I’m a psychologist trained in depth psychology, with a background in marriage and family therapy and mental health counseling. Over the years, I've sat with men who already know what they need to do: tell the truth, face the pain, set the boundary, stop running. For men, insight into this isn’t the problem. The problem is action. What stops them isn’t ignorance. It could be things like anger, guilt, some shame, and the quiet fear of what happens after the choice is made. I’ve come to think of this pattern as what I call the Shakespeare Complex.

In Shakespeare’s plays, the audience usually knows what must be done long before the final act arrives. The tension in the story isn’t what the protagonist........

© Psychology Today