All Men Are Liars – The Peter Pan Syndrome

I know a lot of men who, once they got to their 30s, hit a fog after realising youth was behind them and then mistakenly decided their best years were gone just because they were losing their hair and couldn’t dunk a basketball anymore.Part of this is because many Lost Boys have eschewed what is commonly held to be the path to happiness – settling down and having children – because it often appears a false step that’s bought only intermittent solace to harried and divorced friends and family.

Part of it is also because male role models are so thin on the ground – with society as a whole confusing fame, wealth, self-absorption and perpetual youth for the fountainhead of contentment.After thinking and writing about the problem for years, as well as living through it, I reckon that much of the reason is because there is no clear next step for men aside from marriage and kids, however, I think I may have worked out a healthy alternative …Recently I read an essay by American psychiatrist Allan B. Chinnen titled ‘Men’s Mid-Life Initiation into the Deep Masculine’ and it provided some new pieces to the puzzle for me.

Chinnen argues that modern society has been selective in the male mythology it has chosen to embrace, focusing too much on fairy tales and stories presenting “men battling evil enemies, winning a great victory, and then becoming king.”"The dramas reflect the traditional heroic and patriarchal paradigm of masculinity,” and so “society expects young men in real life to be brave, aggressive and victorious, so young men struggle to fit the heroic and patriarchal image,” writes Chinnen.

The Age Blogs: All Men Are Liars