Episode 14
Why Male Vulnerability Feels Like a Trap
In this powerful episode, I’m joined by therapist Edan Zebooloon, LMHC, for an honest, eye-opening conversation about male vulnerability—why it’s so hard, why it matters, and what often gets in the way.
We explore the emotional bind many men live in: wanting to connect but feeling trapped by a culture that equates emotional expression with weakness. Edan shares his personal journey of surrendering the idea of being a "real man"—and how that act of letting go became the gateway to true connection, both with himself and with other men.
We also dig into what happens in relationships when men do finally open up—why it can feel destabilizing for their partners, how couples can unintentionally get stuck in a cycle of shutdown and pursuit, and what it really takes to create safety for emotional intimacy on both sides.
Whether you're a man trying to access your own emotions, a partner longing for deeper connection, or a therapist supporting couples through these stuck points, this episode will leave you with clarity, compassion, and a few practical tools you can use right away.
💬 We talk about:
- Why vulnerability isn’t even on the radar for many men—and what shuts it down
- The emotional cost of performing masculinity and the relief of letting it go
- Why some partners unconsciously reject the very vulnerability they ask for
- The danger of turning couples therapy into a parent–child dynamic
- The power of men’s groups and peer modeling for emotional expression
- A simple but powerful tool to reconnect with your partner’s (and your own) inner child
👤 About Today’s Guest:
Edan Zebooloon is a certified Emotionally Focused Therapist in practice for over fifteen years, bringing his unique vulnerable authenticity and array of emotional expressiveness in service to his clients—cutting to their own core truth.
He has a passion for all of us to be seen, to receive the validation and empathy we deserve, and to be more deeply connected to ourselves and one another. His work includes a strong focus on Gender Equity and Reconciliation, helping women and men both understand and appreciate one another’s emotional experience.
To connect with Edan for therapy, gender groups, or referrals to other practitioners he personally endorses, visit:
👉 www.greaterseattlecounseling.com
💌 Free Resource for Couples:
Want help breaking out of reactive cycles and starting more honest conversations with your partner?
Grab my free 7-day email course, “Break the Cycle: 7 Days to Stop the Same Fight and Rebuild Connection.”
Sign up here: 👉 www.drrachelorleck.com
Transcript
Edan - Male Vulnerability
[:Today's episode is one that is going to linger in the best way. I'm joined by Edan Zebooloon, a fellow EFT therapist, with a powerful personal story and a deep understanding of male vulnerability. We talk about the quiet grief men carry, how couples get stuck when one partner wants more emotional openness but doesn't know how to receive it and what it really takes for men to feel safe enough to drop their armor. Whether you're in a relationship with a man raising one or you are one, this conversation will challenge and move you. Let's get into it.
ly when we're thinking about [:Feel more connected to our loved ones. So welcome to the show, Edan.
Edan: Thank you Rachel. I was really, uh, touched when you had suggested that I come on your show and at the time I didn't know, you know, what I might be speaking to, but I just had this hit something around vulnerability and men because it's something that has been.
Um, very much coming up in my own practice, but I've just been seeing it in the wider culture. Um, and I just felt like it is important that someone in, in our position, uh, be speaking to it that I've not been hearing sufficiently.
you've done a lot of work in [:Edan: I. I appreciate that. It's like, it's the main reason why I am here and became a therapist. And, um, ironically, it stems a lot from me not feeling like I was a real man myself. Since I was a boy, I was always more vulnerable and more emotionally sensitive than the other boys around me, and even in my own family where I would be
s just too painful to try to [:And the irony is that freed me up to just be who I was. So when I was in my early twenties. I was invited to a men's group and I would be the one who was just sharing what was really authentically going on for me and just speaking and expressing rawly with my emotion. And so by the end of that, um. I was blown away when all these big studly dudes came around me and thanked me for my vulnerability, saying that it gave them permission to be vulnerable.
u consider, even though it's [:Rachel: Sure. Well, it sounds like from that story that even the people who we might classify as real men also have this vulnerable side, but they don't know how to access it, and seeing you be so vulnerable in that way really gave them that permission that it was okay for them to attend to that part of themself.
on his radar that, um, it is [:He said, no, it's not even something that I was aware of. It's just something that I've been accustomed to of not feeling. And
Rachel: so
Edan: not being vulnerable. So vulnerability is just a very foreign concept. And so that's something that I've been coming to, um, examine more.
Rachel: Do you think that's a function of how we teach men versus women to recognize emotion?
xpectation to be emotionally [:Rachel: Yeah, women have this.
You're either not enough or too much, but men, if you access that at all, it's just not okay.
Edan: Exactly.
Rachel: It really is such this bind because when we're thinking about couples and people going into couples therapy and wanting to be closer and more connected. I know in my practice and, and maybe you see something similar women say they wanna see their partners open up, they wanna have access to that.
But when men finally do, it actually can trigger more of that cycle or more judgment or panic in that relationship. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that.
that this is a, male female [:That on the one hand, wanting our significant other to be more emotionally present and expressive, but then when they are, that is not, received the way that, um, would be rewarding. So men are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
It's something that I, um, observed in a couple that I was working with relatively recently where it was, it was played out classically of the girlfriend saying that they wanted her, boyfriend to be more emotionally. Present and expressive. But then when he finally was, she was having a visceral reaction.
[:Rachel: Mm-hmm. So this, it's this balance of wanting strength and vulnerability, but sometimes seeing that vulnerability as weakness or experiencing it as such in the moment.
work of Brene Brown and just [:Um, to paraphrase that we've had it backwards, that vulnerability is not a weakness. It's actually a strength. Mm-hmm. And not being vulnerable has been the true weakness, but that said, it's still not realized, um, in reality. And so unfortunately, um, boys and men feel like it's a trap that they're being asked to walk into.
Rachel: Yeah, well, you want this, but then you're telling me I, I'm weak when I do it. And all of a sudden it's like, well, I'm not going there, I'm not gonna expose myself only to have it dismissed or diminished or invalidated.
ught as I have had some time [:That because I hear a lot of, uh, women, complain about why are their husbands not showing up and it's the worst of both worlds of they're not being, I. The providers that they want to be the case. Exactly. Or they're not helping out around the house and so forth. And, I believe it has a lot to do with, as wonderful as it was that there was the women's liberation movement.
And it was a long time coming. There hasn't been a similar men's liberation movement, and so this generation has been in this quandary of looking to their forefathers, and there's a part of them that still believes they have to be like that. So shut down and unemotional.
But then on the other [:Rachel: It's such an unrealistic expectation to be everything, and it sounds like it's a really big burden to carry and. How disappointing it is to feel like you can never achieve or be enough.
Edan: Yeah. And, and that's where, um, I, I'm hoping that it helps for women, um, or again, even in, um, a queer, uh, gay relationships to be aware of this, that, um, if.
your vulnerability received [:And so as, I mean, as a man myself, I do consider myself a feminist and where I've had some, reticence to express this, but as much as women have been needing to be really seen, uh, and that's not been the case, sadly, because of the way, um, patriarchy has been so dominant, we need to find a way.
For men to be [:I.
Rachel: Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective, and as this dynamic is going on, I can imagine there being a lot of this emotional gridlock that could happen that as therapists we really need to be aware of and work through in the therapeutic environment to make it safe.
therapist is not mindful of [:But it feels like a betrayal to being a man, like they're being asked to, divulge in a sense like the secrets of being a man.
It's like is, but it is not even as conscious of that. And it, it contributes to what we often see in men of anger, uh, because they feel like it's a threat. They're not even aware of why, what that threat is exactly, but it is a threat both to their own masculinity, um, and themselves as an individual, but it's also a threat to the relationship that whether their partner.
r not, that their resistance [:Rachel: It's interesting that you talk about anger and security of the relationship, kind of in the same breath. How does that work?
If anger becomes this reaction to protect the vulnerability
But anger in a relationship ends up being a danger signal ' cause it can feel threatening when your partner is angry with you on that attachment level, then how do we get past that?
Edan: Yeah. If I'm understanding you correctly that uh, the, the female partner is experiencing the threat of the anger Yes. Themselves.
et with anger, if they could [:the threat of the anger that the reason for the anger is because their husband or boyfriend is feeling threatened. And if we could just have that acknowledgement to begin with and then curiosity as to what is the threat, then it can hopefully diffuse that for both.
Rachel: Sure. I could see how somebody listening to this might take that in as well
It's not, it's okay for that [:Is that what I'm understanding?
Edan: Yeah, and I, it's something that I, especially again, as a man have been self-conscious of in my work of that then I was perpetuating the, the harm of women.
In order for us to not be harmed the person who's experiencing that more overtly, then we need to help to figure out what is the harm that is happening for our partner and for us to help.
ets off. But in order to let [:And that might mean having some ownership in the piece that hurt them. Like if there were words that we used, or actions that we took that hurt our partner, that we then saw anger. But underneath there's something much more vulnerable. And when we can own that and understand it, instead of take it very personally, take it as accusation or blame that we started the cycle, but it's just understanding the cycle better. So I understand that when I come at you with anger, you pull away and have to protect yourself. But if I come towards you with something more vulnerable, my fear is that you will still back away and not [00:19:00] be there for me when I am naked and alone.
Edan: If we are being judgmental and critical and, and especially shaming of it, then we're not going to be experiencing, healing around that.
Rachel: And that's really what I love about. Emotionally focused therapy because it does have this cycle where it's, there's no one to blame. It's just understanding how we are contributing to this cycle that's ongoing with our partner.
, even though it's not going [:And it goes back to what we're touching on earlier that even though that may be a fact that the, the husband or boyfriend, uh, male partner is experiencing hurt, they have not even been conscious of it themself fully or feel like it's okay to acknowledge it. Mm. Because it has not been acceptable to acknowledge being hurt.
It would be a sign of weakness, um, and or it will be used against them.
Rachel: I can imagine how awful that would feel in those moments of vulnerability
that, part of the resistance [:Rachel: I think I understand what you mean about the parent and child, but just so everybody else who might be listening can understand that. Can you say a little bit more?
I was working with the other [:And then it's like where they feel like then they're being asked to be like the parent. A lot of it has to do with because they're afraid that if they do lean into that role of being a nurturing responder now to their partner's [00:23:00] vulnerability is going to kill any of the sexual chemistry and attraction.
Rachel: Yeah, A few episodes ago, I, recorded an episode on co-regulation and, and that's what this is bringing up, where in a true, intimate, loving relationship, we co-regulate with our partner. And when we are in a relationship with somebody, we accept and work with their areas of growth.
And we work with them as challenges, as part of the relationship rather than leave them alone with it or try to do it for them either over function or under function.
one or the other, that there [:Rachel: Well. So as we're getting ready to wrap up here today, I have one final question. So, for the men who might be listening today who really wanna start working on cracking, open some of that armor, and for the women or partners who wanna support that without shaming or chasing, then what's something that they could each do differently?
Edan: As easier said than done as it is to not expect this is going to be just like a flip of a switch.
at acknowledgement. But that [:I. And if, if they don't have that, it's going to be difficult for them to really open up to that themselves. Men's groups and, uh, particularly speaking to vulnerability and just how powerful that has been of the same guys that we've been talking about here when they're able to show up in a container. That they are seeing other men opening up, it's, it's almost like a kettle of popcorn. That's like when one pops and then another pops, and it's just so beautiful that is not able to really be experienced like in especially like a heterosexual [00:26:00] relationship, that it's going to be harder for the man to feel like it's okay to be vulnerable with their female partner if they've not had that witnessed and experience with other men. So that's a big one. Okay. For what the man can do. Um, and then for the woman is, like I was suggesting earlier, for them to consider that if they're experiencing some type of hurt or harm, that the likelihood is really good that their, husband or boyfriend is, and to just have that grace for them.
t in that moment. And that's [:And so is it any wonder that the fox is gonna wanna retreat into their home more? But if we could step back and, practice being more patient and, having compassion and grace, then there is going to be a greater chance for the fox to feel safe to come out. Um, yeah, so that's a big part of it.
, uh, boys are actually more [:So if both of them could go back, and this one couple that I was working with recently was, uh, sharing about a story when he was 12 years old and how he was literally and figuratively beaten, for his vulnerability. That's when he shut it down. And if we could go back and reclaim that, that's what's going to help both of them be able to open up to that more moving forward together.
Rachel: Yeah. As you're describing that one, I feel so sad 'cause I have a young boy at home and I just feel so sad thinking about that. And on the other hand, it just sounds like generations and generations of trauma.
Edan: Exactly.
ections, these guards for no [:And being more curious and sensitive around those, it sounds like what you're saying will help some of that drop away to make more safety for the the boy or the sensitivity to come forward.
Edan: Exactly, and so one of the things that I love giving as a homework assignment to couples early on, after examining some of these things is for them to get pictures of that wounded child for each of them, because it's not just boys who were harmed and hurt, but girls also.
If we can get pictures of that vulnerable wounded child, then it can help them to see what the one that is being reactive now and the one being reacted to is coming from this hurt place.
so much for sharing that and [:Thank you so much for taking the time to come on today.
Edan: Yeah. And thank you for, uh, allowing for this platform that I just, again, believe it is really critical that there's more, awareness around this phenomenon.
Rachel: I hope people listening to this are able to take some nuggets from this and really be able to incorporate it into their own life and know that, men, women, nobody's broken for having soft emotions and needing to be cared for, and loved, and seen.
ailable, but without models, [:In doing so, Idan gave us some powerful tools to start with patience, grace, and a willingness to see the hurt underneath the reaction. You can find I Don's information in the show notes if you'd like to connect with him and learn more about his work. And if this episode resonated with you, I'd love it if you'd share it with somebody who needs to hear it.
Until next time.
Until next time.
ls, safety or permission, it [:In doing so, Edon gave us some powerful tools to start with patience, grace, and a willingness to see the hurt underneath the reaction. You can find Elon's information in the show notes if you'd like to connect with him or learn more about his work. And if this episode resonated with you, I'd love it if you could share it with somebody who needs to hear it.
