This year’s Rhode Island Men’s Gathering will be held the weekend of Feb. 16-18 at URI’s W. Alton Jones campus in West Greenwich. Above, with Milo the moose, are, from left, Mike Lipman, Don-Paul Sommerfeld, Francois Lapointe, Ralph Kreiser and Ed Valentine.

Men meet. They do it all the time. They watch football; drink beer; tell jokes. Notable it’s not.

But in two weeks, a group of them will get together and make history, again, by doing something daring: talking, sharing and (brace yourself) relating to each other.

“It is counter-culture,” says John Blakeslee. “But it’s not revolutionary at all. It’s just a bunch of guys getting together and supporting each other.”

The Rhode Island Men’s Gathering returns. The weekend retreat, Feb. 16-18 in the woods of West Greenwich, is in its 15th year. Blakeslee has been there for each. The 51-year-old house painter from Smithfield founded the group, starting it in the early 1990s. This is when the men’s movement, championed most notably by author Robert Bly and his Iron John book, was making its way to the mainstream.

“I’m not sure the men’s movement gathered enough steam to be a movement,” Blakeslee says. “Robert Bly is not talked about much anymore.”

Still, many men talk personally to each other, though not in the numbers they used to. That first year, 1993, 68 men participated in the R.I. Men’s Gathering at URI’s W. Alton Jones Campus. In each of the last several years, about 40 have.

“That’s actually a better number for our type of gathering,” Blakeslee says. “We begin and end with an open circle. Everyone has the chance to speak. With 70 or 80 men, it gets a little wordy and too much.”

The weekend is full of workshops (coping with stress, developing trust, dealing with divorce, etc.) and activities (drumming, hiking, storytelling, etc.). Do what you want.

“We don’t direct anybody’s experience,” Blakeslee says. “People can sit by the fire and do nothing.”

Whatever the men do, it’s noncompetitive, which Blakeslee says is refreshingly different. Normally in society, he says, even conversations between men degenerate to one-upsmanship.

“The format is not win or lose,” Blakeslee says. “Actually, once we had a raffle where someone won.”

Getting together in a group where there are only men, no women, Blakeslee says, “creates a different dynamic,” where men are more inclined to talk about their prescribed gender role, and, most notably, to talk to each other. Of course, Blakeslee says, it takes a man to do that.

“Friday night, there are a lot of sweaty palms,” he says. “You get over that and realize people are pretty much like you. By Sunday night, there is great camaraderie.”

For any man who ever thought that acting a little less so-called manly, and little more openly, would be good, Blakeslee extends an invitation, and a challenge.

“It is taking a step out,” he says. “It is an act of bravery to participate.”

Now, we meet a couple of brave men, at different ends of the spectrum. One is about to enter the working world; the other has retired from it. One’s single; the other’s married. Both believe opening up to other men has made them better men.

Michael Mathieu is new to the men’s movement. And the movement is new to the former Rhode Islander now living in Boston and attending Northeastern University.

“Most people my age don’t even know there was a movement,” he says. “That trend has passed.” Mathieu, 22, heard about the R.I. Men’s Gathering through his mother’s partner, Sal.

“I was receptive because my father left when I was 11 years old. I’ve been on a path of self-discovery to figure out who I am as a man.”

Mathieu first participated in the men’s gathering at 18, the minimum age for admittance. He has since tried to encourage some of his friends to join him, but none have.

“A lot of men aren’t receptive,” he says.

Most men, according to Mathieu, have the wrong impression of men’s meetings.

“It’s not just a bunch of men getting together and hugging each other,” he says. “It’s about learning what it means to be a man.”

Part of that, Mathieu says, is learning what it means to be a woman. Men’s meetings, he says, are one aspect of feminism.

“The misogynist attitude in society doesn’t just affect women, but men. It prevents us from being in touch with emotional things. We put our heads down and follow a career path.”

Mathieu, a music major in his last semester of his senior year, is about to look for a job. But, he says, “my main worry is finding myself.”

After a few years of attending the men’s gathering, Mathieu knows several of its regulars. However, he says it’s opening up to those he doesn’t know that makes him grow.

“If you only do what’s comfortable, then you’re not going to expand yourself.”

If more men followed the ideals of men’s meetings, according to Mathieu, we’d all be better.

“The gathering leads to the ability to make change outside for yourself and society. The men’s gathering essentially creates leaders.”

Carl Hirsch is a veteran of men’s gatherings. The 66-year-old Scituate man has been involved the last 11 years, the last three in Rhode Island and the eight before that in New Jersey.

“That pretty much changed my life. It really influenced me a lot. I always pictured myself as different from other men and isolated. Then I realized I was different and I wasn’t isolated.”

The men’s gathering is open to all men: single or married, young or old, straight or gay. This last category made Hirsch, married and a retired art teacher, a little uncomfortable at first.

“By the end of the first night and well into the next morning, I had one foot out the door,” he says. “Then something happened. I got to know these people and realized we were all in the same boat. We were men.”

There’s a common denominator, according to Hirsch. It’s loneliness. Most men, he says, are culturally conditioned not to be personally or intimately expressive with each other.

A men’s gathering, Hirsch says, “is a form of community that most men don’t know is available to them. Sometimes you have the deepest conversations with strangers because you know you’re not going to see them again.”

Sometimes just being around open-minded men is good enough.

“There are guys who go there and have a wonderful time and don’t talk about things. You don’t have to be an emotional bleeder.”

However, Hirsch adds, “vulnerability is a wonderful prerequisite to a good experience.

“You can have a good diet and be missing a certain vitamin,” he says. The once-a-year experience gives Hirsch the emotional nutrition he needs.

For more information about the Rhode Island Men’s Gathering, call John Blakeslee (before 9 p.m.) at (401) 231-4785, visit www.members.tripod.com/

rimensgathering or e-mail snowri@att.net. Advance registration is required. Admission for the weekend is on a sliding-scale, $80 to $130.

brourke@projo.com