First group, March 2027
Six weekends across seven months, with eleven other men
An in-person group in Melbourne for men who've run into something the ideas they were handed about being a man can't explain.
Register your interestNo commitment at this stage. It puts you on the list and starts a conversation.
Something's broken and the usual explanations don't fit
Most men who come to a group like this arrive bewildered rather than certain. Something happened, often in a relationship, and it knocked over a belief you didn't know you were holding. You can describe what happened well enough. What you can't do is make it mean anything.
There's no age range and no particular story required. What matters more is a willingness to look for causes outside yourself, and enough patience to sit with material that isn't immediately about you.
What the seven months are for
You were taught what a man is. Nobody sat you down and did it formally, which is exactly why it's hard to see now. Most of the work here is tracing those ideas back to wherever you picked them up, and then working out which of them you'd actually choose to keep.
That happens on four levels rather than one. You'll think and reflect. You'll learn frameworks and skills you can name and use. You'll go and do something different between weekends, in your real life rather than in the room. And across seven months some of it stops being a technique you apply and turns into how you are.
The first pass is on yourself. The second is on the people you're actually in relationship with, which is harder and is where most of the value sits.
In person, on your feet
This is a body-in-the-room program. There's talking, and there's also movement, somatic practice and ritual. The venue gets hired for its floor space rather than its chairs.
Twelve men, the same twelve the whole way through. Two facilitators, a man and a woman. That pairing is deliberate. Much of what men carry about being a man got formed in relation to women, and it helps to have both in the room while you take it apart.
One or two other men come in to help hold the space during the weekends. They're not clients and they're not there to work on themselves.
How it's built
Six weekends, one a month, running March to September 2027. The first is orientation. The group forms and builds its own working agreements, on top of a floor that isn't up for negotiation. That floor covers confidentiality, what leaves the room, and the facilitators' right to step in. Everything above it is yours to set, and the two of us go first.
The weekends move from the wide end towards the close end. Early on you're looking at inherited material, the archetypal and cultural ideas that set what a man is allowed to be. Later it comes closer in, through family, then the relationships you're in now, then you. The middle of the program is the heaviest part, and that's designed rather than accidental.
The month in between
A month is a long gap, and the work doesn't survive it on its own. Three things run through it.
A braintrust
Every man sits in a small group that meets at least once between weekends. It's where you say what you're going to do, and where someone other than a facilitator notices whether you did it. Being known at that scale is different from being known by twelve.
A buddy
One other man, matched at the start. He's the one who notices when you go quiet.
Optional workshops
Extra sessions run between the core weekends for men who want to go further into a particular piece.
None of the three runs with a facilitator in the room, so there's a route back to us if something comes up between weekends that shouldn't wait. You'll be told what it is on the first weekend.
We intend to keep something going after the seven months finish, since men who've done this together usually want to. The shape of it isn't settled yet, and the first group will have a hand in deciding it.
The practical bits
The first group is a pilot, and we mean it
These seven months have never been run before. The design is good and it isn't finished, and the men in the first group get asked what's working while it's still running. Some of what they say will change the program underneath them.
That's why the first group costs less than later ones will. You're getting something less polished, and you're contributing something the men who come after you won't have to.
When this isn't the right room
It isn't therapy and it doesn't diagnose or treat anything. If you're already working with a therapist or counsellor, keep going with them.
It isn't legal education either. Family law comes up, because it has to, and where it does a practising lawyer covers it. Nothing said in the room is advice about your own matter.
It isn't a Men's Behaviour Change Program and it won't satisfy a court, Corrections or Child Protection requirement. If you've been directed to attend a program, contact the Men's Referral Service on 1300 766 491 for an accredited provider.
A group like this also isn't the place to be in the middle of an acute crisis, or while addiction is running things. We'll talk about that honestly before you join, and if the timing's wrong we'll say so and point you somewhere better. Crisis numbers are in the footer of every page on this site.
Getting a place
Three steps, and one of them is a real conversation.
You apply
The application asks about your situation and what you're after. It takes a while to fill in, deliberately.
We talk for ninety minutes
Long enough for both of us to be straight about whether this is the right group and the right year. Not everyone who applies gets a place, and being told no here is better than finding out in month four.
Your place is held
If we both say yes, one of the twelve is yours. There's a midpoint conversation of about an hour in month four as well, so you're not only ever seen inside the group.
Put your name down
The first group starts in March 2027. Registering your interest costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Register your interestYou'll hear about dates and the application before anyone else does.