In this short video, I explain why so many men carry their sexual worries alone, and what begins to move once you can say them out loud to someone who stays calm.
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Online men’s sexuality therapy helps you understand what has changed in your sexual life and what you can do about it: desire that has gone quiet, intimacy that has turned into pressure, or a part of yourself you keep out of sight. Sessions are one to one by video, in English, each lasting one hour with 50 minutes of therapy, booked when it suits your time zone.
I am a psychotherapist. I am not a doctor, and I am not a sexologist. I work with the feelings, the history and the patterns around your sexuality, so desire stops being a test. This is the sexuality branch of my online psychotherapy for men. For one dominant theme, there is focused help with performance anxiety and compulsive porn use.
You can book a free 30-minute call, pick a session time, read my client policy or write to me in confidence.
Online men’s sexuality therapy is for men, living anywhere in the world, who sense that something in their sexual life has stalled, faded or gone into hiding. You want to talk about it plainly and feel at ease in your own desire again.
Some sexual worries need a narrower focus. If one of these fits 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.
“Since I began studying men’s work in 2010, I have become convinced that most men handle their sexual troubles as a private repair job, and that the secrecy does more harm than the trouble itself. Underneath the quiet I hear ‘Am I still wanted, or only needed now?’ and, right next to it, ‘This is mine to sort out, nobody has to know.’ Often the same man is also saying ‘Come closer, just do not look too carefully.’ Desire rarely survives being hidden. It tends to come back when a man can say what he feels and stay in the room while he says it.”
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.
Aaron is 39, an Australian logistics manager who has lived in Singapore for 6 years with his wife Mei and their 2 small daughters. They have not been intimate since before the younger one was born. After a few refusals, Aaron stopped asking. Now he answers late emails on the sofa until Mei is asleep, and tells his friends at the club that all is well. He misses her, and has no idea how to start the conversation.
I would not begin with the bedroom. I would begin with the evening Aaron decided to stop asking, and what he told himself about it. In a first video session he would probably notice that being turned down touched an older sense of being a burden, and that his silence shields him from feeling it again.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried ignoring it, laughing it off and sorting it out alone, and the distance around sex is still there.
There is no correct moment and no required reason to talk about your sexuality with a therapist. A sense that sex has turned from connection into tension, or that you have quietly given up on part of yourself, is enough. You do not need a diagnosis, a crisis or polished words first. In 22 years of practice I have learned to tell when a pattern has set hard enough to need real attention.
I will help you see what actually happens around desire and closeness in your life, what holds it in place and what has to change. Let the 6 questions below help you decide whether to get in touch.
If so, it deserves your attention, even though nothing dramatic is happening. You stay up later than your partner and feel a small relief when the light goes off and nothing is expected.
I would ask when this started and what else shifted then. If anything has changed in your body, ask your doctor for a check as well, because some causes are physical. If this is your evening too, book a session with me and we can look at it together.
Yes, and both feelings can be honest at once, because each one protects something different. One part of you longs for play, heat and being wanted. Another part is glad to skip the risk of a no or of feeling exposed. Guilt follows, and the guilt makes the next try heavier.
I do not cast the careful part as the villain or the longing part as the hero. In psychosynthesis, the tradition I trained in, both are parts of you worth hearing. I help you see what each one guards, so your choices about intimacy become yours instead of a silent tug of war.
A great many men feel this, and almost none say it. A sleepy “not tonight” lands like a judgement on your worth as a man. You start keeping count and bracing before you reach out. The fear of not mattering has taken the wheel.
Wanting to be desired is a real and decent need, and I will not make you feel small for it. What I help you change is the alarm that goes off before you know what the no actually meant. We look at what the refusal touches in you, and you practise naming what you miss directly, without sulking or quietly keeping score.
Men describe this more often than they expect to. You complain that there is no intimacy, and when your partner moves towards you, something in you tightens. You want to be held and left alone, sometimes in the same evening.
In our video sessions I slow this down, so we can find the exact second where wanting turns into bracing. I respect that reflex, and I will also ask you to own how it lands on your partner, so you can pause without vanishing.
Plenty of men do. As soon as the topic comes up, you turn practical, crack a joke, change the subject or remember an urgent message. Your partner is left guessing, and then hurt.
My view is that your need for distance is doing a job, and there is nothing shameful in it. I help you understand what it shields you from, so you can stay in the conversation a little longer without feeling swamped. You learn to say “I do want to talk about this, can we do it at the weekend?” before the silence hardens into a wall.
After years of fitting around a partner, children, a career or a picture of how a man should be, your own desire can go missing. You may have built yourself around keeping the peace, or around an image borrowed from friends, films or your father. None of this means you are broken.
I help you sort out which parts of your sexuality are truly yours and which are habits, fears or other people’s rules. I will push back where I see you shrinking, though I will never hand you a ready-made identity. The aim is a clearer sense of who you are and what kind of intimacy fits you.
If you saw yourself in these questions, book a free call to talk it over privately, or choose a session time if you already know you want to start.
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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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Knowing why sex has become difficult matters, but the work also has to change how you touch, talk, ask and stay present.
Working with me on your sexuality will help you understand what is going on around desire and intimacy, see the patterns that keep it stuck and make changes you notice at home and in your body. Insight is useful, yet insight that changes nothing in how you live seldom brings relief.
Psychotherapy is my core training. Alongside it, men’s work has been part of my study since 2010, with Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, as a central influence, and it adds to and deepens what I bring as a psychotherapist. On this subject I draw most on David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man”, about living from your deepest purpose and being present in intimacy rather than performing. I also use the Lover from Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover”, the part of a man that feels and connects. I guide and challenge you actively. The 6 questions below describe what we work towards.
Related reading: How did we end up with a dead bedroom?.
First I help you tell the real difficulty apart from everything piled on top of it. Low desire, avoidance and long silences are usually results, not causes. Below them you tend to find something specific: unspoken resentment, fear of being found lacking, or an old family rule that your needs were selfish.
I tell you what I think is happening, what needs attention first and which explanations are keeping you stuck, such as “every man loses interest after 40”. When you are ready to start mapping it, book a session with me.
You can learn to catch that moment, and that is often where change starts. For many men, intimacy goes wrong at one precise point: a thought about how you are doing, a tight chest, a sudden wish to get it over with or to make a joke.
Deida writes about a man’s presence in intimacy, and I find the idea useful because presence can be practised. In our sessions I help you slow the sequence down and see what triggers it. Then we rehearse a different response until it holds on an ordinary evening.
Staying steady does not mean pushing the feeling away or acting as if you do not care. It means remaining present enough to notice what is happening and choose what you do next.
I help you spot the rise sooner and understand what your body is reacting to, often something it learned long before this relationship began. Together we find small, workable ways to slow it. Expect to practise between sessions, because that is where the change takes root.
It starts with knowing what you feel, what you want and what belongs to you rather than to your partner. Many men raise the subject only once resentment has built up, so it comes out as an accusation, or it never comes out at all.
I help you find words that are honest, concrete and kind. I will challenge you when you stay quiet to avoid a scene, and also when you make your partner responsible for every feeling you have about sex. We often rehearse the real conversation on screen first.
Clearer choices come once you separate guilt, duty, habit and other people’s expectations from what you actually know and want. You may be weighing whether to accept less, ask for more or even leave.
I help you look squarely at your options, what each is likely to lead to and what each would ask of you. You get my honest view, and I will say so when I see you dodging the decision, but the decision stays yours. If an affair is part of the picture, online therapy for men after infidelity goes further into that.
Lasting change has to reach past our video calls and into your ordinary week. You may need evenings without screens, more honesty about what you enjoy, or simply more sleep.
Together we work out what in your sex life needs to change and what is fine as it is. Moore and Gillette describe the Lover as the part of a man that feels deeply and connects, and they show its shadow when it is wounded: a man either loses himself in pleasure or goes numb. I am not trying to rebuild you. I want you to live your sexuality warmly and responsibly.
You can also send me an email
No diagnosis, no perfect vocabulary and no neat story are needed. We start from your life today and what you want to feel differently.
When you begin, I listen closely, help you name the central difficulty and set a clear direction from the first session. I never ask for intimate detail you do not want to give.
This work is one focused strand of my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on your inner life and your relationships. If the difficulty turns out to live mainly between you and your partner, and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. When you already expect the work to take a while, a therapy bundle gives you real savings and the steadiness of a plan agreed at the outset.
In the first session I ask what made you decide to come now, what feels hardest at the moment, what you have already tried and what you would like to be different. Your life story can wait.
Before we finish, I tell you how I read the situation and what I would suggest. Then you decide whether my way of working feels useful to you. If you would prefer to talk before you commit, book a free 30-minute call first.
Individual work is right when the difficulty lives mainly in you: in how you feel about your body, your history with sex, your shame, your fears or your sense of yourself as a man. We can explore the relationship without your partner on the call, and it works just as well if you are single.
One to one, I hold the thread from week to week, give you direction and tell you honestly what I see. For the wider picture of my structured individual work, see online psychotherapy.
Couples therapy fits better when the relationship as a whole needs steady, shared attention. If every talk about sex ends in the same row, or one of you keeps reaching while the other retreats, working together usually helps more.
With both of you on the call, I help you spot the loop you fall into, each own your share of it and find safer ways to be close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing. Some men begin alone with me and bring their partner in later.
The right pace depends on how much the difficulty is affecting your life, how much room you have just now and how much continuity the work needs. Sexual worries slip back underground when gaps are long.
I usually suggest a video session every week or every second week to begin with. I will tell you if we meet too rarely for anything to build, or when we can thin out. If you travel a lot, sessions can also sit back-to-back over a few days.
A bundle suits you once you know this will take a number of sessions and you want the work to keep going without a fresh decision every week. With a subject this private, it is tempting to cancel in the very week it gets uncomfortable.
A bundle lowers what each session costs, and a plan agreed in advance is a kind of safety in itself. The details are on therapy discounts and bundles, with the cards lower down.
Therapy has done its job when you have more ownership, clarity and choice around your sexuality, and the original difficulty has changed enough for you to go on without the same support.
I review progress with you in plain words, and I have no interest in keeping you in therapy longer than you need. Sessions can space out, pause or stop when the work is done. Coming back years later with a new question does not mean anything failed.
Not sure this is the place to start? Here is how online men’s sexuality therapy sits beside the options men with these questions most often weigh up.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online men’s sexuality therapy (this page) | Desire, intimacy or how you feel as a sexual man has become a source of worry, distance or silence. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online performance anxiety therapy | The fear that your body will let you down in intimate moments is what you most want to change. | A focused course of 1-hour video sessions |
| Online compulsive porn use therapy | A porn habit you keep hidden has started to crowd out sleep, closeness or self-respect. | Weekly video sessions close together at first |
| Online therapy for men in relationships | Conflict, distance or feeling shut out at home weighs on you more than sex itself. | 1-hour video sessions weekly or fortnightly |
Online men’s sexuality therapy with me is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men whose desire, intimacy or sense of themselves as sexual beings has become a source of worry, distance or shame. It is talking therapy, not medical treatment.
I work in depth with the whole man: your feelings, your body, your relationships and what you absorbed about sex from your family and culture. It is a main branch of my online psychotherapy for men.
Come when the subject has started to cost you closeness, sleep, self-respect or peace at home, or when you notice yourself steering clear of your partner, or of dating altogether. If you feel something is wrong, trust that feeling.
I look at how long the difficulty has lasted and whether it is spreading into ordinary affection. When it has gone on for months, it deserves proper attention.
Often, yes. Desire seldom disappears without a reason. It goes quiet under stress, resentment, grief or fear, and can return once those are understood. I am not a doctor, so I always suggest a check with your own doctor too, to rule out physical causes.
In my clinical experience, men who say they have lost all interest usually find that their desire has not died but gone into hiding. I would focus with you on what it is hiding from, and what it would need in order to come back.
Yes. Many men first book because someone who loves them nudged them to. Often your partner has seen something you were too busy, or too proud, to face.
What matters is that the work becomes yours. In our first session I will ask what you think is going on, not what your partner thinks, and we will look for what you want for yourself.
Because both of you are protecting yourselves, and the 2 protections lock together. You step back to avoid feeling pressured or inadequate. Your partner reads the step back as rejection and either presses harder or gives up.
I help you see the move you make under pressure, what it is for and what it costs the 2 of you. Then we practise staying put a little longer and naming your needs without blame.
No. We start with what is happening now and how it affects you, not with anything explicit. I ask what brought you, how the difficulty shows up in your life and relationship, what you have tried and what you hope for. By the end you will know how I understand it so far and where I suggest we go.
There is nothing to prepare. Whenever it feels right, book your first session, or start with a free discovery call.
Plan for a course of sessions over a few months rather than a single conversation, meeting weekly or every second week. If the difficulty is bound up with older experiences or a long history of shame, it usually takes longer.
Over 22 years of practice I have found that a clear first stretch, reviewed honestly, works far better than drifting. Each time we review, we check what has moved in you and at home, then agree whether to continue, slow down or stop.
It can be very private. Many men find it easier to talk about sex from their own space, and nobody in your local circle needs to know. If you move country or travel for work, the therapy simply comes with you.
You need a room where you cannot be overheard, headphones, a steady connection and a laptop or tablet. Times in the calendar appear in your local time, and a free call can answer any doubts.
You book individual psychotherapy as online sessions of one hour, with 50 minutes of therapy. Today’s fees, shown in US dollars, are on my prices page.
If you expect the work to take several sessions, a therapy bundle saves you 10 per cent on each one and gives the work a structured plan. The options are on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book a first session now, or ask for a free 30-minute call if you want to talk it through beforehand. A short note about what is on your mind is all I need.
If none of the times suit you, or something has just happened that feels urgent, contact me directly. I keep some space for acute situations, normally a time within days, as described on acute online psychotherapy. Pick a time, and we start from where you stand.
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!
