run of sessions, therapy discounts and bundles give you real savings and a plan agreed from the start.
I ask what made you get in touch now, what an ordinary week looks like, who is in your life and who has slipped out of it. Your whole history can wait. If talking feels hard, we begin with facts and let the feelings arrive later.
By the end I share how I understand things so far and suggest a direction, and you decide whether my way of working suits you. Prefer a conversation before you commit? Then book a free 30-minute call first.
Individual work is right when the loneliness lives mainly in you: in what you learned about needing people and in the ways you hold back. We can look at your friendships, your family and your partner without anyone else on the call.
Week by week, I keep the thread, give you direction and tell you honestly what I see. For the wider picture of how I work one to one with anyone, see online psychotherapy.
Couples therapy is the better route when the relationship itself needs sustained attention: you feel alone lying next to your partner, trust has been damaged, or one of you keeps reaching while the other retreats.
With both of you on screen, I help you see the loop you are caught in, each own your part and build a safer way of being together. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing. Some men begin alone and invite their partner later.
That depends on how long you have felt this way and how much room your life has at the moment. Loneliness grows in the gaps, so I like sessions close enough together that we keep the thread.
I recommend weekly or fortnightly sessions to begin with. I will tell you when meeting more often would help and when we can space things out. If your work involves travel, a few sessions back-to-back over several days can also work.
A bundle suits you when you know this will take a number of sessions and you would rather commit than reconsider after each one. For men who tend to cancel when things get close, that commitment is part of the work itself.
A bundle brings significant savings and the safety of a structured plan, and I will help you judge whether it fits your situation. Look through therapy discounts and bundles to compare.
The work has done its job when you have people you can call, can ask for company without dread and no longer need regular support from me. You may still love your own company. It just stops feeling like exile.
We review progress together and openly, and I have no interest in keeping you in therapy for its own sake. Sessions can thin out, pause or end. If you return one day with a fresh question, nothing has gone wrong.
Not sure this is where to begin? Here is how this page compares with the options lonely men most often weigh up.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online therapy for lonely men (this page) | You feel cut off from friends and want to understand why and change it. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online therapy and men’s groups | You belong to a men’s group, or want to join one, and want one-to-one work alongside it. | 1-hour video sessions beside group life |
| Online therapy for depression in men | The loneliness sits inside a heaviness, numbness or short temper that will not lift. | Weekly video sessions at first |
| Online therapy for expat men | Your isolation began with a move abroad and a life far from home. | 1-hour video sessions weekly or fortnightly |
It is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men who feel cut off from friends, family or a sense of belonging, whether they live alone or in a busy household. It helps you understand how the distance grew and how to let people come closer.
I work in depth with your history, your family, your body and the ways you learned to cope by yourself. Within my online psychotherapy for men, this is the branch for loneliness.
Come when weeks pass without a real conversation, when you dread the weekend, or when you realise there is nobody you would phone at 2 in the morning. If you feel something is missing, trust that feeling enough to act on it.
Over 22 years of practice I have learned to ask how long it has been this way and what you have stopped doing. Loneliness that keeps returning, however busy you stay, deserves proper attention.
Yes, though not by handing you a script. I cannot promise how fast your social life will change, and therapy is no replacement for friendship. What it can do is clear away what keeps getting in the way: the shame, the scorekeeping and the habit of vanishing.
In my clinical experience, men who find real friends after years alone rarely do it by trying harder. What changes things is allowing themselves to be seen a little more. That is where I would focus with you.
No. Plenty of men first come because a partner, a sister or a friend kept asking. Being curious enough to try one session is all it takes.
I am not on your partner’s team, and you are not a problem to be fixed. We look at your life as you see it. Often a man finds that the push from home gave him a permission he was not giving himself.
Because both moves keep you safe. Counting calls spares you the risk of caring more than the other man does. Staying away protects you from finding out. Some men do the reverse and keep reaching out, then feel hurt when the warmth is not returned. Neither is a flaw in your character.
I help you notice which of these moves you make when you feel slighted, and what it costs the friendship. Then we rehearse other options: saying plainly what you would like, letting some friendships be lopsided, and stepping back without silently closing the door.
Not in my experience. Many lonely men find a video call from their own room easier than walking into a waiting room, and nobody in your local circle needs to know. If you move country or travel for work, the sessions come with you. By the end of the first one you will have my first understanding and a direction.
I keep the screen in its place. It is where we work, while the change happens with real people where you live. Whenever you are ready, book a first session, or try a free discovery call before deciding.
Think in terms of a few months, meeting weekly or fortnightly. In that time most men grasp their pattern and take some first concrete steps towards others. If the loneliness reaches back to childhood or a major loss, it takes longer.
With 22 years of practice behind me, I prefer a clear first stretch that we review honestly to open-ended drifting. Each review ends with a shared decision: carry on, ease off or stop.
You need a quiet room where nobody can overhear you, headphones, a steady connection and a laptop or tablet. Times in the calendar appear in your local time, and sessions run at hours that fit most time zones.
What you say stays between us, as set out in my client policy. If you are still unsure whether this format suits you, we can talk it through on a free call.
This is individual psychotherapy, booked as online sessions of one hour with 50 minutes of therapy. Today’s fees, shown in US dollars, sit on my prices page.
If you plan a run of sessions, a therapy bundle saves you 10 per cent and gives the work a clear shape. See therapy discounts and bundles for the choices.
Choose a time for your first session online, or ask for a free 30-minute call if you would like to talk before you book.
If no time works for you, or something has happened that makes this urgent, contact me directly. I keep some room for acute situations, usually a time within days, as described on acute online psychotherapy. Send the booking, and we begin with your life as it is.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
