Jan-Willem van der Heiden
About

For years, my life's work was men.

Workshops, retreats, circles, fight clubs. Rooms where the excuses had to die so the man underneath could live. Then one message changed the shape of everything.

For years my life's work was devoted to men. Guiding them to stop blaming the world, to face the mirror, to fight, sometimes literally, for their self-respect. Workshops, retreats, circles, one on one conversations where the excuses had to die so the man underneath could live.

I taught men to own their shadows. To speak the truth even when their voice shook. To look a woman in the eyes and say "I love you" only when they meant it. To stop chasing approval from their mothers through the women they date. To be the kind of man they could admire at the end of the day, especially when no one else was watching.

It was hard work, and I loved it. Still do.

The message

Then one woman wrote to me

She was forty. She'd never had a boyfriend. Her father had been physically abusive and emotionally unpredictable, so she learned early that men weren't safe. She became independent, strong, capable, and tired. So tired.

She'd seen one of my posts and said: "I know you work with men, but I feel like you understand something about women too. Could we talk?"

I said no. Not because I didn't want to help, but because I wasn't sure I was the right person. She insisted, and so we began.

A heart that wanted to feel held. A soul that wanted to feel seen.

Esther C., coaching client
The work

Untying a thousand knots

The first sessions were exactly that. She didn't trust me easily. She couldn't relax. She over-explained everything, apologised for being too much, too sensitive, too broken.

But I knew what was underneath: a man she could feel safe with. We helped her feel again. Breathe again. Let go of the story that her past defined her future.

Within three months she had a boyfriend. Not just any boyfriend: a man who made her feel safe first. Who didn't flinch when she cried. Who adored her softness. Who held her without needing to be held back.

Then she took a three month journey on a sailing boat with three elder men who treated her like a daughter. Not a burden, not a woman to seduce, but a woman to care for. That trip healed something even she didn't know was still broken. I remember the photo she sent me, the biggest smile in the world, and a voice note, crying. For the first time in her life she felt free. She felt peace.

Esther C. · coaching client
Since then

Hundreds of women, and the couples work

That was the moment I knew I wasn't here to work with men alone. Since then I've helped hundreds of women too. Anxious and confused becoming clear and grounded in their standards. Lifelong caretakers finally letting themselves be chosen, adored, and led. Women who'd only known unsafe love finding peace in a man's arms.

And the couples work grew out of both rooms. A thousand men telling me the truth about what shuts them down. Hundreds of women telling me what they stopped saying years ago. Put those two truths in one room and you can see what neither partner can see from inside: the loop they're running, and the way out of it. That's the work now, and it's the most meaningful thing I've ever done.

Jan-Willem, his wife, and their daughter Elisa
At home

I run my own marriage on every tool I teach

I live in Ubud, Bali, with my wife and our daughter, who arrived this year and rearranged me in ways I'm still discovering. I'd love to tell you my own relationship is effortless because of what I do. It's better than that: it's honest. My wife has been on the receiving end of my worst seasons, the controlling ones, the absent ones, and the tools I teach came out of necessity long before they became a career. We run the weekly rituals. We repair within the day. We still get it wrong, and we know exactly how to find our way back, which I've come to believe is the entire game.

Becoming a father sharpened all of it. There's a small person in my house now who will learn what love looks like by watching us. I want her to grow up thinking the way we treat each other is normal. That's the standard, and it keeps me practising.

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