This week I spent an evening with a men’s group that meets regularly to talk together. I’d been invited to lead a session on men and relationships, focusing on partners, friends, family and ourselves. I came away moved, and with a few thoughts I’d like to share.
How it worked
There were no slides and no lecture. After a short introduction from me, I passed around my iPad. Each man chose from five sets of questions: self, family, friendship, intimacy and society. A question was drawn at random from his chosen set, and the room took it from there. Nobody had to share anything; listening counted too.
Starting with the weather
One of the first questions was a playful one: if you were a weather forecast today, what would it be? I’d included it to ease us in, and I hadn’t expected it to open things up as much as it did.
It offered a different way of asking, “How are you, right now?” without needing a precise answer. Fog, sunny spells, a front coming in: a picture can say what “fine” can’t.
Who were you close to?
Early on we turned to childhood, and to who, growing up, we felt close to. In my work with men, I’ve found this can be a hard question. For some, the answer is nobody, or nobody they felt able to confide in. There can be sadness in recognising that.
I’ve also seen, both in my work and that evening, how memories of particular people can become clearer through conversation: someone who mattered more than we realised, or whose influence we’re only now able to recognise. That doesn’t undo what was missing, but it can add something to our understanding of childhood.
Where we learn to relate
Alongside those memories, we talked about what we learned in our families: how affection was shown, or wasn’t; what happened to anger; whether it felt safe to need someone.
One way I understand the idea of the inner child is that childhood experiences can continue to shape how we respond as adults, including with a partner, a friend or our own children.
A familiar model, the drama triangle, also came into the conversation. It describes three roles we can slip into in relationships: rescuer, persecutor and victim. It gave us a way to talk about patterns we might not notice while we’re caught up in them.
Intimacy wasn’t avoided
I’d half expected intimacy and sex to be subjects the group would steer round. They weren’t. I took the willingness to discuss them as a possible sign of the trust the group has built, though I can’t speak for how each man felt.
Group and one-to-one
People sometimes ask how group work compares with one-to-one therapy. That evening reminded me of individual sessions in the honesty of the conversation and the attention given to family and relationships.
The difference was in hearing from several people. Something one man said stirred another man’s memory. An observation from someone else could offer a perspective different from mine.
Saying it out loud
If I took one thing home, it was the value of talking about experiences we might otherwise keep turning over alone. Speaking to people who listen can help us understand what we’re feeling, or discover that someone else recognises it. That’s something I value in both groups and one-to-one therapy.
If you’re a man reading this and something here strikes a chord, you could look for a men’s group near you and ask how it works and whether it’s taking new members. If you’d rather explore this one-to-one, I work with men online and in person in Bude. You can book a free 30-minute introductory call.
If you want to try the decks for men on your own, with a friend, or in a group you trust, they are free to use here.
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