You are enough.
“A man needs appreciation like oxygen.” Alison Armstrong, relationship coach, speaker and author of The Queen’s Code.
A simple statement that stopped me in my tracks, not as revelation but as recognition. It names something that’s happening right in front of me on a daily basis, yet rarely spoken aloud. A fracture running quietly through so many relationships. A kind of emotional misunderstanding that leaves both men and women feeling alone in rooms they share.
Most men — certainly the men I work with — don’t sit around craving admiration from their partner. This is where the stereotype collapses under real observation. What they want is far more grounded: support. A sense that the person beside them understands the pressure they’re under, the responsibility they carry, the internal negotiations they never voice. When a man feels overwhelmed — and many do, far more often than they admit — what he needs is validation, not solutions. The simple, stabilising presence of someone saying: it makes sense you feel this way. You’re not weak for struggling. I’m here.
But men rarely ask for this. Many have been trained, explicitly or not, to treat their internal life like contraband: something to keep hidden, something to swallow down until it burns. They learn to stay composed even when their mind is running at a pitch that borders on frantic. And because they don’t express what’s happening inside, the world assumes nothing is happening at all.
Women, meanwhile, are dealing with their own version of the same strain. They carry the emotional infrastructure of the relationship — the unspoken worry, the future-planning, the maintaining of connection. They’re stretched by the constant demand to be attentive, responsive, adaptable. They want to feel supported enough that they can finally let the armour loosen. They want to be met, not managed.
And this is where the fracture lives: two people, both under pressure, both expecting the other to understand, both interpreting the silence of the other as indifference.
But silence is rarely indifference. More often, it’s exhaustion. Or fear. Or the belief that speaking might make things worse.
The repair begins with a reframe: men and women have equal emotional needs. Equal, not identical. Men need support more than spectacle. They need their partner to say: I see the strain behind your steadiness. You’re allowed to feel overwhelmed. You don’t have to carry this alone. Women need presence that doesn’t retreat. They need to feel someone has their back without needing to ask for it.
Appreciation, in this context, isn’t flattery. It’s oxygen. It allows both sides to breathe again.
I see it all the time in coaching sessions, in relationships on the edge, in families trying to keep their shape. When a man feels supported, he opens. His shoulders drop. His voice steadies. He stops bracing. When a woman feels supported, she exhales. She stops scanning the emotional weather. She softens. A different kind of intimacy becomes possible.
None of this is dramatic work. It’s quiet. Small gestures. A shift in tone. A moment of real listening. A sentence delivered at the right time: you’re not alone in this. I’m with you.
If there’s a way through the fracture, it’s this: understanding what the other person is carrying, even when they don’t have the words to say it. And then speaking the words that help them breathe.
Slow down. Look properly. Listen without preparing your defence. Say the thing they’re too tired or too afraid to ask for.
No one should have to live their life feeling alone inside their own relationship.
This is the first way back.
