Westsider Radio: This Complex Life

Your teenage son has gone quiet, the bedroom door stays shut and every headline says boys are in trouble. How do you raise a good man when the internet is trying to raise him too?

Therapist Marie Vakakis, Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and couple and family therapist, sits down with parenting researcher Dr Justin Coulson to talk about his new book Boys: Building Strong Young Men From the Inside Out. They talk about what's normal for teenage boys, what deserves real concern and what parents can do this week.

This episode covers:

•    Why grunts, privacy and an obsession with mates are a normal part of adolescence

•    The code red signs: pornography, contempt towards girls and not accepting no

•    Why the manosphere appeals to so many teenage boys, and why most still name their dad as their role model

•    The core idea of Boys: healthy men help the people around them feel safer and stronger

•    Five practical ways to start the conversations that matter, beginning when boys are young

•    How to respond to "I never had this and I turned out fine"

•    The water bottle of connection and why correction and direction drain it

marievakakis.com.au

[email protected]

You're the one everyone brings their problems to, and by the end of the day there's rarely anyone left to ask how you're going.

Therapist Marie Vakakis talks with business coach and photographer Fi Mims about life in the sandwich generation, juggling teenagers, ageing parents, a business and a marriage all at once, on the latest episode of This Complex Life.

This episode covers:

What life looks like in the sandwich generation, with 17 year old twins and two parents in aged care

Why the health messaging aimed at women over 40 can leave you feeling like nothing you do is ever enough

The unspoken expectations about who carries the mental load, and why workplaces and schools haven't caught up with families where both partners work

Who Fi talks to when things get heavy, and why sharing the load with the right people matters

What Fi has learnt about listening in her marriage and with her teens

Why planning ahead and slowing down before you're forced to is worth the discomfort

Choosing deeper connection over the easy win of the couch

marievakakis.com.au

[email protected]

You still say I love you every night, but somewhere along the way you stopped feeling like you actually know each other.

Therapist Marie Vakakis explains why long term couples drift apart even when nothing has gone wrong, and what actually brings emotional intimacy back.

This episode covers:

• Why relationships fade slowly instead of ending in one big fight
• What bids for connection are, and how missing them adds up over time
• The difference between spending time together and quality time
• A simple framework for becoming a better listener
• Why couples stop updating each other, and how that widens the gap over time
• Practical questions to ask your partner this week

Open ended questions: https://marievakakis.com.au/open-ended-questions-for-couples/

Relationship Reset course: https://marievakakis.com.au/relationship-new-year-reset-2026/

marievakakis.com.au

[email protected]

The school holidays roll around again and her daughter still doesn't have anyone to hang out with. A parent writes in wondering if she's doing something wrong, and whether filling the days with activities will help or make things worse.

Therapist Marie Vakakis responds to a listener question from a parent whose teenage daughter is struggling to make friends in high school. She looks at what loneliness can actually look like in teenagers, why pushing activities on a struggling teen so often backfires, and what it means to support a young person without trying to fix the problem for them.

This episode covers:

• The difference between loneliness and solitude, and why that difference changes how a parent should respond
• Why offering too many suggestions or activities can leave a struggling teen feeling more overwhelmed, not less
• What screen time is often doing for a lonely teen, and how to get curious about it instead of shutting it down
• Why nudging a teen to just go and talk to someone tends to backfire and increase avoidance
• How emotion coaching can open up a conversation without a teen shutting down
• What emotional availability looks like when a teen doesn't want to talk about it

marievakakis.com.au

[email protected]

You can listen to every mental health podcast going and still find yourself losing it about shoes on a Tuesday morning. Knowing the information and actually doing something with it turn out to be two very different skills.

Therapist Marie Vakakis sits down with Sana Qadar, host of the ABC's All in the Mind, to talk about what actually sticks after five years of interviewing some of the best minds in psychology and neuroscience. Sana isn't a therapist or a psychologist. She's a journalist who has absorbed more mental health content than most of us ever will, and she's honest about the bits that changed how she lives and the bits that went in one ear and out the other. They talk about the parenting advice that reshaped her mornings within a week, the therapy language that's become so common it's lost its meaning, and why nearly every story about the brain ends up being a story about relationships.

The 5 Love Languages: What the Research Actually Says

Twenty million copies sold. A quiz most couples have done at least once. The five love languages are one of the most widely used relationship frameworks in the world, and it turns out the core claims don't hold up the way most people assume they do.

Therapist Marie Vakakis breaks down what the research actually found when the five love languages framework was formally tested, what it gets right, where it falls short, and what she sees in her couples therapy room when people use it in ways that aren't working.

This episode covers:

•    The origins of the five love languages and why the framework resonated so widely

•    Why Gary Chapman's model was based on pastoral counselling, not research

•    What the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy found when the core claims were formally tested

•    Why sharing the same primary love language as your partner doesn't predict relationship satisfaction

•    The most common ways the love languages go wrong: compatibility tests, measuring sticks and fixed diagnoses

•    What responsiveness is and why it's one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction

•    Love maps: what they are and why most couples stop updating them after three to five years

marievakakis.com.au

[email protected]

https://marievakakis.com.au/relationship-new-year-reset-2026/

Grief is something all of us will live through, yet most of us were never taught how to talk about it. In her latest episode of This Complex Life, therapist Marie Vakakis sits with grief in all its forms, from the loss we see coming to the loss that knocks us sideways.

Therapist Marie Vakakis, an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and couples therapist based in Melbourne's west, opens up about the grief she's lived through and the patterns she sees in her therapy room every week. She covers the many types of grief, the things people say with good intentions that actually make it harder, and the small practical ways we can show up for the people we love when they're grieving.

This episode covers:

The different types of grief, including anticipatory grief and disenfranchised grief

What to say, and what to never say, to someone who's grieving

Why partners often grieve in completely different ways

Grief bursts, and why sadness can arrive months or years after a loss

How to support someone without asking them to do the thinking for you

What to do when grief comes out as anger

Why your grief matters, no matter whose loss it's measured against

Find Marie at marievakakis.com.au or get in touch at [email protected].

You're spending time together. Dinners, dog walks, evenings on the couch. Nobody's fighting, nothing is obviously broken. Something feels completely off and you can't quite point to it. In this episode I walk through seven signs your partner might be emotionally checked out, even when everything looks fine from the outside.

Resources and Links

•    Relationship Reset course: marievakakis.com.au

•    Free Conflict Workbook: marievakakis.com.au

•    Connected Teens parenting course

•    Marathon sessions at The Therapy Hub: thetherapyhub.com.au

[email protected]

The ick in dating. That sudden, full-body recoil where someone does something completely normal and you just shut down. 64% of people have experienced it, and a quarter ended the relationship because of it. But is the ick a red flag, or is it fear of intimacy disguised as disgust?

Therapist Marie Vakakis unpacks the psychology of the ick, what it reveals about your attachment style, and asks: are we being too picky, or are we terrified of being truly seen?

This episode covers:

•      What the ick actually is and why it happens

•      Red flags vs superficial triggers

•      How shame, projection and avoidant attachment drive the ick

•      Are we being too picky in dating?

•      What to do when the ick shows up

Show notes and more at marievakakis.com.au

Got a question for the podcast? Email it to

 [email protected]