October 14-20, 2004

city beat

Something to Talk About

Facilitator: Gerald Evans' program encourages men to openly address topics that they might otherwise keep inside. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

A Center City therapy group has men discussing their feelings.

by Doron Taussig

There tends to be a pregnant silence at the start of a men’s intimacy training session. The participants have come to talk about their feelings, but when they look around at a room full of men -- grown men, family men, men who have surmounted obstacles and vanquished opponents -- they often balk. They wonder if it’s appropriate for men to express themselves like this. In some cases, they are looking at men who they have known and shared intimately with for many years. Still, no one wants to go first.

Sometimes Gerald Evans, the therapist running the session, will try to break the ice with a question. Eventually, one man will start to speak.

He'll talk about a problem with his wife, career or children. Maybe he'll say his teenage son is being picked on at school, and the fact that the man can't do anything about it makes him feel powerless and small. Then one of his peers will ask a question, another will offer advice. Often, one of the men will chime in and say that he's been going through the exact same thing. This is the magical moment: just knowing that another man is struggling with the same problem makes both feel better. When someone feels better -- voila! -- that's therapy.

Men's groups have been Evans' central therapeutic strategy since he opened the Men's Resource Center (now at 16th and Walnut) 25 years ago. Evans, 64, became interested in this approach when a support group helped him through a divorce and the subsequent period of isolation.

"In that support group, I felt freer to talk than at any other time in my life," he says. "And I decided if it worked for me, it'll have to work for everybody else."

The MRC provides anger management groups and domestic violence groups, but the most unique service the MRC offers is "Intimacy Training for Men" (ITM). Unlike the men who are required by court order to attend other programs, ITM participants attend voluntarily. They are men who are struggling with relationships or identity questions, but they have been raised to keep a masculine arm's length from their feelings.

ITM endeavors to grant these men access to themselves through intimate conversation with others. Participants gather in groups (usually of about eight to 12 men) and just -- talk. Evans guides the discussions through such difficult topics as sexuality ("the least-talked-about subject between men ever men don't really talk about sex. They pretend to talk about sex," says Evans' colleague David Richards) and family origin, during which a man has to stand up in front of the group and introduce his father as though he were present.

The formal program is 10 months long and costs $200 a month. Necessarily, the clientele is middle-class. The program was popular during the 1990s when Evans ran it in the suburbs. In recent years he took some time to focus on other projects, but he is now resurrecting the program in Center City. He held an open house yesterday and plans to open the doors again to the public on Oct. 29.

On a recent Sunday morning, five ITM veterans gathered at the MRC's original office in Wayne. Though these men completed their programs years ago, they continue to meet monthly because they say they benefit from the process. They are all middle-aged white men, clad in Sunday-morning, suburban-dad attire: jeans, sneakers, T-shirts. They decline to give their names, though they provide their occupations: two engineers, one graphic designer, a financial planner and a man in software development.

These men are neither exaggeratedly strong-and-silent nor touchy-feely. They seem as though they could have been plucked at random out of a church, grocery store or golf course. Several sought out the program because of marital or relationship difficulties ("I was involved with a woman who more than gently suggested I get some therapy," recalls one). One came because he was closing down his business and realized that the business made up such a large part of his self-image that he wouldn't recognize himself without it.

Oddly, all of the men say that their personalities haven't changed dramatically since they began the program. One notes that he is now more sharply attuned to other people's problems: "Sometimes I'll ask someone a question and he'll say, "nobody's ever asked me that before.'" But for the most part what the program has given the men is "an opportunity to get involved in other people's lives," and, as a result, "an understanding that you're not in most stuff by yourself."

Men often fail to communicate, Evans says, and as a result they don't work through their feelings. It's a "universal truism," says one participant, that when you get in touch with your feelings, those feelings get better.

The men claim that intimacy hasn't gotten any easier, but they seem rather adept at it. One man with a wife and children mentions in passing that he has had homosexual fantasies, and nobody so much as blinks.

Together they've weathered all the storms of the middle-class man: divorces, deaths, job losses, children with drug problems. They have listened, complained, fought, advised and supported. Isn't what these men have really found in one another a group of very close, very expensive friends? No -- they insist that these relationships differ from friendship in important ways.

"We don't socialize with each other much outside of this group. That makes it a safer environment," one says. "We have anonymity. What we say here is not going to be distributed through a social network."

Rather than build friendships the old-fashioned way, with the accompanying risks of abandonment and betrayal, these men have purchased custom-made intimate relationships with state-of-the-art security systems. They seem very happy with the product.

But their overriding concern for anonymity raises a question: Are the men ashamed of being in such a group? When Evans first started, he says, "everybody thought I was gay." Homosexuality is more accepted today, but Evans believes there is still a stigma associated with male intimacy (no, not many homosexuals take Evans' program).

The men seem surprised by the suggestion that they might feel embarrassed. "I don't keep it a secret from the important people in my life," says one, although "not everybody knows I do it." Anonymity is important because of the content of the discussions, not the form, they say.

But aren't there people out there who would snicker at a group like this?

Most of the men nod; one grows defensive.

"Those people who [snicker], where do they share?" he asks. "I mean, I got other things to do on a Sunday, but I need to do this. What do they do?"

"They probably do what you and I did before this," says another.

"Yeah, nothing," responds the first, with a mixture of pain and pity.

The men continue to discuss the merits of intimacy, and before long, the defensive man is reassured. After all, there are four other men in the room, and they all agree: Intimacy is a human necessity.

A few more minutes pass, and then it's time to go -- it's nearly time for kickoff in the Eagles' game. The men shake hands firmly, slip their checks to Evans and, without much chatter in the parking lot, go their separate ways.