Hey guys, I’m 30 and I’ve noticed something big about myself after a breakup with my ex-fiancée about 10 months ago. Since then, I feel like I’ve undergone a major mindset shift I’ve become more confident, assertive, and, honestly, a “manlier” version of myself.
One thing I realized is that trying too hard to avoid conflict in a relationship with women was coming from weakness, not strength. Letting go of that mindset has made me more grounded and self-assured. It’s like the soft/nice version in me, sought validation, and over-pleased has died, and I’m grateful for the transformation.
I’m curious do other men experience a similar phase?
Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
38 comments
Killing the boy is like setting all your food rations on fire for warmth.
Learn from your experiences, gain maturity, build your sense of self, learn your worth, and try to live with morality and integrity. But you need that boy. There is no need nor benefit by psychologically eliminating those parts of yourself from your youth.
The boy inside me is thriving because I’m spending my big boy checks on fancy Pokémon cards.
I spent half of my life avoiding that boy but through therapy I learned that I need it to be happy. I now embrace it and defend it with pride. Is a nice part of me and I don’t want to hurt it anymore.
You can’t kill the boy inside, only push it down, and pushing it down will have destructive consequences longterm. You have to make peace with your inner child, consult it when appropriate, and parent it when appropriate.
Nurture the boy in you. He represents your feelings and your needs, which you may find beneficial to stay connected and true to. The man in you has developed the wisdom to know that there are many ways to meet your needs, and how to go about getting them met in ways that are harmonious with other people’s needs.
Keep the boy inside, but make sure you become somebody that boy would look up to.
You shouldn’t do that. Maturing is a must, but completely killing that side of you will just make you miserable and unlikeable for everyone else. You need that ‘boy’ mentality to some degree. I don’t think I’d be alive today if I killed that part just to be more mature and more acceptable to society. You can have the best of both worlds.
It’s not about killing your boy inside. It’s giving it all that didn’t get, the adult you taking care of kid you. He craved a lot of things, when you proyected into the present you feel it like insecurities and weak stuff. By embracing what you lacked you give yourself an opportunity to grow.
If not, perhaps you feel more powerful now but you may get into a vulnerable position later and the boy will emerge again to satiate on those unmet needs.
For me it was the opposite.
I spent my teens/early adult life running away from the boy, because he was the representation of the trauma I went through in childhood.
I went through a similar transition that you describe when I started to care for that boy inside. Essentially becoming the protector he needed at that moment. I believe a lot of psychology call it the shadow or something along those lines.
My resolve changed when I accepted them and I matured very quickly from 25ish to now.
Where as before I didn’t really change all that mentally from 10-23. Life changed, responsibilities changed, but I felt like a young kid in a young adults frame. Almost like I was frozen in time.
Every aspect of your psychology, mindset, beliefs, morality etc are like an army. You’re only as strong as the weakest link. So in that sense it’s counter intuitive to kill said weak link, you want to lift them up and take them with you.
Once you’re entirely secure in every aspect of yourself, it’s very easy to be more assertive because there’s no more doubt or confusion.
As you get older you simply stop caring about shit as much.
Once your “world” has come crumbling down around you a few times and you’ve realised you have the strength to pick yourself up and keep going. You start to realise that you don’t have to care about keeping everyone happy, you don’t owe anything to anyone except those you choose to help and most people you meet are simply looking out for themselves.
I don’t think it’s “killing the boy” as much as it’s simply figuring out how you want to live your life.
I still nurture my childish side but it has a time and place.
For most people I meet they get the default version of me, friendly, polite and professional. Everything else is saved for my friends, partner and family.
Aka Rite of Passage from boy to man. Something sorely missing in modern cultures from across the world.
The older I get the more I realize that all I want in adulthood is what I wanted when I was 8 years old.
You don’t kill the boy, you understand your inner child, you allow yourself to be free, and happy.
You aren’t talking about the boy inside you. You’re talking about your tendency to people please and be a “nice guy” as a response to trauma.
Read “No More Mr Nice Guy” by Robert Glover.
Then be kind to your inner child and re-parent them.
Fuck that. Keep your whimsy, keep your silliness, do dumb things and laugh at yourself. And be nice and soft if you want to. This strange obsession men have with reaching some predefined concept of masculine standards is so pervasive.
Be confident and assertive if you want. Be soft and gentle if you want. Neither is wrong, neither is bad and framing it as killing a part of yourself to achieve some sort of higher level of existing is weird.
There’s a time and place for everything. I think a better way of maturing is identifying what is needed where instead of simply writing entire concepts of your being off.
I hope “the boy inside” never dies. I hope there’s never a day when I don’t have the first instinct to be kind and gentle, even if I know there will be times I have to be firm and assertive. I hope there’s never a day where I take myself so seriously that I couldn’t jump on a swing set just because swinging is fun, or that I would ever hold a toy lightsaber and not make the swooshing sounds with my mouth.
Life starts to hit at 30 for men.
This is the age when the delusions of your 20s die.
Most men usually get tired of chasing women at 30. A few playboy types extend until 35 or so.
Coincidentally, this is the age when women start to complain that there aren’t any good men.
This is normal trajectory for men. Standard.
48- I watch cartoons, superhero movies, go to comic cons, play with all the little ones in the family, play video games, etc.
All my relationships are great, bills are paid, go to the gym daily, work is fine, travel the world.
Maturing is fine and needed, but you do all this for that little boy inside you.
Not common at all, that’s not how it works and that’s not how it is supposed to work. I think you’re learning wrong lessons from your break up.
I suspect that the fact that you’re more “confident, assertive and manlier” now just means you have to be like that now that you’re out of the relationship in order to deal with life.
Normally you grow to be like that slowly over time, confidence and knowing when to be assertive come from experience you gain over the years. So it’s not a sudden change. Also you don’t “kill the boy inside” it still exists, we don’t really change after early/mid 20’s, we just gain more life experience. Every dude I know is just as much of a kid on the inside, given the right circumstances where they can goof off.
When I was 18, I got into a huge fight with my parents which resulted in them kicking me out of the house in the middle of a tropical storm, and I was homeless for several days. I was able to rebound and confront them, resulting in my father moving out and leaving permanently. That was the exact moment that changed me from boy to man, and I haven’t been the same since then.
That was over 20 years ago, mind you. My mother has since passed away and I’ve forgiven my father.
So i read a book, it’s German “Der Kind in dir muss heimat finden” (the child inside you needs to find home)
Basically we all have “sun child” and a “shadow child” inside of us. The sun child is where our dreams, interests, joy is, that was built up by being loved. the shadow child is our fears, insecurities that was built by neglect.
What I’m reading from you is that you want to kill your sun child and embrace the shadow child so that you can “grow up”. Youre gonna end up depressed and lonely.
You mentioned that you felt weak, avoided conflict and people pleased in order to get love. Does that sound like the actions of the sun child or the shadow child?
You need to find your shadow child, imagine yourself as a crying little 5 year old who was neglected and abused by your ex. Now what would you tell that crying 5 year old? Grow up? Stop being a child? No. Give that kid a hug and love him.
Then find your sun child, explore what gives him joy, what are his desires and interests, make sure he is loved and has confidence and freedom to pursue as happy of a life as you can provide him. Let him be goofy and take risks. Don’t shame him for messing up.
We were all children and those times in our lives are formative to the person you are today. You can’t separate that part of you.
Therapy talk is so weird to me.
Lol, you need to kill whatever version of you takes this kind of andrew Tate bullshit seriously. Maybe let the boy out and go play in the woods.
“Killing the boy” is to me just a really flawed framing. It’s one thing to mature and learn from experiences, it’s another to leave something of who you are behind and “kill” it.
Like, you can be more assertive and confident without letting go of the part of you that can be sensitive and caring.
There’s a difference between weak and soft, or even just weak and kind. You can be kind but selective and assertive. You can be soft with people who’ve earned the right to experience that part of you and all the benefits that come with it. You can be sensitive without oversharing or turning people off with certain feelings or emotions in the wrong setting.
This is the first time I’ve heard that phrase and hopefully the last.
F that
“I’ve got a cat named Easter and he says, will you never learn? You’re just an empty cage, if you kill the bird” -Tori Amos
The boy inside has all the wonder that makes anything worth doing. Without him I’m just going through the motions
I wouldn’t describe it as “killing my inner boy”, but I was married to a ball buster with BPD for 13years. By the end she had so crushed my self esteem and pride that I was one giant passive PUSSY. I let her walk all over me because I was afraid of the blow up if I didn’t. It got so bad that I thought I had IBS, but it was entirely stress caused by being around her. She literally gave me the shits.
She did me a huge favor and walked out after I caught her having an affair.
Once I got away from her I kind of WOKE UP, I felt like I was able to breath for the first time in over a decade and went through a pretty thorough transformation and saw how big of a bitch I had become. I made some changes and things got better.
Now I am married to the best woman I have ever met and she takes very good care of me and respects me and I give the same back to her. I am still a big dork inside though, I LOVE sci fi and nerdy shit and love driving fast cars and shooting guns and building little robot models. I can have fun and be silly when it is acceptable, and get serious and strong when I need to do that as well. I wouldn’t want to be a boring too serious dude.
That’s not what the boy inside is. That’s establishing healthy boundaries. you can still be kind. Killing the boy inside, is about losing childhood wonder and playfulness. Don’t lose your joy.
You need a balance. Your first priority is to be an adult and take care of your life well. But that doesn’t mean abandoning your child like instincts. Becoming a father really clarified this for me. When you have kids you get to rediscover your childlike self by being with them and seeing the world through their eyes. If you are full ‘adult’ without some sense of childlike wonder, play and curiosity/openness, life is soulless
Just be normal dude
I can definitely relate. I think there is some adaptation to the person you are with which is reasonable (e.g it’s a fair expectation that you spend time with her and not just hang out with your friends 7 nights a week or wtv). Over time things that in isolation can seem reasonable can begin to pile up until you have 1000 things she expects which when they add up you realize you’ve completely lost yourself. When I broke up with my ex after 13 years, I wasn’t in the slightest bit sad about it after the initial drama, I felt genuinely free for the first time in a decade.
The boy inside died when I was a boy. When my parents separated, I was suddenly the man of the house, and grew up with the sole purpose to take care of my mom and younger sister. Now, with mom gone and my sister living her own life, I’m just…empty.
Hey OP I just want to say it’s really great that you’re taking all this advice to heart. Take care of yourself and good luck out there brother.
Heal the boy and grow him into a man, don’t kill him.
Every guy goes through that after a tough break up. Its called growing up. Not truly a man until you have been betrayed, your heart stomped on, and your soul seared.
You come out stronger, harder, and see the world and people for what they really are.
Don’t listen to these people with Peter Pan Syndrome. Kill the boy. Evolve into an adult rather than remain a child. No one is coming to help you. Be assertive. Be responsible. Take calculated risks. Seek confrontation rather than avoiding it. Confrontation is good once you do it so often that you acclimate to it and handle it with ease. This is a work in progress for me, but my life has greatly improved since beginning the process of killing the inner child and moving on to the adult phase of life.
It sounds like you have more maturing to do.
The point isn’t to ‘kill the boy’ or to crush your dreams, I hate that, it is so regressive. The point is to be able to be adult enough to contextualize properly. Maybe, not everyone gets to see the boy in you, but to let go of that part of yourself entirely is basically letting ‘them’ win. I refuse.
You are still actively grieving the loss of your relationship; maybe you do need to nurture your tougher side, but it isn’t a zero sum game. You don’t need to nurture that by killing the side of you that is nice and gentle. Don’t let *them* turn you into a shallow husk of an angry tough guy.
I don’t think that avoiding conflict means that you are “weak”. I avoid conflict because most things are just genuinely not worth fighting over. When someone abuses that to always get their way, I do stand up for myself or just cut that person out or my life. I think that it’s a sign of immaturity when someone is unable to compromise.