It exacts a high toll on individuals, the community and governments. Men's attitudes to counselling Statistics show that while many of the clients accessing counselling services are couples, individual clients are more than likely to be women. And yet so much of the feedback I have received from Government backbenchers, lobby groups and via the media and my own observations, points to men often being in crisis, or being desperately unhappy or feeling isolated. The issue for us then is to reconcile this apparent need for support with the fact that men are not utilising the services available to them. In part it is this very dilemma, which has fuelled this initiative.
Men believe that commitment is important and that it is too easy to leave relationships.
Contrary to popular belief, men are willing to talk about their relationships in the right circumstances, especially within a group of men with similar backgrounds. This was true of men across all social and economic groups. Men seek communication, trust, honesty, compatibility, flexibility and compromise, love and sex, spending time together while at the same time maintaining some independence, mutual respect, support, understanding and shared values and goals in a relationship. And they have different, pragmatic approaches to communicating about and solving relationship issues. As I mentioned earlier, the Government has allocated substantial funding to develop and pilot innovative family relationship service responses suited to men.