What does this growing up thing really mean?

In one of my previous articles, I commented on an article about people who, as it were, refused to grow up. More precisely, I was just venting some anger. Since then, I've given the subject a lot of thought, and think I've realised what it's all about.

The men of the previous generations lived like that: until 18 years, you were, firstly, a slave to your parents (who were much more autocratic than the parents of today), and secondly, oppressed by the education system (which also was much more restrictive than it is today). Reaching legal maturity, you were pretty much immediately drafted to the military, spending a year or two or three without any rights, subjected to strict discipline and harsh deprivations. Finally released, half-insane from the lack of sex, you soon got some girl pregnant, had to marry her, and then found yourself buried under the obligations of a family father. The next couple of decades you were spending basically all your energy on earning money to satisfy your wife's ever-increasing demands of what was "necessary", your mental energy drained by her daily verbal abuse, your spare time occupied by numbing yourself with the TV and alcohol – just anything to escape from her nagging, and to sink the yearning to do the things you know you will never have a chance to do with all those responsibilities laid upon your shoulders.

Pretty much the only rest you ever had was when you were ill. Therefore, you might have been so totally drained of vital force by your 40s that you could have just as well lied down in a coffin. If you weren't, though, you might have, inamidst of this wonderful, miraculous silence in your home without any loud music or kids shouting at each other, started to get thoughts.

One day, it might occur to you that, as your children have grown up, you are no longer responsible for them. You are no longer obliged to defend your hard-earned money against their outrageous demands. Your wife can't even demand child support, should you leave her.

Another day, it might become painfully clear to you that your wife is way too ugly to be arousing, and that it has actually been the case for some time now. You've always forced yourself to kiss her ass and put up with her attitude, mortally afraid that she might leave you and then you would have no one to fuck. Now you realise that you haven't really much to lose – sex with her has long ago become more a nuisance than a pleasure.

Yet another day, you might suddenly realise that you aren't really all that old – anyway, nowhere near as old as your wife insists you are. You know, how a woman keep telling her husband that he is old and fat and balding, but it doesn't matter because she loves him just as he is and will always love him. What she really means is "Don't think that any other woman would ever go to bed with someone like you!" In spite of her sounding so convincing, you'll begin to increasingly pay attention to obvious signs which indicate that young women consider you by no means too old to be attractive.

In other words, having reached a certain age, having fulfilled the major part of the obligations laid upon him, the man might realise that he now has the chance to have a life of his own he's never had. For the first time in his life, he is not crushed under external obligations. On the contrary: he is likely to have secured a decently good income, accumulated some savings, and his expenditures have hugely decreased as the children are now earning their own living. All he's ever done is been living for the others. Now he has a chance to start living for himself.

Women insist that it's mid-life crisis: that the man realises that the time is running out, soon he'll be unable to have sex, so he desperately tries to make the most of the time as a man he has left.

That is a horrendous lie. That is what is happening to the women. It is a biological inevitability that their ability to have children vanishes at a certain age. So does their physical attractiveness. Knowing perfectly well that men can retain their sexuality for far longer than they can, women do all they can to drag their men into the abyss with them.

Most men aren't strong enough and let their wives slowly suffocate the man inside them. The only outlet they succeed to find is, in most cases, alcohol.

Some men, though, manage to leave the sinking ship and find happiness, or at least try, instead of going down without putting up a fight.

Now, what's with the so-called Peter Pan generation? Well, the youth of today have it much easier. The society is far more tolerant of teenage sex, as well as short- or long-term sexual relations outside of marriage, the contraceptives are easily available to anyone, some countries don't even have military slavery... In other words, the Peter Pan generation are the people who have never put their necks into the noose of "normal adult" responsibilities of the previous generations. What their fathers had a chance of in their 40's, they can start doing right away.

Sure enough, many of them don't really have an idea what to do with their lives. Maybe some of them would indeed be less unhappy getting married at 20 and having hardly any time to think during the next couple of decades. Most of them, though, are likely to be much happier than their parents. They may not be leaving fancy houses to their kids (by the time the latter are too old and sick to enjoy their sudden wealth), and they will forever be plagued by the stupid sermons from their parents, but they have at least a chance of turning their lives into something their parents have become too brain-dead to even dream about.