Some men never mature and at a certain point, they just go into decline...
Life is a process of continuous change, every age has its stages of consolidating one's personality, as a preparation for what comes later, until a person reaches their full maturation.
There are individuals who, by choice or necessity, "become adults" quickly, but there are others who arrive at this stage only very late in life, those who never arrive, and those who try to arrive as late in life as possible.
The latter type is the so-called "eternal Peter Pan".
via standard.co.uk
Growing up is a process that must follow its course and natural path, so it is not good to either rush through the stages without enjoying the carelessness of childhood and youth nor to refuse to evolve while remaining stuck in the earlier phases of life.
In the second case, we are dealing with selfish men who only know how to concentrate on themselves, on their own needs, and who cannot perceive that someone else can exist outside of them.
Individuality must be cultivated and protected as long as one is in that period of existence in which one learns to know oneself and to understand one's capacities and limits. But when one remains bogged down in self-gratification, one risks not going any further.
Even the less sensitive individuals at some point can perceive that something is missing or is not working, because human beings are not made to live in solitude but to create relationships and social connections.
Confronting one's self with others, however, implies going beyond one's own dimension and having "to answer" to someone else and not only to oneself. For the chronically immature, any link, love or friendship, which requires care, attention, and responsibility, is tantamount to a real prison.
To think of being able to change these people with affection, to awaken in them the best part of themselves, often turns out to be a failed endeavor. Those who grow old without ever growing up are also condemned to unhappiness because they will never accept the physiological transformations of their body such as wrinkles, gray hair, becoming bald or the loss of muscle tone.
In fact, a "forty-year-old teenager" will experience all this with great discomfort and channel all his frustration towards everyone around him. In any case, you cannot force someone to grow up because maturity must be an act of awareness.
In the end, the only possible strategy to be adopted with an eternal Peter Pan is to leave him alone, allow him to see and face his mistakes, and perhaps in this way, he will be able to wake up, accept reality, and finally, perhaps, he will choose to become a mature adult.
