For masculine identifying folks, what were the things you did (or had happen to you) that you feel helped you transition into adulthood and find fulfilling community?

Statistics suggest that a large number of men feel isolated, unvalued by society, and dysfunctional, but it’s not 100%.

  • sunbeam60@lemmy.ml
    6·
    9 hours ago

    I’m not advocating for any of these, but my journey towards feeling secure in a male adult identity was probably:

    • Good set of male friends in high-school that I still keep in touch with (at 48). That was pure luck, I didn’t get to choose them ending up in my class.
    • Joined the army at 18. Hard work but definitely forced me into a number of situations I wouldn’t otherwise have had to deal with and raised my personal confidence that the unknown was generally something that could be handled.
    • Did the Landmark Forum early twenties. I do not recommend this to anyone but it did wonders for me.
    • Through doing a bunch of shitty jobs learnt to apply for good jobs.
    • Raised with high expectations. Parents weren’t jerks or unreasonable but they expected me to apply myself without ever nagging at me. Good parents is a huge hidden privilege.
    • Met my wife at the right time and through sheer luck she turned out to be perfect.

    In short: Mostly luck, privilege and a bit of hard work. And when I say privilege I do not mean money. That we had not very much of.