In this short video, I explain why a man can love his partner and still drift out of reach, and what we start with when we meet by video.
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Online therapy for men in relationships helps you understand what happens to you inside your relationship: the quiet withdrawal, the short fuse, the sense of being a guest in your own home. You see me alone, by video and in English, for 1-hour sessions that hold 50 minutes of therapy, booked at an hour that suits your time zone. Your partner does not have to take part.
I help you notice what you feel and want, put it into words and stay steady when the conversation heats up. Within my online psychotherapy for men, this page covers love and partnership. If an affair sits at the centre, online therapy for men after infidelity goes deeper, and if the relationship has already ended, online therapy for men after divorce or breakup is the place to begin.
When you are ready, book a free 30-minute call, choose a first session, read my client policy or write to me.
Online therapy for men in relationships is for men, wherever they live, who care about their partner and still feel stuck, flat or cornered at home. You may keep hearing that you are never really there, and you want to understand why before the distance sets hard.
Not every difficulty a man has at home belongs on this page. If one of these lines fits you better, follow its link.
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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 man rarely leaves a relationship by walking out of the door. He leaves by staying in the room and switching off. He is kind, useful and reasonable, and he is not there. His partner is quietly asking ‘Have I stopped mattering to you?’ He is asking ‘Can I have one evening when nobody needs anything from me?’ Some men hold a third question as well: ‘Come closer, but not too close.’ I do not see this absence as coldness. I see a man who has lost track of what he wants. Once he finds it again and says it out loud, his partner usually feels him return before he has changed anything else.”
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.
Karim is 38, a pharmacist from Lyon who lives in Montreal with his partner, Sofia, and their son of 4. He does the school run, keeps the car serviced and has not raised his voice in years. Last month Sofia told him she feels lonelier with him than without him. He has no idea what she wants him to do differently. He now stays late at the pharmacy and plays online chess until after midnight.
I would not start with Sofia. I would ask Karim what happens in his chest when she is unhappy with him. In a first video session he would probably see that he goes still and starts managing, the way he once kept the peace between his parents.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried harder, helped more and kept your head down, and still the gap between you keeps growing.
You do not need a crisis to come. Feeling like a lodger in your own relationship is reason enough, and so is being tired of a complaint you cannot make sense of. I can usually tell early on whether a couple is going through a rough season or whether a man is caught in a pattern that will keep returning.
My view is that the most useful work begins with you, not with a list of what your partner gets wrong. These 6 questions describe the signs I take most seriously in men who are struggling at home.
If so, notice it. You prepare yourself on the way home, check the atmosphere in the kitchen and plan your first sentence. You might open a second beer or stay up scrolling, simply to have an hour that belongs to you.
I would explore with you when home began to feel like another shift at work, and whether this is a hard patch or a habit you brought with you long before this relationship. If your evenings sound like this, book a session with me.
Yes, both can be true, because each serves a different need. One part of you wants to be wanted and met. Another part needs room without being asked what is wrong. So when your partner reaches for you, warmth and pressure arrive in the same moment.
I do not treat your wish for space as the fault. Both needs are real. I help you see what each one guards, so you can say “I want to be with you, give me half an hour first” instead of disappearing.
Many men carry this fear far more than they let on. A sigh, a short message or a long call with a friend can feel like evidence that you are losing her or him. You read the relationship like a forecast, waiting for the storm.
Wanting to feel secure is reasonable, and I will not mock it. I help you settle the alarm that rings before there is any proof, and stop trying to earn love instead of asking for it. We practise saying the fear simply: “I have missed you this week.”
More men do this than admit it. You suggest a trip away, then start an argument on the first night. You ask for more intimacy, then feel crowded when it arrives.
I help you slow the sequence down until we can see the moment the wish to be close turns into a wish to get out. Something specific usually sets it off, such as feeling watched, relied on or about to fall short. I respect these reactions as protection, and I will also ask you to own the ones that hurt your partner.
Plenty of men shut down at the very moment their partner most needs them. Tears or anger land like a wave of pressure, and you become factual or say nothing at all.
That silence protects something real, often a dread of making it worse. I will not shame your need for distance. I help you stay a little longer, and say “I need 20 minutes and then I will come back” before the quiet turns into a wall between you.
After years of fitting around a partner, children, a career and perhaps a new country, many men can no longer say what they want for themselves. That is not a defect. It is what long years of being useful can do to a man.
I help you sort out which habits are truly yours and which are ways of keeping the peace or earning your place. I will challenge you when you make yourself small, and I will not hand you a ready-made version of manhood. The aim is to know who you are in love.
If you recognised your own evenings here, book a free call to talk it through, or choose a session if you already know you want to start.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
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Knowing why you go quiet is a beginning, but your partner will only feel the change when you speak, stay and choose differently.
Working with me will help you see what happens in you inside your relationship, recognise the patterns that repeat and make changes your partner can actually feel. Insight on its own seldom changes a Tuesday evening at home, and that is where the work has to show.
Over 22 years I have found that men do better when I take an active part. I say what I see, ask direct questions and push back on explanations that keep you stuck. Since 2010 I have also been a student of men’s work, and it has added to and deepened my training as a psychotherapist. David Deida, in “The Way of the Superior Man”, is a writer I often bring in, for his picture of a man who lives from his deepest purpose and stays fully present with the person he loves. Robert Glover adds a sharp eye for the man who hides his needs to stay liked. These 6 questions describe what we work towards.
Related reading: Why do I get so defensive with my partner?, Why does my partner shut down when we argue? and Why do I keep feeling unheard by my partner?.
I help you tell the real problem apart from everything that has grown around it. The rows about screens, money and whose family to visit are real, yet they are often symptoms. Underneath there is usually something more precise, such as a fear of being controlled or of being valued only for what you provide.
I tell you what I think is happening and what needs attention first, and I question lines like “I am just not a feelings person”. If that is the work you want, book a session with me and bring your most recent argument.
By learning your own early warning signs. Most men are surprised how soon they appear once they look: a tight jaw, heat in the chest, the thought “here we go”, a hand moving towards the phone. Spot the first link and you gain a moment in which to choose.
In our sessions we take one recent evening apart, minute by minute, and find what set you off and what the reaction was guarding. Then we practise another response until you can use it on an ordinary weeknight when everyone is tired.
Staying steady does not mean looking calm while you vanish inside. It means being present enough to hear your partner and choose what you say back.
I help you notice the moment your body goes into alarm and find simple ways to slow down: feel your feet on the floor, lower your voice, ask for a short pause and keep your promise to return. This takes a few minutes of practice on most days between our video sessions, not only during them.
It begins with noticing the need yourself, well before the argument. Many men only discover what they wanted once the row is over. Until then it leaks out as sarcasm, sulking or a silent decision to stop trying. Glover calls the hidden version a covert contract: I do this for you, and you should know what I expect in return.
I help you find words that are honest and in proportion. I will push back when you bury what you need, and just as firmly when you expect your partner to guess it.
Decisions get clearer once you separate guilt, fear and duty from what you actually feel and value. Many men wait, hoping the relationship will decide for them.
Together we set out the real options and the price of each one. You get my honest opinion, and I will name it when I see you leaving the choice to your partner. The choice stays with you. If the relationship has ended, online therapy for men after divorce or breakup carries this work on.
Real change reaches past our sessions, into lazy Sunday mornings, holidays with her or his family and the way you greet each other after a long day. It may mean firmer limits at work, one friend you can be honest with, time alone that you take openly instead of stealing, and a no that needs no apology.
Deida’s idea of presence helps here: being completely there when you are there. I help you decide which habits at home need to change and which are fine. What we aim for is a partnership where the man at the table is plainly you.
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You do not need a diagnosis of what is wrong or the right words for it. We start with what is happening at home now.
From the first session, I listen for the heart of what is going wrong at home and give our work a clear direction. Many men begin with “My partner said I should come”, and that is a perfectly good opening.
This is a focused strand of my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on you and how you love. Online couples therapy alone also works with one person, but there the relationship is the subject, while here the starting point is you as a man. When the relationship needs both of you, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. A therapy bundle gives you real savings and a plan agreed at the start.
I ask what has brought you now, what feels hardest at home, what you have already tried and what you would like to be different. I pay attention to when the gap first opened and what tends to trigger an argument or a shutdown.
Before we finish, you hear how I understand your situation and where I suggest we go, and you can judge whether that feels useful. Prefer a conversation before committing? Book a free 30-minute call.
Individual work fits when the focus is mainly you: how you react, what you avoid and what you learned about being a man and a partner. That holds even when the trouble shows up at home. We can explore the relationship in depth without your partner on the call.
From week to week I keep the thread, tell you what I notice and push you when you settle for too little. Online psychotherapy describes my individual work as a whole.
Couples therapy is the better choice when the relationship itself needs sustained attention and your partner is willing to take part. If the same fight keeps coming back, trust has been damaged, or one of you reaches out while the other backs away, working together usually achieves more.
As an EFT couples therapist, I help both partners see the cycle between them, own their share of it and build a safer way of being close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing.
That depends on how strained things are at home, how much room your week has and how much continuity the work needs. When the relationship feels close to breaking, sessions close together carry you while things are raw.
My usual suggestion is a session each week, or every other week, at the start. I will say so honestly if the spacing is too wide for progress, or when a slower rhythm will do. If travel or shift work makes a weekly rhythm hard, several sessions can be placed back-to-back over a few days.
A bundle makes sense when you want to give this a proper try without deciding after every session whether to carry on. A planned course keeps you in the work long enough for the change to reach your home.
It brings real savings and the security of a plan agreed in advance, and I will tell you honestly whether one suits what you want to change. The details sit on therapy discounts and bundles, with the bundle cards lower on this page.
It has done its job when you can stay in a hard conversation, say what you want and bear your partner’s reaction without disappearing.
Every few weeks I ask you plainly whether the work still earns its place in your week, and I do not keep men in therapy for its own sake. Sessions can thin out, pause or end. If a new chapter in the relationship brings you back one day, that is life moving on, not the earlier work failing.
Not sure this is the right starting point? This table sets it beside the choices men under strain at home tend to weigh up.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online therapy for men in relationships (this page) | You want to change how you show up in your relationship, as a man, on your own. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online couples therapy alone | You want to work on the relationship itself and your partner will not join. | 1-hour video sessions on your own |
| Online couples therapy | The relationship needs work and both of you are willing to take part. | Longer joint video sessions every few weeks |
| Online nice guy syndrome therapy | Hiding your needs to stay liked runs through your whole life, not only your love life. | Weekly or fortnightly video sessions |
It is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men who want to understand and change how they live inside their relationship. We look at how you handle closeness, conflict, desire and your own needs, and where those habits began. Your partner does not take part.
I work in depth with the whole man: your history, your body and what you learned about being a man. Within my online psychotherapy for men, it is the branch for love and partnership.
Come when you notice yourself going quiet, keeping the peace at your own cost or feeling like a stranger at home for months on end. Come too if your partner has said “I do not know who you are any more”.
I want to know how long the gap has been there, whether it now reaches touch, friendship and family time, and which things you no longer say aloud. A lot of men hold off until the relationship is close to collapse. Coming sooner is allowed.
Yes. Not knowing is one of the most common things men bring me, and it says nothing bad about your heart. Often you learned early to keep feelings under control, and you did it so well that you can no longer find them.
In my clinical experience, men tend to feel things in the body first: a tight chest, a clenched jaw, an urge to leave the room. We start there, and slowly the body gives the feeling a name before it comes out as silence or irritation.
It can be a good start. Many men come because someone who loves them gave them a push. What matters is whether part of you also senses that something is not working. If it does, we begin with that part, not with your partner’s list.
I am not here to take your partner’s side or turn you into the man she or he ordered. I am interested in what you want and what stands in its way.
Both moves are attempts to feel safe with someone who matters. Afraid of losing your partner, you lean in and look for proof that all is well. When you fear being swallowed up or found lacking, you withdraw and handle things alone. This is how you learned to protect yourself in love, long before this relationship.
We map the direction you take under strain and the toll each direction takes on the two of you. Then we work on steadier choices: asking for closeness directly, taking space without vanishing, staying when you want to run.
We start with your relationship as it is now: an ordinary evening, the last time you felt close, what usually starts a row. I also ask about your parents’ marriage, because many men repeat it or rebel against it without noticing. You leave with my first reading of what is happening.
You do not need to prepare a speech, and feeling awkward on screen at first is normal. Book the first session whenever it suits you, or have a free call with me beforehand.
Think in months rather than weeks, meeting once a week or once a fortnight. Partners often notice small shifts, for instance when you start coming back after a row or saying what you want.
Over 22 years I have seen men do far more with a defined first stretch that we review together than with sessions that simply roll on. At the review, you decide with me whether to continue, space the sessions out or move to couples work.
It works well by video for most men. Many find it easier to talk honestly without the drive to an office, and you can keep the same therapist if your job takes you to another country.
Privacy matters, so choose a room where you cannot be overheard, use headphones and tell your partner you need the hour to yourself. Some men talk from a parked car or a booked office room. Times in the booking calendar appear in your own zone, and any technical worry can be sorted out on a free call.
This is individual psychotherapy, booked as 1-hour video sessions that each include 50 minutes of therapy. Today’s fees, in US dollars, are listed on my prices page.
If you expect to work with me for a while, a therapy bundle saves you 10 per cent on each session and gives you a structured plan. The options are on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book your first session about your relationship, or request a free 30-minute call if talking first feels easier. A sentence or 2 about what is going on between you is enough.
If no time suits you, or things at home feel close to breaking, contact me directly. I hold some room for acute situations, usually a time within days, and acute online psychotherapy explains that help. Choose a time, and we start where you are.
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!
