Your husband is
doing something unusual.
If you're reading this, your husband has probably mentioned Men of the Way, or you have found it on his phone. You may have questions. What is this? Is it a men's group? A cult? Why forty days? What is he promising to do?
This page is for you. Written plainly, without spin.
Men of the Way is a forty-day rule of life — seven disciplines your husband agrees to practise daily, built on the pattern that Christian men have used for formation for the last two thousand years. It is not a weekend retreat. It is not a men's conference. It is not affiliated with any church or denomination. There is nothing he is being recruited into and nothing anyone is trying to sell him.
It is a private commitment to the habits that have always made men steady: reading Scripture, training the body, writing honestly about the interior life, giving up one thing that has power over him, serving someone each day, rising before the house is awake, and one 48-hour fast at the close of the rule.
What to expect.
What it is
A 40-day rule of life — seven disciplines practised daily. Private, structured, with accountability to one other man.
What it is not
A self-improvement programme that will take him away from the family. If done rightly, he becomes more present, not less.
What he is promising
Daily Scripture reading, training his body, journaling, naming a vice, serving someone, rising early, and one 48-hour fast on the final two days.
What you may notice
He may be quieter the first two weeks. He may go to bed earlier. Some wives report he becomes more attentive, not less.
The honest part.
The first two weeks are the hardest. He will be tired. He may be grumpy about waking early. He will almost certainly want to quit around Day 10 — that is a universal feature of this kind of practice, not a sign that anything is wrong.
If he makes it past Day 14, he will likely finish. And if he finishes, he will probably want to do it again, better, with other men alongside him.
We ask wives to know this: a man who takes his own formation seriously for forty days almost always becomes a better husband and father — not a more distant one.
If something concerns you — if he seems to be withdrawing from the family rather than leaning in, if the disciplines are tipping into obsession, if he is hiding things — that is worth raising with him directly, and with us. This is not a programme that should damage your marriage. If it is, something has gone wrong.
The fasting.
One 48-hour fast on Days 39 and 40 — the final two days of the rule. Water only. He will know the dates before he begins. If he has any medical condition that makes fasting unwise — diabetes, medication requiring food, or a history of disordered eating — he should speak with his doctor first, and potentially skip this discipline entirely. No rule is worth his health.
If you want to help.
Honestly? The most useful thing is to leave him to it. Don't ask him every day how the Rule is going. Don't monitor his journal. Don't remind him of the disciplines. Let it be his thing. Your job is not to manage it — that is exactly the kind of external pressure the Rule is designed to replace with internal conviction.
If he falls off on Day 37 and has to start over at Day 1, resist the urge to comfort or shame. Just let him decide what he wants to do next. This is the interior work of a man, not a family project.