Over the years working with men on their mental health and personal development, John has noticed something quite profound. Most men he speaks with have become masters at meeting their needs, yet they’re absolutely terrible at pursuing what they actually want. And this distinction? It’s quietly destroying their mental wellbeing.

Let’s explore what John means by this.

The Trap of Need-Driven Living

You’ve probably encountered this in your own life, even if you haven’t put words to it yet. You wake up, go to work because you need to pay the bills, maintain relationships because you need companionship, exercise because you need to stay healthy, and keep your emotions in check because you need to appear strong. Everything becomes driven by necessity rather than genuine desire.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: when your entire existence revolves around meeting needs, you’re essentially running on a hamster wheel. You’re moving constantly but never actually arriving anywhere meaningful. The research backs this up in ways that should concern all of us.

In the UK, approximately one in four adults experiences a mental health problem each year. Yet when we look specifically at men, the picture becomes even starker. Men account for roughly 75% of all suicides in this country. That’s three men taking their own lives every single day. Read that again and let it sink in.

These aren’t just statistics—they represent fathers, brothers, sons, and mates who felt trapped by their needs and lost sight of what they genuinely wanted for themselves.

Understanding the Need Prison

Think back to John’s original piece about wants versus needs. He highlighted something crucial: want is a conscious choice, whilst need is subconscious. This distinction matters enormously when we’re talking about men’s mental health.

Most men John works with have never truly considered what they want from life. Instead, they’re driven by what they believe they need to be:

A provider who never shows financial vulnerability
A rock who never crumbles under pressure
A problem-solver who never admits he’s struggling
A leader who never asks for help
A protector who never reveals his own fears

These perceived needs become iron bars in a prison of your own making. You meet them diligently, day after day, yet that gnawing emptiness persists. Something feels perpetually off, but you can’t quite identify what’s missing.

The mental health data reveals this pattern clearly. Research shows that only 36% of referrals for psychological therapy in the UK are for men, despite men obviously experiencing significant mental health challenges. Additionally, 40% of men report feeling too embarrassed to seek professional mental health support.

Why? Because admitting you need help contradicts the need to appear strong. The very act of reaching out for support feels like failing to meet your most fundamental need—to be self-sufficient.

The Significance Trap

Let’s examine significance as John discussed it, but through the lens of men’s mental wellbeing. If your primary emotional need is significance, and you learned to seek it from external sources, you’re constantly chasing validation that exists outside yourself.

For many men, this manifests through work. In 2021, approximately 875,000 workers in Great Britain reported experiencing work-related stress, depression, or anxiety. That’s not coincidental. When your significance comes from professional achievement, redundancy or setbacks don’t just threaten your job—they threaten your entire sense of self.

John has seen men completely unravel when they lose their position or face career difficulties. It’s not really about the job itself. It’s about how that job was meeting their need for significance. Remove the source, and suddenly they’re left with nothing to prop up their identity.

Similarly, in relationships, men often need their partner to validate their worth rather than wanting to build something meaningful together. When the relationship struggles or ends, it’s not just heartbreak—it’s an identity crisis. The external source they relied upon to feel significant has vanished.

Certainty and Control

The need for certainty is another area where men particularly struggle. Life is inherently uncertain, yet many men operate under the illusion that they can control outcomes through sheer force of will. When reality inevitably contradicts this belief, mental health suffers.

The ONS has monitored relationships between depression prevalence and the rising cost of living, showing that rates were higher among those struggling with housing costs or energy bills. For men whose identity is tied to being a provider, financial uncertainty doesn’t just create stress—it attacks their fundamental need to ensure their family’s security.

This need for certainty often prevents men from seeking help. Admitting you’re struggling means acknowledging that you’re not in control. It means facing the uncertainty of what therapy might reveal, how others might perceive you, or whether you can actually get better. The need for certainty keeps you trapped in familiar misery rather than risking uncertain healing.

What Happens When We Choose Want

Now, here’s where things get interesting. What if, instead of being driven by needs, you started making conscious choices about what you genuinely want?

This isn’t about ignoring practical necessities. You’ll still need to work, maintain relationships, and look after yourself. The difference is in the driving force behind these actions.

When you want something, you’re exercising agency. You’re making deliberate choices aligned with your values and authentic self rather than responding to subconscious programming from childhood or societal expectations.

Let me give you a real example from John’s work with the Men’s Prosperity Club, a mental health support group in Birmingham that’s pioneered a different approach to supporting men. They’ve built their entire model around creating space for men to explore what they genuinely want rather than what they think they need to be.

The Men’s Prosperity Club offers walk-and-talk sessions where men discuss issues they’ve struggled to articulate elsewhere—mental health challenges, relationship difficulties, financial stress. Currently supporting over 4,500 men weekly through various channels, they’ve discovered something powerful: when men feel safe enough to move beyond their needs, transformation happens.

The Walk-and-Talk Revolution

There’s something almost poetic about the walk-and-talk model. Rather than sitting face-to-face in a clinical setting (which often triggers the need to appear “together”), men walk side-by-side. The physical movement mirrors the psychological journey—you’re literally moving forward whilst processing difficult emotions.

This format taps into something fundamental about male communication. Many men open up more readily whilst doing something together. The activity provides a focus beyond the intensity of direct eye contact, creating what I call a “window of comfort” that’s wider than traditional therapy settings.

What makes this approach particularly effective is that it removes the performance aspect that often accompanies men’s need for significance. There’s no audience to impress, no hierarchy to navigate (the group uses horizontal leadership where every voice carries equal weight), and no expectation that you’ll have everything sorted.

You’re simply a man, walking with other men, discussing what you actually want from life rather than constantly striving to meet needs you never consciously chose.

The Relationship Between Wants and Mental Wellbeing

When you shift from need-driven to want-driven living, several things happen that directly impact your mental health:

You develop genuine self-worth. Instead of seeking significance externally, you build it internally through aligned actions. Your value doesn’t fluctuate based on others’ opinions or external circumstances.

You’re comfortable with uncertainty. Rather than needing things to be certain, you want to grow and adapt. This flexibility reduces anxiety and opens possibilities you’d previously closed off.

You create authentic connections. Instead of needing relationships to complete you, you want connections that complement who you are. This shifts dynamics from dependency to genuine partnership.

You allow yourself to be human. Rather than needing to appear strong, you want to be whole—which includes acknowledging vulnerability, asking for support, and processing difficult emotions.

Recent surveys show that 20% of children aged 8-16 had a probable mental disorder in 2023, up from 12% in 2017. Among those aged 17-19, rates jumped from 10% in 2017 to 23% in 2023. These young men are growing up in a world where needs are amplified through social media and constant comparison.

If we don’t teach them the difference between wants and needs, we’re condemning another generation to the same struggles. We’re programming them to chase external validation rather than internal alignment.

Practical Steps Toward Want-Driven Living

So how do you actually shift from needs to wants? It starts with awareness and honest self-reflection:

Identify your primary emotional need. Is it a certainty? Significance? Connection? Growth? Understanding what’s driving you subconsciously is the first step toward making conscious choices.

Question your “have to” statements. Every time you catch yourself saying “I have to,” pause. Do you really have to, or have you simply accepted it as a need without examining whether it aligns with what you genuinely want?

Explore your values. What actually matters to you when you strip away societal expectations, family pressure, and conditioning? Your values point toward your authentic wants.

Get comfortable with discomfort. Shifting from needs to wants means facing uncertainty. It means risking vulnerability. It means potentially disappointing people who benefitted from you staying trapped in need-driven patterns.

Find your people. Whether it’s the Men’s Prosperity Club, another support group, therapy, or trusted friends—you need spaces where you can explore these questions without judgement. The latest data shows the mental health waiting list at 1.7 million people, which means traditional services are stretched. Community-based support often provides more immediate access.

Practice articulating wants. Start small. What do you want for breakfast? What do you want to do this weekend? It sounds trivial, but many men have so thoroughly disconnected from their wants that even simple preferences feel foreign.

The Technology Factor

Interestingly, 76% of men want to use technology to improve their health and wellbeing. The pandemic caused a 200% increase in mental health app usage, demonstrating that men will engage with support when it feels accessible and private.

Digital tools can serve as a bridge between need and want. They offer the certainty of availability (meeting the need for control) whilst creating space to explore what you genuinely want without the vulnerability of face-to-face interaction initially.

However, technology alone isn’t enough. Eventually, genuine connection with other humans becomes essential. Virtual support can open the door, but walking through it requires real relationships with people who understand your journey.

When Needs Become Dangerous

There’s a darker side to need-driven living that we must address directly. When needs go perpetually unmet, or when meeting them requires increasingly harmful strategies, mental health deteriorates rapidly.

Some men meet their need for certainty through controlling behaviour that damages relationships. Others pursue significance through work addiction that destroys their health. Still others seek connection through unhealthy dependencies or substance use.

In August 2025, 395,585 new referrals flooded into mental health services, and 23,125 people were subject to the Mental Health Act. Many of these cases represent needs that escalated into crisis because alternative, healthier paths weren’t explored.

The tragic reality is that suicide often represents the ultimate attempt to escape needs that feel impossible to meet. Those three men we lose daily aren’t choosing death—they’re desperately seeking relief from the crushing weight of needs they can no longer sustain.

Living Aligned With Want

Imagine waking up and making choices throughout your day based on what you genuinely want rather than what you feel you need to do. How different would your life look?

You might want meaningful work rather than needing status. You might want authentic relationships rather than needing validation. You might want growth and challenge rather than needing comfort and certainty. You might want to be whole rather than needing to appear strong.

This shift doesn’t mean becoming selfish or abandoning responsibilities. It means approaching those responsibilities from a place of conscious choice rather than driven necessity. The difference in how this feels is profound.

Men in the Men’s Prosperity Club often describe a weight lifting when they realize they can choose what they want. The horizontal leadership structure ensures no one’s imposing their vision of who you should be. Instead, you’re exploring who you actually are and what you genuinely want from this one life you’ve been given.

The Ripple Effect

When you shift from needs to wants, the impact extends far beyond your individual wellbeing. Your relationships improve because you’re showing up authentically rather than playing a role. Your children learn that it’s safe to express genuine desires rather than constantly performing. Your colleagues see that vulnerability and strength coexist. Your community becomes richer because you’re contributing your actual gifts rather than meeting expected obligations.

The revolution in men’s mental health that’s slowly building across the UK isn’t really about better services or reduced stigma, though those matter. It’s fundamentally about men reclaiming the right to want rather than always needing.

It’s about recognizing that you don’t need to be invulnerable—you want to be whole. You don’t need to have all the answers—you want to grow through questions. You don’t need external validation—you want internal alignment. You don’t need to suffer alone—you want genuine connection.

Moving Forward

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in these patterns, you’re already taking the first step. Awareness precedes change. Understanding that you’ve been need-driven opens the possibility of choosing differently.

Consider what you genuinely want. Not what you should want, not what others expect, not what makes logical sense—what do you actually want? It might take time to access that answer. Years of need-driven living create layers you’ll need to work through.

Seek support in exploring this. Whether through groups like the Men’s Prosperity Club, therapy, coaching, or trusted friends, having witnesses to your journey makes it real. Trying to sort this entirely in your own head often keeps you trapped in familiar patterns.

Remember that choosing wants over needs doesn’t mean life becomes easy. It means it becomes yours. You’ll still face challenges, uncertainties, and difficult emotions. The difference is you’ll be facing them as yourself rather than as who you think you need to be.

And that makes all the difference.

Final Thoughts

The men’s mental health crisis in the UK won’t be solved by better services alone, though we desperately need those. It won’t be solved by reducing stigma alone, though that’s crucial. It will be solved when men feel safe enough to move beyond the needs that imprison them and conscious enough to pursue the wants that liberate them.

Every man who makes this shift becomes a beacon for others. Every authentic conversation chips away at the facade. Every vulnerability shared normalizes being human rather than performing strength.

You don’t need to wait for permission. You don’t need perfect circumstances. You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You simply need to start asking: What do I actually want?

The answer might surprise you. It might scare you. It will certainly change you.

But isn’t that better than spending your one precious life meeting needs you never consciously chose?