In this short video, I describe what tends to happen to a man in the months after a separation, and why toughing it out alone usually drags it on.
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Online therapy for men after divorce or breakup is for the man whose marriage or long relationship has come to an end, whether he chose it, his partner did or it simply ran out. You meet me alone, by video and in English, for 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, wherever in the world you now live.
I help you through the hollow evenings, make sense of what went wrong and build a life that feels like your own again. This page belongs to online therapy for men in relationships, inside my online psychotherapy for men. If an affair still sits at the heart of the ending, online therapy for men after infidelity is closer to what you need.
Whenever you feel ready, request a free 30-minute call, reserve a first session, read my client policy or send me a message.
Online therapy for men after divorce or breakup is for men whose marriage or long partnership has ended and who are finding it harder than they thought they would. Perhaps you hold it together all day and come apart after dark.
A separation reaches into almost every corner of a man’s life, and some corners call for more specific help. If one of these lines is closer to you, 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.
“Since my first client in 2004, I have watched men after a breakup being told to get back out there, and I believe it is some of the worst-timed advice a man can receive. A man who rushes into a new life before he has mourned the old one usually carries the same wound with him. Under everything in those first months I hear one question, ‘Did I ever really count for her?’, and another, ‘Let me sort this out my own way.’ Now and then a third arrives, more confusing than both: ‘Hold me, and keep your distance.’ My view is plain. Mourn first, then build. What you build afterwards stands on firmer ground.”
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.
Hugo is 51, a marketing director from Edinburgh who has lived in Melbourne for 18 years. In February his wife of 22 years told him she wanted to separate, and by April he was renting a 2-bedroom flat near the office. He cycles 40 kilometres before work, takes every late meeting going and tells colleagues he is fine. At weekends he rereads old holiday photos and drafts messages to his ex that he deletes unsent.
I would begin with Hugo’s weekends, because that is where the grief waits for him. In a first video session he would probably see that he is running the separation like a project, and that the one thing he has not allowed himself is to feel the loss.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have kept working, kept moving and kept up appearances, and the ending still lands on your chest every night.
You do not need to fall apart before you are allowed to come. If the ending fills your nights, your thoughts or your body, if you hardly recognise yourself, or if the people around you have started to worry, that is reason enough.
Over 22 years I have learned to tell grief that is moving from grief that has frozen into bitterness, numbness or non-stop busyness. A man needs to mourn the relationship, not just recover from it. Below are 6 questions that match the warning signs I look out for when a man’s relationship has ended.
For many men they are. Work hands you a role and a timetable. When it stops in the evening, the flat is too quiet, and a weekend without the children, or without anyone, seems endless. You fill it with screens, drink, training or more work.
I would explore with you what those hours contain, and whether the pain is shifting or stuck. That tells us whether this is a hard season or a pattern that will not lift by itself. If the time after work feels like this, book a session with me.
Both wishes can live in you together, because they come from different places. One part misses the person, the closeness and the small rituals. Another is hurt, angry or relieved and wants a clean cut. So a warm late-night message is followed by a cold one at breakfast.
Neither part is the villain. One protects your love, the other your dignity. I help you listen to both, so that whatever you choose next, contact, distance or a careful friendship, is a choice and not a lurch.
Many men do this and feel ashamed of it. You look at her or his profile, find meaning in a new photo and feel your stomach turn at an unfamiliar name. The relief of knowing lasts a few minutes.
That alarm makes sense when something precious has gone, and I will not shame it. I help you calm it, bring your attention back to your own life and find out what you are really trying to learn. Often it is whether you were ever loved.
After a breakup, many men crave contact and then cannot bear it. You leave a date before dessert. A friend invites you round and you cancel at the last minute. Someone new gets close and you feel the walls come in.
I help you slow this down and see what flips you each time, often a reminder of the old relationship or a fear of being hurt again. I respect these reactions as protection, and I will also ask you to own it when they hurt someone new.
Many men do. A friend asks how you are and you say “all good”. Your brother’s calls go to voicemail. Talking feels like reopening the wound, or like weakness. Distance gives you control and leaves you alone with the worst of it.
I will not shame your wish for privacy, and I help you take small steps back towards people. Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, has been a central influence, and I have sat in his work many times. My own practice tells me that a man after a break needs other men around him as well as a therapist. Online therapy and men’s groups explains how the 2 can sit together.
A man’s sense of himself is often built around the marriage, the house, the family routines and the job. When the relationship ends, that scaffolding comes down, and you may not know what you even like doing on a free Sunday.
Sam Keen, in “Fire in the Belly”, writes about men who pin their identity on work and achievement, and about the road towards a fuller manhood with room for feeling, friendship, wonder and care. A breakup can be where that road starts. I help you sort what was truly yours from what kept the relationship going, with direction and challenge, never a ready-made identity.
If your evenings after the split sound like these, ask for a free call to talk it through, or book a session if you are ready 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.
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Understanding why it ended matters, and so does changing how you spend your evenings, whom you talk to and how you love next time.
Our work will help you mourn the ending, notice the patterns you brought into the relationship and make changes that show up in ordinary days. Knowing why it ended is useful, but knowing without changing tends to mean meeting the same trouble again with someone new.
I take an active part: I say what I see, ask direct questions and challenge stories that keep you bitter or frozen. I have been a student of men’s work since 2010, and it has added to and deepened my training as a psychotherapist. That learning colours how I speak with a man about loss, about pride and about his friendships. These 6 questions describe where we are heading.
Related reading: My wife wants a divorce and I don’t. What now? and How do I know when my relationship is really over?.
We sift what truly broke from the clamour that surrounded it. The fights about money, family or chores were real, and often they were symptoms. Beneath them you may find a distance that grew slowly, needs neither of you could name, or a habit of keeping the peace until it was too late.
I tell you plainly what I see and question stories on either side, “it was all her fault” as much as “it was all mine”. To look at the ending properly, book a session with me.
By learning its first signs. A song, an old photo or a message from your ex can set it off: a weight in the chest, a thought like “I have wrecked everything”, a reach for the bottle or the phone. Catch that first moment and a choice opens up.
Together we take one of those evenings apart, find the trigger and what it was protecting you from, and practise something else. Seeing it is only half the job, so the practice carries on between our sessions.
Steadying yourself is not switching off. It means staying present enough to feel the anger or the sadness without being run by it. Both belong after an ending. Neither should write your texts at midnight.
I help you notice when you are flooding, understand what your body is reacting to and find concrete ways to slow down, such as a walk, a few long breaths or writing the message instead of sending it. You practise these at home, between our video sessions.
It begins with knowing which part of the conversation is actually yours. Talks about money, belongings or the home carry old hurt, so they either turn into fights or you give in to avoid one.
I help you find words that are honest, brief and in proportion. I challenge you when you swallow everything, and also when practical talks become a way of settling old scores. I do not give legal advice. Use a lawyer for that, and use our sessions to stay steady in the conversations.
Decisions about where to live, whether to stay in the country you moved to for the relationship, or whether to try again, get clearer once you separate fear, guilt and other people’s opinions from what you actually want.
I help you set out the options and what each would ask of you. You will hear my view, and I will point it out when you are avoiding a choice. The decision stays yours.
Change has to reach past our sessions. It might mean a home that finally feels like yours, a regular evening with friends, a sport or hobby you dropped years ago, an easier relationship with alcohol and a clearer sense of what you want in love.
I help you choose what to rebuild differently and what to keep. You do not need to become a different man. The aim is to live with more clarity and freedom, so that any next relationship begins from firmer ground.
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You do not need to have it all figured out. We start with what is happening to you right now.
In the early sessions, I listen for what the ending has cost you most and give our work a direction. The full history can come later.
This is focused online psychotherapy, structured individual work. Online divorce therapy helps people decide on and carry out a separation, while here the relationship has already ended and the focus is you as a man, rebuilding. If you and your ex both want to try again, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. For a planned course, a therapy bundle gives real savings and an agreed structure.
I ask what happened, how long ago, what your days look like now and what you most need help with. I listen for everything you have lost: the person, the home, the routines, the shared friends and the future you had pictured.
When the hour ends, I share how I read your situation and suggest where to go from here, and you decide whether that is useful. You are welcome to start with a free 30-minute call instead.
Individual work suits almost every man after a breakup, because the questions are now about you: your grief, your patterns and the life ahead. We can look at the old relationship in depth without your ex anywhere near the screen.
I keep track of where you are from one session to the next, and I will say so honestly when you are sidestepping the grief. If the break has stirred older themes, online psychotherapy describes my individual work more widely.
Couples therapy can still make sense when neither of you is sure the ending is final and both are willing to take part. Some couples separate and then find they want another try, with help.
As an EFT couples therapist, I help both partners see the cycle that pulled them apart and take responsibility for their share. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing. If only you want to try again, individual work is the more honest place to begin.
In the first months, a weekly session gives you support while the loss is raw. Later, every second week or every few weeks can keep you on course.
I will tell you honestly if the gaps are too wide for anything to take hold, or when it is safe to ease off. If your job or your travel makes a weekly rhythm hard, a few sessions can be placed back-to-back over a couple of days.
A bundle makes sense when you want to work on this properly, not just survive next week. Many men stop as soon as the sharpest pain fades, before they have understood the pattern. A planned course helps you finish the job.
It brings real savings and a fixed plan at a time when the rest of life feels unplanned. I will help you judge whether one fits. Look at therapy discounts and bundles or the cards lower on this page.
It has done its job when the breakup is one chapter of your story rather than the whole book, when your evenings feel like your own, and when you can think of your ex without being knocked sideways.
We talk plainly about progress as we go, and I have no interest in keeping you in therapy for years. Sessions can thin out, pause or end. Returning later, say when a new relationship turns serious, only means a new chapter has started.
Not certain this is the place to begin? The table sets it beside the routes men after a separation most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online therapy for men after divorce or breakup (this page) | Your relationship has ended and you need help to rebuild your life as a man. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online divorce therapy | You are still deciding, or you want help to separate well. | A planned course of video sessions |
| Online divorced fathers therapy | Your children and your role as their father are at the centre. | Weekly or fortnightly video sessions |
| Online therapy for lonely men | Loneliness came before the breakup and is the real issue. | A steady video rhythm over months |
It is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for a man whose marriage or long relationship has ended. It helps you grieve, see your part, handle anger and loneliness, and build a life that fits you.
The work takes in the whole man, from your past and your body to your friendships and the lessons you picked up about manhood. You will find it under online therapy for men in relationships.
Come when the ending is affecting your sleep, your drinking, your work or your friendships, or when months have gone by and nothing has moved. You do not need to hit bottom first. If you privately suspect you are not managing, that suspicion is reason enough.
I look at whether your grief is moving or stuck, how cut off you have become and whether you are repeating an old pattern. Men who come early often find their feet again sooner.
Yes, though not by helping you forget. I help you grieve properly, which is what allows a loss to settle. I cannot promise a timetable, and I do not offer quick fixes.
In my clinical experience, the men who struggle longest are those who skip the grief and jump straight to anger or a new partner. We would look at what you lost, what it meant and what you want now.
They mean well, and they are partly right, because you do need to move forward. Moving on too fast, though, often means burying the loss, and buried losses resurface later. Real friends can live with you taking longer than they hoped.
I will not keep you stuck in the past. I help you move at a pace that holds, and that includes getting back in touch with friends and with other men who can stand beside you.
Because after a loss, closeness feels both necessary and risky. Part of you wants comfort and touch. Another part fears being hurt again or found wanting. So you reach out and then cancel, or start dating and then vanish. It is protection working overtime, not a flaw.
We notice whether you lunge or retreat when it gets hard, and what each costs. After that we work on steadier choices: saying yes to a friend and staying, dating slowly and honestly, taking space without disappearing.
We begin with the present: what ended, how your days are going, what hurts most. I may ask about your parents’ marriage and how losses were handled in your family, because that often shapes how a man grieves. You leave with my first sense of where the grief is stuck.
Nothing needs preparing. When you are ready, reserve the first session, or try a free call before committing.
Plan for a course of several months. A lot of men notice firmer ground within a few weeks of meeting regularly. Grasping the pattern deeply enough to avoid repeating it takes longer, and longer still when the marriage lasted decades.
I would rather we agree a first run of sessions and then sit down to see what has shifted than let the weeks blur. At that point you decide with me whether to carry on.
Yes. For many men after a separation, video is the practical choice: the address may change, the schedule is chaotic and some weeks are spent between 2 homes or 2 countries. Your therapy stays with you whatever moves.
All it takes is a closed door, headphones and a reliable internet line. Booking times appear in your own time zone. If you are unsure whether this is the right step, raise it on a free call and we will settle it together.
Sessions are individual psychotherapy, booked as 1-hour video sessions with 50 minutes of therapy. Current session fees, shown in US dollars, are on my prices page.
If you plan to work with me for a while, a therapy bundle saves 10 per cent and gives you structure, as explained on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book your first session, or request a free 30-minute call if talking first feels better. A sentence about what has ended is plenty.
If you are struggling badly and no time is soon enough, get in touch directly. In the hardest weeks after an ending I hold some room for acute situations, usually a time within days, and acute online psychotherapy explains how that works. Choose a time, and we begin where you are.
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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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