Why Don't Midlife Men Get The Help They Need? Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Alice Kearney: In everything I read and all the responses I got, I think there was such a small percentage of men who said, “Look, midlife isn't an issue for me”. There was a tiny percentage.

I didn't really understand what a lot of men feel their life is like now. A lot of people sort of said, you know, I'm a middle aged man, or a middle aged white man, and we're the most put upon people out there. I can't say anything. I'm not allowed to say anything about my situation for fear of ridicule.

So it is an issue, but they don't know who to talk to, where to go or what to do.

Paul Sutton: Alice Kearney runs a midlife assessment and advisory service that centres around lifestyle, longevity, and legacy. Earlier this year, she tried to develop something specifically focused on men but found there was little interest. This led her to investigate why. 

The results of her research were revealing: the vast majority of men she spoke to were facing midlife issues and struggling to cope with the emotional pressures and mental burdens they were carrying. Yet, they felt unable to speak up and believed they were being ignored by society. 

A question arose for Alice, and it's something that has bothered me over the last few months: is there a lack of information available for midlife men, or are men simply not interested in helping themselves?

<THEME MUSIC>

PS: I'm Paul Sutton, and this is Middle Man, the show for midlife men and the people who love them.

EPISODE

PS: Alice, back in July, you wrote an article that really caught my attention. You titled it Midlife Men in Crisis, or Not? as a question. What struck me the most was the question you posed about whether there is a lack of information available for midlife men, or if men just aren't inclined to help themselves. 

I think it’s an intriguing question. We’ll delve into that in a minute, but before we do, how did you become interested in the whole midlife sphere and writing that piece in the first place?

AK: It's quite a long, winding story, but essentially, I had a real fear of ageing. As I’m part of a child-free couple, I’d had several incidents with family members, which made me acutely aware of getting older. What happened was, my dad had a stroke – quite a catastrophic one. He couldn't walk, and cognitively, he was completely changed. Five days later, my aunt also had a severe stroke, leaving her unable to walk or talk. Then, her partner passed away, and I became her main carer. 

All of this happened within a short period. To add to that, my dad later developed cancer and died, and then my mum got cancer. During lockdown, I ended up caring for her as well. These incidents piled up, and I started wondering, “What’s going to happen to me? Who’s going to help me?” 

So, I began researching how to plan for the future. I was hoping there would be a silver bullet solution, but there isn’t. What I discovered was that most of the preparations you need to make for later life actually start in midlife. This includes everything from your health and habits to your financial planning, such as pensions, where you live, and even bureaucratic matters like your will and power of attorney. 

These are things we often don't think about until we're "old", but in reality, we need to start planning for them in midlife. The only way to have a good later life is to think about it now.

PS: When you say "midlife" in this context, what ages are you referring to? I’m sitting here at 52, and we talk about things like kids and wills, right? Pensions and all of that – things I should have sorted 20 years ago but, if I’m honest, have only really started thinking about in the last six months. I’m ashamed to admit that. Do you think that’s relatively common?

AK: Yes, it is. I think people tend to think about these things only after they, or someone close to them, becomes ill, or when they experience an unexpected death in the family and realise they aren’t prepared. I recall a statistic that said something like 50 to 60% of people don’t know where their partner’s accounts are.

PS: I had this exact conversation with my wife today, in fact.

AK: Yes, exactly. If something happened to you or your partner, you might not even know what insurances you have to claim on or where to go for information, especially now that everything is digital. In the past, you'd have gone through a filing cabinet and found the necessary paperwork, but that doesn’t happen anymore. When I was handling my uncle's probate, I found an insurance policy that paid out £100,000, and we had just three weeks to claim it. That’s not something you'll easily stumble upon today without being organised.

PS: So, your response to what was obviously a very traumatic time for you has been very practical.

AK: Yes, it was a traumatic time. I wasn’t the only person caring, there were others involved, but it fundamentally changed how I live my life – whether it’s my habits around drinking, eating healthily, or visiting the doctor more often. I’m now planning for where I want to live in the future. Most of my friends don’t have children either, and we've talked about possibly living together in some form of community as we age. I saw with both my parents and my aunt that moving to a rural area sounds idyllic, but it becomes problematic when your health deteriorates. My parents and aunt moved to the countryside, but when they became ill, it was incredibly difficult for them to find support.

PS: Yes, I experienced something similar with my parents. They moved to Devon when my dad retired. It was lovely for about 20 years, but the last few were tough because they were so isolated. My brothers and I all lived hours away, so it became a problem when their health declined.

AK: Yes, and in my aunt’s case, she’s been in Cornwall, five hours away from me, for nine years since her stroke. The concept of a "health span" is something many people don’t fully grasp. For women, the average is about 16 years of poor health, and for men, it’s shorter because they don’t live as long. But it’s a long time to be in need of help.

PS: That’s quite shocking. So, after all that trauma, it seems like you responded in a very practical way by sorting out your later life, but doing it now. Is that what led to the creation of your business?

AK: So, it was also, I think, combined with what probably a lot of people in midlife experience—this feeling of, "Is this it? Am I going to work myself into the ground until I'm 65 and then retire?" My dad, for example, worked all his life, saved diligently, and then two years after retiring, he had a stroke. He was a teacher, so it wasn’t as though he was extremely wealthy, and he didn’t really get to enjoy his retirement. That’s the flip side of things, isn’t it?

We’re taught that we need to save as much as possible for retirement, that everything is geared towards that moment when we stop working, and only then can we start living. I fundamentally disagree with that idea. I think we need to start living now and enjoy what we’re doing in the present. So, I came up with a kind of compromise: I work on contracts for part of the year, and then I take around two months off for holidays. I also work on my business during that time.

My business, by the way, is completely free. People can assess how they’re doing in the three areas I focus on: longevity, lifestyle, and legacy. They can evaluate themselves, and then I can direct them to relevant experts, such as a financial advisor or a fitness coach, depending on what they need. Now, regarding the male aspect of my work, it never really occurred to me to create something gender-specific because, to me, these are problems everyone faces. 

It wasn’t until I started connecting with more people in this field that I noticed men were actually more resistant to engaging with me. That was the first surprise. All the women I spoke to in midlife were eager to chat about it, but the men were more reluctant. I started wondering if I was pitching this all wrong and whether I should focus solely on women. There are so many events, podcasts, and opportunities for women that I could participate in.

But then I thought, this doesn’t make sense. I talk to people about these issues all the time, and men have the same problems. I’ve had many men approach me, saying they don’t know how much they should save, or they want to change their career but don’t know how. I started to question if the lack of change is because there’s nothing out there targeting men, so they aren’t looking for it, or if there’s another reason. I wasn’t sure what the mechanism was or how to change that.

PS: I completely agree with you about the lack of information for men. That’s why I started this podcast in the first place. I looked around and found plenty of podcasts, books, and events for women—loads, especially around menopause, which is understandable. But when it comes to anything focused on men, there’s virtually nothing. It’s like a wilderness.

AK: Yes, exactly.

PS: Were you surprised to find that this was the case? Do you still find it surprising, having looked into it?

AK: Yes, I do find it surprising. But once I started talking to people, it became clear that men are just harder to engage. The main area for women is this huge amount of coaching, and it’s not all related to menopause. There’s a lot focused on career fulfilment, mindset, and stress management, but there’s very little of that for men. So I approached men, asking, "How do I reach you?" And the response was often, "Men only come to us when there’s a crisis." 

I’ve seen that in my own experience—men often only seek therapy or coaching when it’s the absolute last option, whereas I’d say 80 to 90% of my female friends have been to a coach or therapist at some point in their lives, and they talk about it openly. In contrast, maybe 5% of men I know have done the same, and if they have, they don’t talk about it. I think that’s quite strange because it’s not just about physical health; it’s about career fulfilment and how you want to live your life.

PS: Do you know why the women you’ve spoken to—like the 80 to 90% you mentioned—are more likely to have had coaching or therapy? What prompts them to go, while men seem less inclined?

AK: I think women think about their careers differently from men, partly because of the impact of having children. When you have a child, you’re taken out of the career pool for a time, which forces you to rethink how you fit children around your life. I also think there’s often a lack of confidence for many women in the workplace, whether they’ve had children or not, but especially if they have. They’re looking for someone to help them navigate those changes. 

And, of course, it’s a cliché, but women talk about these things more openly with each other. A woman might say, "I had this coach who helped me," and another woman will say, "Oh, can you introduce me?" Men don’t tend to have those conversations as frequently.

PS: The biological element is quite interesting, as well. I think I’ve mentioned this on a previous episode: women’s lives are more likely to be interrupted by biological events like having children or going through menopause, and these events split their lives into different phases. Men’s lives, on the other hand, aren’t interrupted in the same way. Even when we have kids, we might take a couple of weeks off work and then carry on as before. For men, life can feel like one continuous timeline, whereas women’s lives are shaped more by these biological milestones. I wonder if that plays a role in how men and women approach things like coaching.

AK: Yes, I think it does. Even from a young age, women are thinking about whether they want children and how that decision will impact their lives. Men, on the other hand, might not consider these things in the same way, or at least not as early. I know men in their early 40s who haven’t yet met their life partner, but they still think, "I’ll have kids one day." It’s very different. 

And biologically, they can wait longer, whereas women feel the need to plan from a much younger age. Also, whether women have children or not, there’s a lot more medical intervention in their lives—whether that’s around fertility, pregnancy, or menopause—whereas men don’t go through that same level of intervention. I think that might play a part in why they’re less accustomed to seeking help.

PS: And that links back to societal expectations about men needing to be strong, self-sufficient, and capable of fixing everything themselves. It’s an outdated idea, but we’ve been taught that by our dads, who were taught by their dads, and so on. In your article, you mentioned that you struggled to find realistic images of midlife men. Can you explain a bit more about that?

AK: Yes, I find it absolutely fascinating. You can go to Google and try to find images of midlife men, but I was on platforms like Canva and Substack trying to find suitable images, and they simply don’t seem to exist. Women complain about the lack of realistic imagery for women, and it’s an ongoing conversation, but no one seems to talk about the absence of midlife male imagery. There’s this strange gap where you go from a muscly 25-year-old man to a man with a walking stick, with very little in between. Unless, of course, it’s George Clooney—that seems to be the only image of middle-aged men out there. So yes, I really struggled to find images that represented men in midlife.

PS: There’s definitely this "lost age," isn’t there? Men between 40 and 70 seem to disappear from media and advertising. It’s almost as if society forgets they exist. So, you did your own research, having started looking into this. What did the findings reveal?

AK: Well, I looked at loads of surveys and journals, and what I found confirmed my initial thoughts: men are lonely. Men between the ages of 50 and 54 in the UK are the most likely to die by suicide compared to any other age group. I took that statistic and wanted to gather some qualitative information. So, I started by sending out a small survey to friends. Then, my husband decided to help by emailing people he knew—50 middle-aged men—and 37 responded, which, in itself, I found quite interesting. The responses were telling: many men said, "Nobody is talking about us at all."

Some of the free-text responses were really shocking to me. Perhaps I was a bit naive—I didn’t quite understand how many men feel about their lives now. A lot of them expressed that, as middle-aged men (specifically middle-aged white men), they feel like the most put-upon group. They said they can't speak out about their situation for fear of ridicule. Many shared comments along those lines, and until I started digging deeper, I hadn’t fully grasped the extent of their frustration. Part of me, as a feminist, wanted to roll my eyes and think, "Well, poor you." But as I looked more closely, it became apparent that these feelings were real and significant.

I had a conversation last week that highlighted the difficulties men face. I was speaking with two guys, one in his 30s and one in his 40s. The younger one said, "I always get up for women or older people on the Tube." The older guy, however, said, "I never do anymore—you don’t know how people are going to react." Then, a woman who was friends with both of them chimed in, "Yes, I’d be really annoyed if you got up for me," and I was baffled. She explained that she’d feel insulted, thinking he must assume she’s too fat or too old. It was just one example, but I’ve heard similar stories countless times.

A family member told me that he saw his 70-year-old neighbour changing a tyre, and since he’s a bit of a petrolhead, he offered to help. She shot back, "No, I don’t need your help; I’m perfectly capable." He said he felt completely unsure about what to do or say anymore. I think that’s a significant problem for this generation of men—they were raised with certain values, but now those values seem out of place. They don’t know what’s right anymore and what’s wrong. That was one of the biggest shocks for me in my research.

Some of what I found confirmed things I already suspected. For instance, 43% of the men in my survey said they saw their friends only once a month or less. I found that quite surprising, because we often assume that lonely people are those we don’t know. Another thing I explored was why men are lonely. I asked who organises social outings, and my hypothesis was that women tend to plan more. I’ve noticed this in my own life—my husband ends up spending a lot of time with my friends’ partners, which is fine, but it takes away his choice about who he’s spending time with. If you’re not the one organising, are you really as close to the people you spend time with? Are you able to have deeper conversations with them?

At least 60% of the men said they were not the primary organisers of their social activities, so in effect, someone else is choosing what they do and with whom they do it.

PS: Even 60% sounds too low to me, honestly. If you’d said 90%, I wouldn’t have blinked.

AK: Yes, I thought the same. I’ve had conversations with friends where one said her husband told her to stop organising every weekend. He said, "I hang out with my friends spontaneously, but if everything’s booked up, I never see them." So, she had to start leaving gaps in the calendar for him to have that time to plan his own social activities.

PS: It would be interesting to know whether he actually uses that time though. Just because he has the opportunity doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll take it.

AK: He was very social, so he did.

PS: There's definitely something to be said about men not knowing what to say or do anymore. I had a recent experience in London. I got on the Tube after a meeting, and there was a young woman, probably in her late 20s, sitting across from me. She had her head in her hands, visibly upset. I wanted to ask, "Are you okay? Is there anything I can do?" But I didn’t say a word. I felt terrible about it afterwards and kept wondering why I hadn’t said anything. Then I realised it was because, as a 50-year-old man, I didn’t want to be seen as predatory or inappropriate by approaching a younger woman. It’s ridiculous because my concern was genuine, but I hesitated.

AK: Yes, I do think it’s worse for men. There’s a huge difference between inappropriate behaviour and just having a normal conversation, but they often get muddled. For example, if I’d been a woman offering to help that neighbour change her tyre, would she have reacted the same way? We have to be careful not to impose our own narrative on someone else’s actions, but I don’t know how to solve this problem. I think it’s one of the reasons men feel so lonely—they can’t even offer to help without worrying about how it will be perceived. If they can’t talk about simple things like offering help, how are they going to have deeper conversations?

PS: That makes perfect sense. Among the other things you looked at, you had some statistics in your article about men visiting doctors—or rather, not visiting doctors—as well as issues around career purpose.

AK: Yes, the doctor thing is a cliché, but it’s also true. I know many men who say, "It’ll go away. I’ll be fine." And in some cases, that has had fatal consequences. They didn’t go to the doctor in time. In my friendship group, we always remind each other now, "Just get it checked." That applies to both men and women. With the NHS, you’ve got to push for care; no one’s going to come to you and check everything, so you have to do it yourself. This reluctance to go to the doctor is often cited as a primary reason why women tend to live longer than men.

PS: It’s shocking, really. If you don’t go to the doctor early enough, of course you’re going to die earlier. It makes perfect sense, but it’s still surprising.

AK: Yes, it’s quite sad, really, because it’s so preventable. On the career front, I think men and women are actually more similar than we might think. People in midlife are struggling to find careers they want to do, and often their old careers are disappearing or becoming harder to stay in. Technological advances and economic challenges make it difficult to remain in one career for life.

Someone recently told me about a company that got rid of all its middle managers—aged between 40 and 50—and it’s a real problem. Books like The 100-Year Life highlight the fact that we can’t keep putting people out to pasture at 60 or 65. We’re living longer, and we need to work longer. We’re also having fewer children, so we need experienced people to keep working. This isn’t just a gender issue, but I do think men talk about it less with each other than women do.

PS: I think The 100-Year Life is an amazing book, actually. It really made me think about a lot of things. Firstly, as you mentioned, my wife and I had been talking about retirement and pensions, and reading the book was like a wake-up call. It made me realise, "You’re not retiring anytime soon!" As you said, what are we going to live on for 30 years? It really hit home. 

What I found particularly interesting was the section where they map out different personas across various life stages and age groups. It makes it blatantly clear that expecting to have a career from age 20 or 25 until 65 is utterly ridiculous. Yet, we’ve all grown up with that mindset. We’re sitting here thinking, "Well, I’ve got another 15 years in the same career I’ve had for 25 years, and then I’ll retire." But this book forces you to confront the reality—this approach isn’t going to work. You need to start thinking now about how your future career will look, because we’re going to live a long time.

AK: Yes, and to give a more positive spin—because it can all sound a bit bleak—the good news is that, according to all the longevity experts, if you’re in a fulfilling career, you shouldn’t retire. In fact, retiring is one of the worst things you can do. Many people think that’s madness, but it’s because they’re doing something they hate. They’ve worked too hard, for too long, and they’re stuck in a rut. One of my friends calls it a ‘step change.’ 

She’s just turned 50 and has a side hustle that will be her next step. That’s the approach I’ve taken with my business as well—it’s my step change. It might not bring in the same money, but it won’t bring the same stress or hours either. I think more people need to start thinking in that way. I do hear men talking about it, but they face different pressures. For example, I think the statistic I used in my article was that 56% of men in the US are still the main breadwinners, so there’s this fear that they can’t do something else. It’s as if there’s no other option for them, and I think that’s really hard for men.

PS: Yes, I agree. It’s a tough stage of life when all of these realisations hit you at once, and that probably contributes to a lot of the issues we’re seeing. Elsewhere in your article, there was something else that really surprised me. You mentioned talking to a coach—was it in America?—who said that only one in four men who agreed to work with him actually followed through. So, out of four men who committed to start, only one would actually go ahead.

AK: It was actually a coach in the UK. He’s very prominent on LinkedIn, and he said it’s incredibly hard. People get to the point of engaging, but they procrastinate and don’t move forward. The reason, he said, is that they haven’t reached a crisis point yet. He told me that most men know they’re burning out, but they wait until something major happens—whether it’s a medical emergency, like high blood pressure or a heart attack, redundancy, or a death in the family—before they make a change. 

At that point, they can’t ignore it anymore. He said he’s not sure how to change that mindset. Another thing he mentioned is that men, in his experience, don’t want to put in the work. They just want a quick fix—a magic pill. I’ve had other men tell me the same thing. One even joked that his plan was to win the lottery, and while we laughed about it, that mindset is quite frustrating. 

You can’t wait for some magical event that’s never going to happen. I’ve told people, "Imagine what your day would look like if you had hundreds of millions," and they start with, "Oh, I’d go on holiday." But I push them to think about their daily routine, and eventually, they start to unravel what they really want to do. It doesn’t happen overnight, but waiting for that kind of financial windfall isn’t the solution. People are often just looking for relief from the stress and burnout, but without a proper plan, they end up stuck. I’ve also heard people say, "It’ll work itself out," but it doesn’t. You need to plan, think about your skills, and figure out what you want to do.

PS: I spoke to another coach who works with midlife men, and he said something similar. He’s seen a significant drop-off in conversions over the last 12 months. He didn’t specify exact numbers, but it’s clear that things are getting worse. The cost of living and other factors might play into it, but it’s concerning how reluctant men are to take action until they’re in crisis mode. 

This ties into the central question of your article—whether it’s a lack of information or men’s unwillingness to act. From my perspective, there’s so little information available for men in midlife about the challenges they’re going to face, it’s no wonder they wait so long to address them.

AK: Yes, and I don’t think it’s been normalised for men. For women, these conversations are happening all the time—about health, careers, and mental wellbeing. I think the menopause is a big anchor for that conversation because it affects every aspect of a woman’s life. 

Every woman I talk to around my age is dealing with it. For men, there isn’t that same kind of affirmation from other men, like, "Oh, I’ve had a great coach," or "I’ve worked with a therapist." You do see it more in the US, which tends to be ahead by a few years, so hopefully, this will start to become more common in the UK too. I listen to Parenting Hell, ironically, even though I don’t have children, because I have nieces and nephews. The two hosts, who are not quite midlife yet, talk about their therapy openly, and it’s interesting to see that conversation happening. But there’s still this perception that therapy and coaching are for celebrities, and there’s definitely still a stigma around it.

I think the stigma comes from men not feeling ‘bad enough.’ They think, "I’m not burnt out enough, I’m not ill enough," so they keep going until they absolutely can’t anymore.

PS: How do we get men talking about these issues? I know it’s a big question, and you’re not going to solve it in one go, but based on the research you’ve done, do you have any thoughts on how to get the conversation started? One of the stats from your research mentioned that three-quarters of men would be open to joining a community of like-minded men, which really surprised me. I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a community off the back of this podcast because I get so many emails from men who I think could benefit from it. But I worry it might turn into a dead zone where no one talks, because we’re men, and we don’t want to be vulnerable or open.

AK: Yes, but that’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. If the space isn’t there, then it’s hard to foster that engagement. I was surprised by the response in my survey too—around 30% said "yes" and another 30% said "maybe" to joining a community. So there’s potential, but it would need a lot of nurturing. As a woman, I wouldn’t want to run a men’s community myself—that would feel strange—but I do think the appetite is there. When my husband reached out to his contacts, they didn’t just dismiss it as another survey; they engaged with him and said, "We need something like this."

PS: So, going back to the central premise of your article, which was about whether it’s a lack of information or men’s reluctance to engage with the information that’s out there—do you think the midlife media landscape is lacking for men specifically? And is it a supply or demand issue, in your opinion?

AK: I definitely think the landscape is lacking. There aren’t enough role models out there. As I mentioned before, we have George Clooney and maybe Gary Lineker, but there aren’t many men championing midlife issues. For women, the game changer was Davina McCall doing a series on Channel 4 about menopause. It doesn’t take a massive shift, but we need someone visible, a talisman, to go out and say, "This is a problem, and we need to talk about it." From my research, it’s clear that midlife is an issue for men, but they don’t know where to turn. They don’t know who to talk to, where to go, or what to do. So, I think the first step is getting the information out there and creating a feedback loop.

OUTRO

PS: I hope you found today's show interesting. To find out more about Alice and take her free midlife assessment, head to futureproofmy.life.

If you found the show valuable, please tell someone who you think might benefit from listening. You can also sign up to the middleman newsletter, which is an article and resources based on the theme of the week’s show at middlemanpodcast.com 

Next week, we're taking a look at how to tackle stress, anxiety and burnout. 

Katie Maycock: Stress has a profound impact on the body. I think there's this element where we don't really think about stress as a physical illness, we see it as more of a mental illness. In reality, it's actually both, but it's more of a physical issue than it is a mental issue.

PS: See you then.