Interview: Men’s group

I often feel that I can't satisfy my desire for intimacy in my relationships. I think an unmet desire for intimacy feeds into so many social issues.

I'm part of a men’s group. It's a safe space for men to act more consciously. The one I am part of is in Harrogate, a deprived area in North London, specifically focused on including young males who have committed crimes and want to reform.

When you join the club you attend a rights of passage weekend. The joining men have to go through a series of exercises to initiate them into the group. We go out into the forest and in a circle and there are various processes we go through. It's a confidential space to be who you are. I feel seen and acknowledged as a man, and I am able to foster a healthy masculinity. We listen to each other. It creates incredible intimacy because we see and acknowledge and support each other. Going through the various processes out in the woods, men see various parts of themselves, so they are able to step into the man they want to be.

We are not really supposed to talk about what the exact processes are because for the men being initiated, not knowing anything about what is coming adds to the power of the experience. I can tell you one thing though which is very simple and effective. When we are out in the woods, we take turns to throw a rock on the ground and let out our anger. This action gets you in touch with clean anger, and it prevents the anger coming out against another person. I realise that I have so much anger built up inside, and this just releases it. For men, anger is the most socially acceptable emotion. 

The community aspect of the men's group is very important. Normally in a patriarchal society, men are not encouraged to express their feelings to one another, to have a supportive, honest, intimate relationship. There is so much bravado and lad culture and the pub banter situations which is just rife with bad self-esteem. So men turn to women to get what they are lacking in their male-to-male relationships.

The men's group is also important because in the absence of women, men engage very differently. It's shown me a hell of a lot about how I relate to women, through how I relate to men. So we go to women because we lack intimacy in our male relationships. This stops us from being fully authentic with women. We have a neediness there, which since I have developed through the men’s group, I no longer look for in my relationships with women. It's a valuable type of intimacy, it's not the way men usually are in social spaces.