Why It’s So Hard for Men to Talk and How to Actually Start
- Men Behaving Honestly
- May 25
- 3 min read
“Men just need to talk.” Great. Cheers for that. It’s about as useful as telling someone struggling with their weight to “eat less, move more.”
Technically true. Completely useless in real life. Because the problem was never that men don’t want to talk. It’s that no one ever taught us how, and most of the times we’ve tried, it’s blown up in our faces. In episode two we sat down with men’s performance coach Ben Coomber to pull this apart properly and Ben doesn’t do fluff.
There’s a difference between mental health and mental fitness
Here’s a distinction from Ben that lands the moment you hear it. Your mental health is your state, how you are right now. Your mental fitness is what you’re actually doing to look after it.
Most men only think about any of this when they’re already flat on the floor, which is reactive. The whole shift is learning to be proactive while you’re still “fine” — building a bit of fitness before the wave hits, not after.
You don’t need more time. You need less noise.
The objection every man reaches for is “I haven’t got time for this.” Up early, gym, nine hours at work, home, kids, food, one hour to yourself if you’re lucky. Ben’s answer flips it: when he coaches men, he doesn’t add things, he takes them away.
What can you say no to? What can come off the list? Sometimes, and this one’s spicy, it’s even the gym, if the gym’s quietly become the thing you hide in rather than the thing that helps.
Clear the noise: the box sets, the endless scroll, the pint you don’t actually want. Strip the fluff out, and the space you swore you didn’t have suddenly appears. Clarity turns up when you remove noise, not when you cram more in.
Why it comes out clumsy; the language thing
Ben’s analogy is perfect. If we asked you to speak Spanish right now and you’d never learned a word, of course it’d come out a mess. Most men were never taught the language of how they feel, so when we finally try, it lands clumsy, sweary, sometimes a bit offensive and there’s usually a mate stood ready to mug you off because he’s uncomfortable too.
You ring a friend just to say goodnight and he’s instantly going “you alright, mate? What’s going on?” It’s a shit show. But that’s not a character flaw. It’s a vocabulary you were never given. You can learn it.
The disarming technique: how to start a hard conversation
This is the bit to actually try.
Ben asks the men he coaches one question that floors nearly all of them: how well does your partner really know you? Most land on about 60%. That hidden 40%, the bit you never let anyone see, is usually the exact thing standing between you and the relationship you want. You don’t have to hand it all over at once.
You start by naming the hard bit out loud before you say anything else: “This is really hard for me to say. I feel vulnerable. I might even cry here.”
The second you say that, the other person softens, they stop bracing for a fight and start wanting to hold space for you. And let it be messy. We’re problem-solvers, so we want the whole speech written and rehearsed before we sit down. Drop that. Messy and honest beats polished and closed every single time.
Get around the right men and actually do something
You are a product of your environment. If every man in your life says “man up, crack on,” then that’s the filter every thought runs through before it reaches your mouth. Change the room and you change the man. And here’s the practical key Ben kept coming back to: men don’t just need to talk, they need to do and talk.
The jiu jitsu mat, a walk instead of the pints, five-a-side, the climbing wall, clay pigeon shooting... whatever. You’ll learn more about a bloke after he’s tapped you out on a mat than in ten years of small talk over a pint, because the doing takes the pressure off the talking.
So, what now?
Ben’s saying runs right through this episode: the freedom you’re looking for is found in the thing you’re avoiding. The conversation you’re dreading, the habit you’re scared to drop, the feeling you keep walking around, that’s usually the exact thing that sets you free once you go through it instead of around it. You don’t have to fix yourself this week. You just have to start one messy, honest conversation.
Listen to Episode 2 of Men Behaving Honestly with Ben Coomber; on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Then pick one person, and start with five words: “This is hard for me.”
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