Kick-off evening men’s group Brussels

In January 2026, we kicked off the 2nd edition of the men’s group Brussels with 5 participants and us two facilitators. Over the next 6-months, we would work with the group to build a community of brotherhood in which men can open-up and grow together.

There is a distinct tension in the air when even men walk into a room for the first night of a men's circle in Brussels.

No one quite knows what to expect. Conversations start with polite small talk, and the unspoken questions hang heavy in the air: Who are these guys? Is it going to be weird? Can I actually trust this space?

As facilitators, our job on night one isn't to dive straight into deep emotional excavation. It is to build a container—a structure safe and strong enough to support real depth, accountability, and transformation over the next six months.

The topics for the next sessions of the men's circle are also set by the men themselves. We used this first meeting to establish the ground rules and identify the topics the group wants to explore over the next 6-months.

Real brotherhood requires clear rules

As facilitators, we experienced how modern male friendships often suffer because they lack a structure of safety to explore deep topics: We talk about sports, work, or politics, but rarely about what’s pulling at our hearts.

To break that pattern, we started night one by co-creating our circle's agreements. We sat in pairs to answer three simple questions:

• What do you need from this group to show up fully?

• What will you do if things get uncomfortable or hard?

• What agreements do we need to feel truly supported?

We outlined the basic house rules, like strict confidentiality and clearly communicating towards the group if one cannot make a session. We then established the principle of choice of challenge: Every man guards his own boundaries. No one is forced to speak or perform. Paradoxically, giving men complete control over their boundaries is what gives them the courage to stretch them.

The stories that shaped the boy

Once the container was set, we went backward. Through a guided visualization, we invited the men to walk down the memory lane of their childhood homes—to smell the air, notice the atmosphere, and recall a specific moment where they learned what it meant to be a boy in that house.

The insights that surfaced in pair sharing were profound. For us as facilitator-participants, we shared how we for instance had to work and learn hard to win love and feel accepted by our parents.

What it meant to be a boy in the homes we grew up in, aren't just old memories. They are active scripts running in the background of adult men’s lives today. It’s important to be aware of those scripts to identify what is serving us well and what not.

Shaking off the past and walking into the future

After touching those childhood stories, you can't just move straight into "goal setting." You have to clear the nervous system.

We had the men stand up. We turned the volume all the way up on Prodigy’s Breathe and asked everyone to shake—hands, arms, feet, entire bodies. Shake off the story. It’s part of you, but it isn't all of you.

When the music cut abruptly into dead silence, the shift in the room was palpable. The heavy past was left on the floor.

Transitioning into soft music, we invited them to project their minds forward: to visualize a door in the future and walk through it as the man they are becoming—a man who no longer has anything to prove. Each man found a physical pose and a single word to embody that future self, grounding it into his body before writing it down.

Building the bridge

After each exercise, we asked the men to write down one word on a post-it of what they take away from how their childhood memories shaped them, and what they want to step into in the future.

To close the night, we built a physical bridge between two post-it notes on the floor: The Past on the left, The Future on the right.

In the middle, every man wrote down the exact topics he needed to address over the next six months to bridge that gap.

By clustering these topics, we didn't just guess what the group needed; the group defined its own roadmap of the topics they wanted to address in the 6-session series.

A takeaway for your own week

If you are currently experiencing loneliness or a lack of deep male friendships, ask yourself:

1. What is a story or rule from your childhood home that still dictates how you show up around other men today?

2. If you took one small step toward the man you actually want to become, what boundary would you need to set this week?

Step into the next circle

Real growth doesn't happen in isolation. If you’re looking for a facilitated, secular men's group in Brussels or Antwerp to meet self-aware peers and do the real work of personal growth.