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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~ Carl Jung
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Just like women have been, and continue to be, called into deep healing, empowerment, and the reclaiming of their feminine power, men too are being called to rise.
They are being called to step out of their comfort zones, out of emotional avoidance, and into participation. Because if this doesn’t happen, relationships will continue to quietly crumble from the inside.
For generations, men have largely been conditioned to be providers, not participants in relationships. Participation doesn’t just mean paying the bills or taking care of material needs—it also means doing the emotional labour of a relationship. It means being emotionally available, responsive, and present. And this is where most men were never trained, guided, or supported.
We often hear statements like “men are like this, “men aren’t emotional, “they’re logical,” “they don’t know how to deal with feelings,” and so women are told explicitly or implicitly that the work of adjusting, adapting, understanding, and managing emotions and the relationship itself is primarily their responsibility, because well, women are nurturers, and without realising it, most women end up doing the emotional labour for two people in the relationship. That’s exactly why both partners remain disconnected, even when they love each other.
The truth is, while many of these things about men reflect the current reality, they are not the absolute truth of what men are capable of. They’re the truth of conditioning and conditioning can be healed.
Most men are taught how to be worldly wise. They’re taught how to study, earn, fix things, break things, use logic, manage money, solve problems, and “man up.” They’re rarely taught what to do with disappointment, grief, shame, sadness. They don’t know what to do when their heart breaks except drown themselves in work or anything that can numb them. They don’t know what to do when they feel helpless because they are expected to know and have answers to everything, and when tears enter the room men often feel threatened. And that’s because in most households, right from childhood, men are not given a moment to sit with the discomfort of these heavy emotions. If they cry they are “being a sissy” or behaving like a “girl” (what does this even mean?!). And many men have never seen other men in their lives being vulnerable at all.
So most men grow up highly competent in the functional world, but completely lost in the emotional world. They don’t know when to use logic and when to respond emotionally.
And most of the time, they operate from wounded masculine energy—a state of survival, performance, control, ego, dominance, and emotional shutting down—rather than from a balanced masculine that can lead with strength and hold with softness.
It often shows up as:
Defensiveness instead of reflection: Any emotional feedback feels like an attack. Instead of curiosity, there is justification, blame, or shutdown.
Control over connection: A need to dominate decisions, conversations, or outcomes because vulnerability feels unsafe.
Emotional shutdown during conflict: Silence, withdrawal, distraction, or avoidance when things get uncomfortable.
Difficulty naming or expressing emotions: Anger, irritation, or logic replace softer emotions like fear, sadness, shame, or longing.
Self-worth tied only to performance and provision: “I earn, I provide, I fix, therefore I am enough,” while emotional presence is undervalued.
Fear of appearing weak or needy: Asking for help, admitting hurt, or expressing dependence feels humiliating rather than human.
Men were rarely introduced to the world of emotions. It wasn’t even recognised, forget being respected. No one told them it was okay to feel what they were feeling. No one normalised their fears. No one held space for their vulnerability. And most of them only saw male figures around them being functional—providing for families, honouring duties, but not being emotionally present. Vulnerability was never made safe for boys, and what isn’t safe gets shut down.
That’s why so many men struggle to be emotionally available, not because they don’t care, but because their nervous system reads emotional closeness as threat. And any threat must be defended against. This is why defensiveness, aggression, dismissal, withdrawal, or shutdown becomes the default during moments that actually require connection.
I work with men in sessions who deeply feel but don’t know how to express what they feel without breaking down or feeling ashamed. Many of them fear that if they fall apart, who will hold them? Their identity is built on being strong, capable, dependable. And they get tired too, but they don’t know any other way to exist.
And this is why men need healing.
They need to turn inward, to unpack their emotional wounds, learn the language of emotions, because intimate relationships are built on emotional and relational intelligence and not logic alone.
And when a man begins to do this inner work, something beautiful happens. He:
>> becomes emotionally present
>> learns to listen instead of defend
>> learns to hold instead of fix
>> allows accountability instead of image management
>> softens without losing his strength
When this happens, partners feel seen, safety grows, connection deepens, intimacy expands. Even men themselves become lighter, happier, more fulfilled.
I’ve seen this transformation closely. I know so many men who would never ask for help, never admit they made a mistake, never take accountability, because their image wouldn’t allow it, and their relationships are a mess or non-existent.
I’ve also seen how relationships transform the moment men begin to soften. It’s heartwarming to see my brother cry, to see him ask for a hug, see him apologise, see him understand my point, and see him express his hurt without attacking me.
I’ve seen my father change too—from being completely emotionally unavailable to at least making an effort. Even today, I see how deeply uncomfortable it is for him to witness tears in the room, not because I am his daughter, but because as a man, he never learnt what to do with emotions. And yet…even now, he is learning to hold space instead of fix, and that shift alone has created immense safety in our relationship.
And in my therapy room, I’ve seen men transform the moment they allow their tears to flow, without shame.
So yes, men are capable. But they need to step up, and they also need space to learn a language they were never taught. At the same time, this is not about blaming men.
“Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful. A wound that stops you from continuing to play is a girlish wound. He who is truly a man keeps walking, dragging his guts behind. Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be.” ~ Robert Bly
This is about balance. Every human being holds both masculine and feminine energy within.
The masculine is structure, direction, boundaries, protection, action, holding the fort. The feminine is emotion, flow, intuition, receptivity, softness, vulnerability, connection.
Healing does not mean choosing one over the other; it is about integrating both.
Men do not need to “become feminine” in identity, but they do need to embrace the emotional, receptive, feeling aspect of their being. The moment a man rigidly believes:
“This is just how I am.”
“This is how I should be accepted.”
“This is who I am as a man.”
That belief itself becomes a wall.
The truth is both people in a relationship must participate; that’s why it’s called a relationship. Both are holding the fort; both are responsible for safety and growth of their own selves and each other.
Relationships today are no longer about survival alone. They are about emotional fulfilment. They were always about that, and that requires emotional participation from both.
Men don’t need to become emotionally perfect. They need to become emotionally willing to listen, learn, feel, repair, be wrong, and be seen, because when a man heals the wounded masculine within him, he doesn’t lose his power—he finally accesses it in its truest form.
And when both partners bring their healed masculine and feminine into the relationship, love stops feeling like a battlefield.
It becomes a shared home.
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