I learned to be comfortable in my own skin by my late 20’s. I realized that my interests and hobbies might not line up with everyone else’s, but that I could prioritize my own wants and desires in a way that was both true to myself and could make my life easier.

Career wise, I bounced around with different fields and employers between about 5 cities in my adult life, before I found a role in my mid 30’s that really fits my mild ADHD, where my strengths (good research and writing skills) are helpful and my weaknesses (absent mindedness, inability to sit still and focus on a single task for more than half an hour at a time) don’t matter in this position.

Socially, I made lots of good friends in my 20’s and 30’s, and have a diversity of different types of friendships. I have a few groups of fun friends that I like doing certain activities with (one set of camping/hiking friends, another set of skiing friends, a bunch of groups of dinner party/dining out friends, a bunch of neighborhood parents for hanging out with in kid friendly places). And between some of the individual friends, some are great for emotional support when going through tough times, and I try to reciprocate when they’re going through tough times, too.

My parents had church, but I’m not religious anymore, but I still try to build that level of regular in-person contact with the same people through my other recurring meetings: a designated weekly kids night at a neighborhood pizza place, a monthly happy hour with a group of friends that I work near but not with, rotating dinner parties/backyard BBQs with another core group.

And in my early 30’s, I met a partner who just gets me (and vice versa), so we got married. Our quirks complement each other, and we can cover each other’s weaknesses. I love parenting with her, and our household just works really well. We make each other better, and that has generally translated into building up strong foundations for relationships across both friendships and our professional networks, so that we are both in a good place socially and in our careers (which has helped our respective incomes skyrocket since we’ve met, so we’re basically rich now).

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, but having a good base helps getting through the tougher experiences that life inevitably throws our way.

Bit of an odd answer, but for me (and my wife), the last piece of the puzzle was really budgeting. The invisible, constant financial stress is a lot, and adds to that feeling of “pretending” when you’re not even sure if buying groceries will cause a bill to bounce, let alone hanging out with friends who always seem to comfortably have the money to do whatever it is you’re doing.

It’s been several years now (early 30s, started budgeting in late 20s), it took us a while to figure it out and progress was slow, but I can “see the line” now, towards retirement, towards home ownership, we have no more credit card debt (just student loans left, which we’re working on), and we budget “fun money” that I save up to make big purchases like a 7900XTX without any guilt or credit.

We’re also having our first kid soon, and at least financially, I’m not stressed about it at all, which would’ve been impossible in our twenties. Getting our financials in hand and headed in the right direction has just done massive work in helping me feel like I know what I’m doing, and that our life is actually getting better rather than stuck in place.

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.

I pretended I was functional, and eventually I forgot I was pretending.

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

My solution to this has been to join a hobby that happens to check off a lot of criteria

• Physical exercise
• Interesting people
• Teaching and mentorship, with opportunities on both sides of that fence
• Camraderie
• Promotion of positive masculinity

For me that’s the SCA, a medieval reenactment organization. But my local area has a lot of good people in the organization and unfortunately not every area is filled with great people. Plus, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine.

The first thing was growing a beard. For a man aged say 18-25, having a beard makes people treat you like an adult, while being clean shaven you are treated as an adolescent. No I’m not joking.

Second for me was financial independence. Even a stupid things like exiting the cellular family plan.

Third I think is hobbies. When you gain self confidence in your skill in something you love, even if it’s just hiking or metal detecting, you may care less about others opinion of you.

I don’t know about fully functional, but I think there’s 3 things I would say are key to not being miserable all the time:

• Be kind. It’s not in everyone’s nature, but the results are so rewarding. Just stop to think, is what I’m doing right now causing someone else pain or discomfort? How could I reverse that? Don’t let your bad day ruin someone else’s.

• Be purposeful. Find things to strive for. Small goals are fine, and sometimes things take a long time, but don’t lose sight of where you want to be. Dont be manipulative or treat it like a zero sum game either, your success doesn’t need to come at the cost of someone else’s. Winning with your friends is even better than winning alone.

• Be forgiving. Most importantly to yourself. Failure is not the enemy of success. Self hatred will destroy any chance you have at happiness, many of us are taught at a young age to treat our own failings as horrendous sins that we must mentally self flagellate for. This is the one of the hardest things to overcome, but every step along the way will give your mind a little more room to find peace.

I found myself in a place where I was terribly miserable, isolated, and regretful. I didn’t know it at the time but it was the gradual application of the above which helped pull me out of that place.

Mostly realizing that masculinity really is what you make of it. It doesn’t need to be aspirational and probably shouldn’t be. You are a man regardless of whether you fit anyone’s expectations of that or not and the more people you find to become friends with who accept this radical fact the more comfortable you are to express masculinity without boundaries. Being able to be fully real without pretending to like or hate anything because you are “supposed to”. Being able to express a full range of emotion without fear and talk about it occasionally. Not being held to a standard of sacrifice of the self for meaningless prizes which hold no lasting value.

Secondly - sometimes comfort is a trap. We seek comfort as a natural instinct and to have it sometimes is a good thing… But to find it and expect to live in it all the time makes your world smaller. Over time you lose the functionality that allows you to make changes and do the things that you need or want to. Pushing out little by little into the uncomfortable slowly expands the space and duration in which you can be functional and comfortable. Doing things you don’t like, make you self conscious or put you temporarily in an environment that tires you out is training your mind to be tougher and more resilient. Go without comfort sometimes, treat it as exercise or nessisary medicine. Self-care is one thing but self-coddle will make whatever you tell yourself about not being able to handle things true. It is a sedentary lifestyle of the mind. Find a medium between points of comfort and vistas of discomfort to venture into and you will find less things hold you back, more stories you will have to tell and the more life you will feel like you have lived and the more rewarding your times of comfort become.

It’s an eternal work in progress, but the concept of neutral thinking really clicked for me. Look up “It Takes What It Takes” by Trevor Moawad. I’m still figuring out where to start on community, my social life peaked in high school never recovered. All the old civic organizations and churches seem to be dying off.

Just help people. Volunteer, help a neighbor carry groceries, pick up garbage on the side of the road. Do them for the act of doing them without reward or recognition. Just because it needs to be done. Do it earnestly and everything else falls into place.

I’ve realized that in my society, more or less, being human in general is worthless. Or more accurately, a person is as valuable as their latest income statement. I don’t evaluate any person this way. Therefore I refuse to evaluate myself this way.

People’s judgments are endless and contradictory. Because of this, many of us make their best effort to blend into the crowd, trying to conceal every part of themselves that doesn’t fit into the norms. I’ve always taken this to mean that I should be true to myself. This makes a lot of people angry, but that just makes it easier to tell who should I avoid.

A few years ago I started a community that has now outgrown me. I made a few close (mostly female) friends, and as an introvert that’s enough for me. I’m now more focused on strengthening those ties, keeping a door open for others who’d like to be part of my life.

In general, I try to live for my values, avoiding all ideologies, belief systems, political systems and other -isms. The more I go into this process, I’m finding my newer relationships more stable and fulfilling, even if not always easy to come by.

I got a few things that have helped me figure things out.

1. Nobody has this shit figured out. We’re all just kids with jobs and responsibilities now.

2. The only people that care about how manly another man is are other men that wanna feel superior to you. It’s okay to want to feel manly if that’s what you want, but don’t do it for someone that probably didn’t like you to begin with. Why work so hard to earn the approval of someone you don’t like?

3. Men are just as emotional as women and the sooner you realize that the sooner you can start dealing with your emotions in a healthy way.

4. Don’t try and find people that fit the very specific definition of “friend” that you have in your head. Every friendship and relationship is unique and should be appreciated for what it is instead of what it isn’t.

5. Failure doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Try and figure out why you failed instead of focusing on the fact that you did fail. You learn a lot more about yourself from your failures than your success.

The biggest thing that helped me was art. I’ve played music most of my life, and made the decision to move out to a city with a great music scene 4 years ago where I knew nobody. It took me 3 years of exploring open mic communities and such for me to finally find the one for me. Built up an amazing friend group from there and I feel so emotionally and artistically fulfilled now! I was so lonely those first 3 years, but the second I found my people it was night and day. I think the best thing everyone can do is hone in on a hobby you love and connect with the community surrounding it if you can, sometimes the hobby can be enough too though!

I feel like an adult but I don’t waste time worrying about whether I measure up to some arbitrary definition of manhood. Had a recent conversation with some friends where I said I didn’t identify very strongly with my gender and they thought I was manifesting it quite clearly. Maybe the secret is not to worry about it?