Turning Boys Into Men: How I Help Men Build Emotional Strength and Healthy Relationships with Relational Life Therapy
“We do not know how to communicate with each other.” “I don’t feel emotionally safe with my husband.” “He never takes accountability for anything and always gets defensive and shuts down.” “I just want a partner that is going to hear listen and understand to me.” If any of these statements sound familiar you are not alone. I have been working with men and doing couples counseling in Plymouth, MA for the past several years and what I have learned is that 95% of couples have some variation of this type of non-relational dysfunction in their relationships.
Why Many Men Struggle in Relationships: The Hidden Cost of Growing Up Without Relational Modeling
Many men were never taught how to:
Name and regulate emotions
Take responsibility without collapsing into shame
Stay present during conflict
Offer empathy instead of defensiveness
Repair after mistakes
For countless men, these skills were never modeled by their fathers or male caregivers. Instead, they learned messages like:
“Don’t be weak”
“Handle it yourself”
“Power equals control”
“Feelings are dangerous”
As boys, these strategies made sense. They helped them survive emotionally. As men in adult relationships, these same strategies create distance, resentment, and loneliness.
This is what I call a non-relational life—one where intimacy is replaced by control, avoidance, or emotional shutdown.
Many men come into my individual and couples counseling practice feeling confused, defensive, or disconnected in their relationships. They care deeply and most of the time they love their partners—but their partners experience them as unavailable, guarded, or unaccountable. What I find is that these men are not broken, they just do not have the skills to be relational and there are two reasons for this. Number one, the patriarchal culture in which we were raised does not allow it. “That first time a boy falls of his bike at the age of 3, his father or caregiver told him to stop crying, and stop being a baby or a girl!. Talk about stripping a way a boys emotional connection to the world, in that moment that is exactly what happens. But dad, my bone is sticking out of my leg and I just lost 8 gallons of blood, “just brush some dirt on it get back on your bike”. What this little boy takes away from this experience is that you bury your feelings and emotions and regardless of how you are feeling you push them down and never, ever be vulnerable again.
We get shamed for being vulnerable as boys and we are not going to have any more of that in our lives. The only problem with that we carry this into adulthood and those repressed feelings will eventually surface and come out as anger or will be processed with the use of some stances of some other type of addiction. Anger is not vulnerability but in the boy’s mind it is safer to use anger than it is to express a feeling of what is underneath the anger. When we look at this from a relationship perspective. A partner who tries to explain to their husband that they forgot to take the trash out may feel as though they are being criticized and they will fall automatically into shame from their childhood. The resulting response will be grandiosity which is anger or defensiveness. The more they feel shamed the more grandiose and oppositional they are going to become because grandiosity feels better than shame but it is only temporary. You can see how this dynamic may be playing out in your relationship. The two worst things a man can feel is criticized and controlled…why because this is most likely what a part of their childhood looked like and that little boy inside of them is not going to take it any longer!
Number 2, They had poor relational models growing up. I have heard many stories that go something like this. “My dad would come home and sit on the couch, and I would have no idea what was going on in his mind”. “My dad would come home and drink and never say anything to anyone.” “My dad was angry all the time, I think he was depressed just by how distant and sad he looked”. “My dad never spoke about his feeling.” In childhood we come out of it modeling some of what we see and reacting to what is coming at us. If we have a depressed dad that is walled off and quiet, our brains normalize it and when we grow older and end up in relationships most of us become some version of our father’s and sometimes mother’s. I am not sure if this is even a place for this, but when we are talking about male depression, this is one book that all men must read to get an idea of another perception on their childhood if there dad’s were depressed of if they are depressed. “I don’t want to talk about it.” By Terry Real my mentor and RLT therapist founder.
My dad did not provide me with any relationship skills, I never saw say the words “I love you” to anyone including us or my mom. He did not have the ability to be compassionate, vulnerable and accountable. These are the three RLT pillars I teach men and women in my couples counseling and individual therapy sessions. So with a role model as my dad, how do you think I was in my relationship with my wife going on 40 years. Yes, just like my dad.
Son’s become their dad’s or some variant of them and do something a little different to help reconcile the differences. Although the differences are subtle, we were destined to become a version of them because we had no choice. My dad used to slam kitchen cabinet doors when I was a child. What I noted is that when he was quiet and looking stressed, he would slam kitchen cabinet doors and my mom would ask him what was wrong and he would say nothing. Fast forward, twenty years in the future, and I find myself doing the same thing and my wife asking me the same question and me saying “Nothing is wrong”. But back in those days there was something wrong, my dad had feelings and emotions that he was buried and instead of saying to my mom, “hey, what you just said to me was very critical and made me feel sad” he would push it down and it surface as anger against the poor kitchen cabinets. It’s a good thing those were cabinets from the 70’s because they were built for that!
Me, like my dad, became little boys in those moments, our adaptive child that was protecting our inner wounded child from traumas of the past. That is how men become boys because they did not get what they needed so they revert to what they witnessed. That is how you have a grown man having a temper tantrum and if there are children around what we end up doing is doing what was done to us we do to them. We are passing down this generational trauma and modeling down to the ones we are supposed to be setting examples for.
We are often living from a boyhood survival strategy that was never meant to sustain adult intimacy and foster intimate and truly connected relationships. The most important thing to understand and have empathy for is that it is not our fault because how you cannot blame someone for failing when they were shown how to fail! However, after spending a couple of months with me and they decide not to change and let their adaptive child run the show, then it becomes their fault.
I tell couples and men that have children that working with me is the opportunity to put an end to this so their children will not be sitting in my chairs when they end up in relationships in the future. We can pass it back to our fathers or pass it forward to our children. Do they deserve this? No and neither did we and most of our dad’s did not have the opportunity to change but we have the opportunity to change now!
In my clinical work, I use Relational Life Therapy (RLT) to help men grow from reactive boys into grounded, relational men—men who are capable of vulnerability, compassion, and accountability without losing their sense of strength or identity. I am starting a new online program that can help men become relational in 8 weeks.
What Is Relational Life Therapy (RLT) for Men? A Proven Framework for Masculine Growth
Relational Life Therapy, developed by Terry Real, is uniquely effective for men because it does not shame masculinity—it trains it.
RLT helps men:
Move out of entitlement and out of disempowerment
Replace defensiveness with accountability
Shift from “winning” to relating
Develop emotional strength without losing masculine identity
This work is not about becoming passive or overly emotional. It is about becoming relationally mature. When the men I work with get it they are able to overcome that part of them that is holding them back from becoming relational and what they report is “Richie I can never go back to the way I was because this is so easy, it is so much easier to talk about my feeling and standing up with love because the other way I spent so much time trying to get my wife to understand me through my walled off and coldness”
How Relational Life Therapy Works for Men in Counseling
Relational Life Therapy (RLT) is especially effective for men because it is direct, structured, and behaviorally focused. Unlike approaches that rely solely on insight or emotional processing, RLT actively teaches men how to do relationships and I teach them how to be compassionate, vulnerable and take accountability for their actions instead of using defensiveness to avoid shame.
RLT is built on a few core principles that resonate strongly with men:
Clarity over ambiguity – Men are taught clear relational expectations and skills rather than vague emotional concepts.
Accountability without shame – Men are challenged firmly while preserving dignity and self-respect.
Power with connection – RLT helps men move out of power struggles and into relational leadership.
Skills over blame – The focus is on what to do differently, not who is wrong.
For men who never had healthy relational modeling, RLT provides a practical roadmap for adulthood.
From the Adaptive Boy to the Relational Man: The Core Shift I Help Men Make
In RLT, we identify the adaptive child—the younger version of the man who learned coping strategies to survive emotionally.
That younger boy often:
Avoids vulnerability
Feels easily criticized or controlled
Reacts with anger, shutdown, or superiority
Lacks models for repair and accountability
In my work, I don’t attack this part—I educate and update it, helping men build an internal adult who can lead with steadiness and integrity.
Men learn how to:
Recognize when they are operating from their adaptive boy rather than their adult self
Understand how entitlement, defensiveness, or withdrawal protect them from vulnerability
Identify bodily cues that signal emotional flooding or shutdown
They also learn how to:
Pause instead of react
Speak from vulnerability rather than blame
Hold their partner’s reality without collapsing
Stay accountable without self-hatred
This is the shift from boyhood survival to manhood leadership.
Core Relationship Skills I Teach Men Using Relational Life Therapy
RLT teaches men concrete relational skills that can be practiced in real time. These include:
Relational accountability – Learning how to own impact without minimizing, justifying, or counterattacking
Speaking from vulnerability – Expressing fear, sadness, or longing instead of anger or control
Boundary clarity – Standing up for oneself without aggression or withdrawal
Repair skills – Knowing how to return after conflict and restore connection
Emotional regulation – Staying present when conversations become uncomfortable
These skills are repeatedly practiced until they become embodied, not just understood.
Men’s Individual Counseling: How I Use Relational Life Therapy One-on-One
In my individual men’s counseling work, RLT is direct, structured, and skills-based.
We work on:
Emotional regulation and nervous system awareness
Identifying entitlement, victimhood, and avoidance
Practicing accountability language
Developing compassion for self and partner
Building a strong inner adult who leads the younger parts
Men often report feeling:
More confident and grounded
Less reactive and defensive
Clearer in communication
More respected in their relationships
This is not talk therapy alone—it is relational training. Men are coached moment by moment on how to respond differently in their real relationships, often practicing new language and behaviors during sessions.
Couples Counseling for Men: How Relational Life Therapy Rebalances Power and Restores Connection
One of the most important ways RLT helps men is by addressing power dynamics in relationships. Many men unconsciously use:
Withdrawal or shutdown
Intellectualizing emotions
Defensiveness or counterblame
Control disguised as logic or problem-solving.
RLT helps men see these patterns without shaming and teaches them how to shift into relational responsibility.
How This Transforms Couples Counseling
In couples counseling, men often feel blamed or overwhelmed. RLT changes that dynamic.
Rather than shaming men, in my couples work I:
Challenge behavior while preserving dignity
Translate emotional language into actionable steps.
Help men stay present in difficult conversations.
Teach real-time repair and accountability.
When men grow relationally, couples often experience:
Less escalation and stonewalling
More emotional safety
Faster conflict repair
Renewed intimacy and trust
Relationships don’t heal through insight alone; they heal through relational action.
Teaching What Was Never Taught
At its core, my work is about teaching men what they never received:
How to be strong and kind
How to lead without dominating
How to stay open under pressure
How to repair instead of withdrawing
The young boy inside many men simply did not understand vulnerability, compassion, or accountability—because no one showed him how.
Therapy becomes the place where that learning finally happens.
Turning Boys into Men—One Relationship at a Time
Becoming a man is not about age, income, or authority. It is about the capacity to stay relational when it’s hard.
Relational Life Therapy offers men a clear path forward:
Out of isolation
Out of power struggles
Into connection, responsibility, and love
Turning boys into men is not about blame. It’s about growth, healing, and finally learning how to show up fully—in life and in love.
Ready to Grow Into the Man Your Relationship Needs?
If you recognize yourself in this work, if you know you care deeply but struggle with defensiveness, shutdown, or recurring conflict—this is exactly the kind of growth Relational Life Therapy is designed for.
In my practice, I work with men who are ready to:
Take real accountability without collapsing into shame.
Learn how to stay open and grounded during conflict.
Build emotional strength, not emotional avoidance.
Repair trust and deepen intimacy with their partner.
Whether you’re seeking individual men’s counseling or couples counseling, the work starts with learning how to show up differently.
If you’re ready to move from surviving your relationships to leading them or have a partner that believes this type of work would be beneficial to them and your relationship, I invite you to schedule a consultation and begin the work.
