It started with five men on stools in a perfume shop.
In 2020, Adil Hussain’s life came apart in public. At thirty-one he was thrown out of the family home. His girlfriend found out he had cheated. What followed was the first honest look he had ever taken at himself.
He had spent his life unable to say what was going on inside him, and it had made him someone he did not want to be. The conversations he was avoiding with everyone else were nothing next to the ones he was avoiding with himself.
So he found a men’s coach, and he joined a men’s group. The Unmasked Man, run out of the UK by Alexander Cottle. It was the first time in his life he sat in a room of men and told the truth.
What surprised him was not the relief. It was the weight of being seen by other men. Nothing he had chased in validation came close to it. Women can listen, and they can carry you.
Only another man knows what it is to be one.
He knew that night he wanted to build it here, in his own way, for the everyday man. Not the man who needs a jungle and a drum. The man who wants to make a living, raise his kids, look after his body and be a decent man while he does it. A room where men could shut off the outside world for one night a week and get honest with each other. Not stories. Not bravado. The real thing.
January 2021. Brotherhood DXB.
Five men on stools in a perfume shop.
After that it was the beach, or a park, or wherever would have them. Summer was worse, because nowhere in this city is free in July. Some weeks five men came. Some weeks three. Some weeks he sat there on his own with a flask of karak, and on a few of those nights he hoped nobody would turn up, so nobody would see how few were coming.
He kept going every Tuesday anyway.
The barbecue that nearly did not happen
Forty men, and a name that had to change.
By the third time he thought about walking away from it, he decided to run one last event. A barbecue out in Al Qudra. Forty men came. When they heard what he had been doing every Tuesday for years, the answer was not polite interest. It was do not stop this. They became the founding members.
Five and a half years of Tuesdays
The name changed because the idea had outgrown it. A man is a project he is never finished with. The Man Cave Project was the obvious next name.
Today there are several rooms a week across Dubai and Abu Dhabi. More than a hundred members. Guardians who run rooms and events on their own time because they want this to exist. Man Caves inside corporate organisations. Sharjah next, and then further.
Same two hours.
Same circles of five.
Same reason.
What it is now
The only men’s community in this region working on all of it at once. The body, the mind, the emotional weight, the spiritual side, the brotherhood, and the business and friendships that come out of it.
It started because one man had nobody to talk to. It exists because he was not the only one.
Where we have been covered
- Khaleej Times
- Virgin Radio Dubai
- Dubai One TV
- Sharjah Entrepreneur Festival
Operating since 2021 in Dubai, now in Abu Dhabi, with chapters opening beyond. The Man Cave Project runs under Satori Lifestyle Coaching Co. LLC.
Your first one is free
Walk in once. Decide for yourself.
Every man’s first Man Cave is on us. Walk in, sit down, decide for yourself. No membership, no commitment, no conversation about money until you want one.
You will not know what this is until you are in the room. Most men walk in for one reason and stay for a completely different one.
