Masculinity has never felt more contradictory. A therapist-led men’s group to connect, explore and have a different kind of conversation.

Being a man today has never come with a more contradictory set of expectations.

Be strong, but vulnerable. Independent, but emotionally available. Be there for everyone else, but somehow find your own way through.

It's a lot to navigate, particularly when so much of what we're carrying never makes it into conversation.

There are things we come to believe belong only to us. The loneliness we don't talk about, the feeling that everyone else seems to be managing life better than we are, the parts of ourselves we keep hidden because it's easier than trying to explain them.

We have a deep human desire to be known, yet being known means allowing someone to see the very things we've spent years learning to conceal, and that can feel risky.

The Space Between Us is a therapist-led group for men to come together, step outside the usual roles we play and have the conversations we don't often make time for.

There is something powerful about group therapy. We can arrive believing our experiences are ours alone, only to hear someone share something we've never quite found the words for ourselves.

The group isn't about having the right answers, fixing one another or knowing what you want to say before you arrive. It's an opportunity to become curious about ourselves, our relationships and what happens in the space between us when we allow ourselves to connect.

You don't need to arrive with a problem to solve or a story to tell. You can speak, you can listen, you can take your time getting to know the room.

Listening is participation too.

What is Group Therapy

This isn't a workshop, a class or a support group where people offer advice or try to fix one another. It is a professionally facilitated therapeutic group.

Individual therapy offers a unique relationship in which we come to understand ourselves. Group therapy offers something different. It allows us to experience ourselves in relationship with others, in the present moment.

We begin to notice not only the stories we tell about our relationships, but what actually happens when we are with people. The ways we seek connection, the distance we create, the moments we hold back, the assumptions we make about how others see us.

Sometimes another person's experience feels unexpectedly familiar. Sometimes we notice ourselves responding to someone in a way we recognise from our relationships outside the room. These are the moments that make group therapy different from simply talking about our lives.

The group becomes a place where we meet ourselves through others.

This is therapy held in community.

What to Expect

The Space Between Us is a monthly, therapist-led relational therapy circle for men aged 18 and over in Bournemouth.

Each evening has a gentle structure, while allowing room for whatever naturally emerges between us. We begin by arriving and settling into the space, followed by an opening check-in and facilitated conversation. There may be moments of reflection, relational exploration or gentle experiential exercises, before we bring the evening to a close.

There is no expectation to share more than you feel comfortable with. You remain in choice throughout, and listening is as welcome as speaking.

Confidentiality is an important part of how we work. We ask everyone attending to respect the privacy of other group members, and the facilitators will explain the group's agreements and the limits of confidentiality.

Meet Your Facilitators

Petr Mach

Petr comes to men’s work with an unusual combination of directness, humour, lived experience and a deep reverence for the human being beneath the armour.

A former professional footballer from the Czech Republic, he knows something about the worlds many men learn to inhabit: competition, endurance, achievement, control and the pressure to keep moving. He has also lived the cost of mistaking achievement for fulfilment, and of building an identity around success, fixing others and believing he had somehow become more enlightened along the way.

That experience changed the way he works.

Petr is less interested in endlessly examining what is wrong with a man than in finding what is still alive in him. He is curious about the identities we build to survive, succeed, belong and be loved and what happens when the person we needed to become begins to obscure the person underneath.

Expect to be challenged. Petr notices contradiction and will risk saying the thing it might be easier to leave unsaid. But he doesn’t need another man to agree with him. His allegiance is not to being right., it is to remaining curious enough for something more truthful to emerge.

That is where his challenge and his reverence meet. Petr believes there is a knowing within each of us that no therapist, teacher, partner or guru can possess on our behalf. He is not interested in prescribing a better way to be a man, but is more

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