Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 422. The psychology of Peter Pan Syndrome About this episode We’re all familiar with the story of the boy who wouldn’t grow up: Peter Pan. But when someone displays similar traits in real life - issues with commitment, responsibilities, and adulting in general - they might be experiencing what’s referred to as Peter Pan Syndrome. In this episode, we break down the psychology of Peter Pan Syndrome, including why it happens, the frustration it causes those in its orbit, and how to learn to grow up - at last.
We unpack:
• The key characteristics of Peter Pan Syndrome
• Why being coddled or never disciplined as a child can lead to struggles with ‘adulting’
• How ‘Wendy Syndrome’ can act as an enabler for Peter Pan Syndrome
• What it feels like to date someone with Peter Pan Syndrome
• How to overcome Peter Pan Syndrome
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Our favourite sources:
www.health.clevelandclinic.org/peter-pan-syndrome https://www.health.clevelandclinic.org/peter-pan-syndrome
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-life/201605/the-peter-pan-syndrome
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1006.8462&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1006.8462&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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2:41 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology.
3:01 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of your 20s, the psychology of our 20s, psychology of my 20s. You guys have no idea how long I've wanted to do this episode for. Literally, this has been on my list for, I would say, three years. And I just never got around to it. I don't know why. Probably because I was like waiting for this very moment to do an episode on it. We're talking about a really cool concept today, a little-known phenomenon called Peter Pan Syndrome.
3:44 Jemma Sbeg? Let me start this episode with a question. Have you ever met somebody who just has no desire to grow up? Who just wants to have fun all the time? Seems almost like allergic to responsibility? Or ever getting serious about a job or a relationship? Who maybe is like obsessed with reliving things you did in high school as kids? Reliving your uni days despite those times being well and truly done? Do you know this person? Have you have you met somebody like this? This... Is a Peter Pan. This is Peter Pan syndrome to a T. A pathological fear of growing up. Not growing older, that's part of it, but growing up.
4:29 Jemma Sbeg? And leaving the spontaneity, the fun, the ease, the lack of responsibility behind. This is far more common than you may think. But because it's kind of hidden behind nostalgia, or like somebody just trying to figure out their choices. Or somebody who is enabled by their parents, by their partners, by their friends. Not a lot of people talk about it. What's sad, though, is the damage that Peter Pan syndrome does, not only to the person who is, you know, going through it and who suddenly is gonna look around one day and realize that everybody else grew up but them. But also the people around them who so deeply want this person to become an adult and show some like gusto for life.
5:15 Jemma Sbeg? That they become more and more frustrated from trying and feel more and more kind of despondent. So this is what we're gonna talk about today. If you haven't heard about it before, the psychology of Peter Pan syndrome. Why some people wanna stay childlike or young forever. The corresponding Wendy syndrome that we see a lot in women who date Peter Pan's. How you can be friends with this person. How you can be the partner of this person, the sibling of this person. And how much you can actually do for them. Like, can you force somebody like this to change? There is a lot to discuss, a lot to break down. It's just a fascinating episode in general, so let's get into it.
6:04 Jemma Sbeg? So what is Peter Pan syndrome? Where did it get its name? Where did it come from? We are, I think, a lot of us, not we all, a lot of us are familiar with the story of Peter Pan. It's like a classic childhood fairy tale. Folk story, I think maybe you would call it a fairy tale, but. For some revision, Peter lives on like the mysterious faraway island of Neverland. He has like this troupe of like forever children called the Lost Boys. They get up to all kinds of adventures. Nothing is very difficult. They have like a nemesis, which is Captain Cook, but like he's not really a threat. He doesn't really ever do anything to them and life is just very easy and there's no responsibilities.
6:48 Jemma Sbeg? There's none of like the drudgery of adult life. It's all very fun. They have these adventures. And it's seemingly the fantasy of many, many people, never having to grow up and face chores and work and complex relationships. Getting to be young forever. This is the very famous story from which Peter Pan syndrome emerged. Peter Pan, the syndrome was first coined in the eighties by a psychologist called Doctor Dan Kylie. In his book, The Peter Pan Syndrome, Men Who Have Never Grown Up. And he came up with the term because he kept encountering a lot of men, a lot of like older teenage boys, but mainly men who like kept having all these problems with adjusting to the real world.
7:31 Jemma Sbeg? They really struggled getting girlfriends or partners. They had trouble with their jobs. And he really believed that a lot of this derived from their fear of growing up and of being responsible. It's not an official psychological diagnosis, but the term Peter Pan syndrome gained so much popularity after his book was first published because it was kind of the first time that anybody had dissected this particular set of behaviors and patterns and a lot of people saw their partners, saw their sons, saw themselves painfully in that description. And I think on some level, we all can kind of relate. None of us particularly enjoy paying bills.
8:13 Jemma Sbeg? None of us particularly enjoy doing chores. Let's be real. Sometimes adulthood feels like just doing the same things over and over again to stay alive. A lot of things that aren't a lot of fun. But here's the distinction, those with Peter Pan syndrome often exhibit those same like tendencies and behaviors and annoyances with adulthood on a pathological level. They cannot commit to a relationship, but they also really have no desire to work. And they also just wanna have fun all the time, and they also seem pained by the idea of doing chores, keeping a schedule, getting a driver's license, that sort of thing. People with the same syndrome can seem quite helpless as well.
8:57 Jemma Sbeg? Those around them might have the general impression that this person like just can't get it all together. Um, and a- as we said, it brings a lot of frustration. They might be prone to uh emotional outbursts when they are asked to do things that a normal adult would do. Or when they face stressful situations, they make a lot of excuses, they blame others for why it went wrong, why they can't do it, they find criticism difficult, they find people saying no difficult. More broadly, they just have no desire or interest in personal growth or making
9:37 Jemma Sbeg? solid, long-term plans. They wanna keep their options open, they wanna have fun, they wanna be spontaneous. And they can also really rely on a lot of self-destructive behaviors, you know, engaging in things like substance abuse, addictive patterns, all with the goal of escaping from and suppressing the difficult feelings that come with growing up. They wanna avoid that as much as possible through whatever means. It can happen in women, but there's a lot less accounts, I think there's very few accounts of it happening, probably because of how women are socialized to take on responsibility from a young age in the home, in classrooms, in social groups. So why does this actually develop in a lot of, not a lot, but why does it end up developing in in young guys and in men?
10:21 Jemma Sbeg? Firstly, we need to examine the role of the parent. I feel like parents kind of get blamed for everything, but this is a case where it might be a little bit fair. Even if their intentions were pure, a lot of it does begin with how, and I will say men and women, but how particularly um a young guy was like raised. There's this woman, Humbelina Robles Ortega. She is a professor at the University of Grenada and she's an expert on this. She's an expert on emotional disorders, on parenting, and she basically claims that overprotective parents are a massive contributor. They think they're protecting their child by limiting their independence, by always driving them everywhere, by helping them with their homework, cooking all their meals, choosing their major, not letting them get a job.
11:06 Jemma Sbeg? But it can leave their children ill-equipped to deal with adult life. Again, they think they're doing what's best, but the child never gets the necessary skills to confront things that we all kind of have to go through as an as an adult, including painful things like heartbreak and scary situations and discomfort. There's one longitudinal study from twenty twenty three that examined the impact of having overprotective parents in thousands of children in the Netherlands. And children who had these kinds of parents were more antisocial, they had lower levels of academic achievement, poorer coping strategies, even when the parents themselves didn't think that they were being overprotective.
11:49 Jemma Sbeg? Now, as an adult, if you have grown up in that environment, you've never adjusted. So they still may feel or feel the need to be physically and financially taken care of by their parents. They don't, they kind of take the system for granted. And you know what, if it was me, I would probably do that. Like, I wish my parents paid all my bills. I wish they took care of everything. Uh, of course, somebody who's always had this handed to them is going to continue that way because not doing it is so painful, but it doesn't exactly set them up well. Now, there's a difference between an overprotective parent, like the ones we spoke about, and a permissive
12:31 Jemma Sbeg? parent. And permissive parents may be even worse. Overprotective parents will still say no if it is in their child's best interest. Permissive parents won't. Peter Pan syndrome can emerge because of permissive parenting. Because children or this child has zero boundaries, zero restrictions on their behaviour, zero punishments for following impulses that lead to poor decisions. Everything is done in permissive parenting to keep the child happy. Now, this happens for a few reasons. The parent themselves may have had, like, just a really harsh upbringing. So they go too far in the opposite direction, kind of as a form of, like, it's a form of overcorrection.
13:13 Jemma Sbeg? They may also just struggle with conflict and feeling guilty in their own relationships, including their relationship with their child. Even though they obviously have authority and they still do what's best. Like, the child can be unhappy. It doesn't matter if it means they're safe and learning. That's a good thing. But they wanna be loved. They wanna be seen as a nice or a good parent. That's what causes this. And sometimes permissive parenting can just be straight up neglect. Like, there's no boundaries because the parent doesn't care enough to set them. There is an entire Reddit thread about people's experiences with permissive parenting. And it goes into so much detail on the ways that this experience, whilst probably a lot of fun in childhood,
13:56 Jemma Sbeg? can really mess you up as an adult because you don't learn rules. You don't learn what it means to be told no. And if you only ever experience that as an adult, it's gonna be really annoying and it's gonna seem really unfair. Moreover, permissive parents often, not the neglectful kind, but the I want you to love me all the time kind. They often take the blame for their children's wrongdoings, meaning their child never learns that actions have consequences, which is another important feature of growing up. I had a friend like this in school whose mum would just swoop in with an excuse for any wrongdoing. And he was kind of like a mama bear figure, which, power to her.
14:39 Jemma Sbeg? But she didn't do her daughter any favors because her daughter just got her way with everything and therefore learnt that she could do anything. I wanna say, like, I'm not a parent, I can't judge, and I can imagine it must be really, really hard to figure out what the right thing is for your child, especially if you had a really difficult upbringing. But these behaviours are, they're just frankly, a big contributor to Peter Pan syndrome, as we see it in the research. Now, another contributor beyond parenting and that kind of relationship is fears about one's own competence. Even somebody who had the most perfectly balanced and supportive parents, who also set boundaries, may still develop Peter Pan syndrome because
15:23 Jemma Sbeg? they are subconsciously, unconsciously afraid that they are not very good at being an adult and that they will fail. Being just a person who is alive nowadays comes with a lot of expectation, right? A lot of comparison. And life is just really hard. Like, it's harder to get a job, it's harder to be paid well, it's harder to be seen as competent, harder to make a mark, harder to dream big, harder to do all the things that our parents did at our age. And sometimes the psychological solution to that, when we feel like that failure is all us, is avoidance. You know, if I never try, I didn't fail because I wasn't capable, I failed because I wanted to. Failing was my decision because I chose not to give it a go. That's kind of the situation that they end up in.
16:08 Jemma Sbeg? I'm not gonna be a bad adult if I never force myself to act like an adult. A lot of people with Peter Pan syndrome are deeply insecure. They're anxious, they're perfectionists, and they're kind of just scared that they won't be able to adapt or be the person that they wanna be. So they mask it with this more socially acceptable facade of like, I'm just living in the moment, I'm just enjoying my youth, I'm just having fun, when really what's going on is like a deep existential fear of not feeling capable. Of course, speaking of existential fears, the fear of growing up is also deeply correlated to the fear of aging. And I feel like a lot of us can relate to the birthday panic.
16:52 Jemma Sbeg? Like, when we were kids, we were so excited to get older. And then now it's like every birthday just feels like I'm, you're closer to dying. And that's not a great feeling. It's easy to see why creating a psychological fantasy land of like eternal youth is attractive. After all, like, society is very obsessed with youthfulness and young bodies and capable young bodies and the attractiveness of being young. When somebody lives in a fantasy land where they never have to grow up, they feel safe from what aging means. They feel safe in the delusion of being youthful, energetic, carefree. And if they can't actually
17:34 Jemma Sbeg? freeze themselves at an age, they can freeze their behaviour at an age. Research from the nineteen eighties, which analyzed like, I think, twelve hundred retired adults in the US, found that this fear of aging is really just the fear of the unknown. When someone has Peter Pan syndrome, they are gravitating towards the known. Being a child who doesn't have to assume any responsibility, for whom life is always explained and taken care of for them, that is a known. And that is not as frightening as the unknowns of adulthood and the unknowns of getting older that we're facing right now. To clarify, I will say, this doesn't mean like you can't be playful and young and joyful.
18:17 Jemma Sbeg? Like, you are still allowed to even be childlike at some points and like to be a little bit silly. You know me, you guys have probably listened to episodes where I've just gone on and on about the importance of play psychologically and mentally and emotionally.
18:34 Jemma Sbeg? So we're not just like throwing all of that out and saying, grow up or else. However, when this bleeds into pathological, childlike behaviors and irresponsibility, that is Peter Pan syndrome. That is not just having fun and being light and joyful about life. This is somebody who is paralyzed by the idea of growing up, and that has consequences for dating, for friendship, for their financial situation, for their career, which we are going to discuss after this short break, as well as how to deal with somebody like this. Stay with us.
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22:11 Jemma Sbeg? You know what's sad? What I think is sad is when somebody has Peter Pan syndrome, like obviously they get a really bad rap, but they miss out on the full range of emotions and experiences that life has to offer as we get older. Like the richness of growing up. By remaining in like this childlike emotional and behavioral state, the Peter Pans of the world miss out on like the immense satisfaction that comes with knowing you can rely on yourself. And knowing that like you built this, you made this, you're responsible for the success in your life. They also miss out on the feeling of knowing that others can depend on them. And that they can show up emotionally, physically, maybe even financially for their friends.
22:57 Jemma Sbeg? Think of it this way, like when you're experiencing a crisis, you're not gonna call your Peter Pan friend, you're not gonna call your friend who has no sense of adult responsibility. That's unfortunate for you because you missed out on another support network, right? It's also responsible a bit for the Peter because I think it's a true privilege. It's like, it is, it's a privilege, it's a joy, it's a gift. Getting to support others and getting to help people through hard things and have that mutual sense of help and love and connection. It can be really frustrating to be around these people because you're moving forward, you've got ambitions, you've got plans. And they're staying still, like they're not keeping up with the progress of life.
23:41 Jemma Sbeg? Perhaps whilst you are listening to this, you probably thought of somebody, right? If you've made it this far, you've got somebody in mind who fits the criteria for a Peter, I would assume. A sibling, a romantic partner, a friend, a colleague, maybe somebody you just met in passing. Um, and being around them is hard. It's just hard. I had a roommate like this and I actually ran into him recently, like last week. And five years on, he hasn't changed. And I remember hearing this term for the first time when we were living together and being like bingo. Like that is him, that describes his behavior to a T. And seeing him five years later and being like, oh my God, you're still the same was like quite shocking.
24:23 Jemma Sbeg? Perhaps the reason I wanted to do this episode. And the thing is, it's very easy to be resentful of Peters, especially if you're close to them, because they fail to assume responsibility for their own actions. And that's hard, that's, it's hard to be around somebody who like can't do simple things like take the bins out or wash the dishes or show up on time or commit. And it can be really pronounced if this person is a sibling and you see how they've been treated. Differently because of their behaviours, or maybe even in ways that contribute to their behaviours. Like, a really common example, and something I'm sure many of you can relate to, is like, having a brother.
25:03 Jemma Sbeg? You being a woman, you being a sister and having a brother, and you can see how much is not asked of them and how much is asked of you. Like, you have to have it all together, they get away with murder. And there's always an excuse as to why they can't step up, why they can't assume responsibilities for the things that you as a sister do, or maybe you as a brother, or just like anybody, like you have to, you have to grow up and they don't. And study after study shows that this dynamic in particular is like a recipe for resentment because and it's resentment for literally everybody involved, right? Because the sibling resents the other sibling who resents the parents, who resents that sibling, who resents their parents and like it's just this triangular motion where like everybody feels like they're hard done by
25:49 Jemma Sbeg? and nobody wants to take responsibility and nobody, well particularly the Peter, doesn't want to change. It's also hard because in those situations, if you are the sibling, you probably wanna be like, can't you see how this has hurt me and how this has influenced me as an individual and like, they're probably not gonna listen because there's a lot of ego involved in recognizing that you are somebody who has Peter Pan syndrome, or as a parent, recognizing that you are somebody who's contributed. So, I think siblings of, of Peters get a hard rap because they just kinda have to stay silent and accept that you know, they're never gonna be and never have been treated the same way.
26:30 Jemma Sbeg? Trying to help somebody with Peter Pan syndrome get moving or reach the level that you think they're capable of can also make you feel like a nag, and it can make them feel really like patronized and it becomes highly personal very quickly. It's not a happy situation for anyone. Definitely hard when they're a family member, very complex when there's somebody you're dating, whole different story. Dating, naturally, you guys know this, like, I don't wanna sound like I'm like mansplaining this, even though I'm a woman, but you know what I mean, like, I don't wanna sound like, but, you know, it's, it involves balance, like,
27:09 Jemma Sbeg? yeah, you've got to accept your partner's quirks and idiosyncrasies, and you wanna encourage each other to be the best version of themselves. But you also wanna be able to rely on them. And if you have this recurrent feeling that your partner just like can't seem to grow up, or a general feeling that they probably couldn't handle life on their own, that can really leave you questioning, like, is this relationship worth it? In a relationship setting, like, you probably notice it more. They neglect their personal hygiene. They avoid any kind of chore. They don't really do anything around the house. They don't really do anything for their life. You might constantly be like, come on, don't you have ambitions?
27:51 Jemma Sbeg? Don't you wanna do things? They might let you plan everything. They let you make big decisions. They also generally just like, don't wanna maybe go that extra mile in terms of being more committed, moving in with each other, or getting engaged, or thinking about the future. And that takes its toll. But we know about the the labour load where the person who does more chores around the house often feels more exhausted and resentful. But the mental load of just having to think about what needs to get done has the same effect. And the mental load is probably a lot more significant if you are the partner of somebody who is a a Peter. In the long term, right, it's hard to be with somebody when every time you bring up a plan for the future,
28:36 Jemma Sbeg? like, there's nothing. It's hard to imagine a future with somebody who can't even take care of themselves. Like, imagine having kids with a Peter. Imagine trying to get a home loan. Imagine when things get really tough. Like, will they bolt because they can't cope with people relying on them? Will they just go and hang out with their buddies? And how do you know that by being patient, you're not just enabling them? Especially if they do have other things going on. Like, they might have ADHD. They might have been through a really tough childhood. They might just be overwhelmed. Like, it's a hard fricking line to walk. This is where we need to talk about Wendy Syndrome, which is the companion to Peter Pan Syndrome.
29:19 Jemma Sbeg? Peter Pan Syndrome, again, normally a man doesn't wanna grow up. He wants to be a boy forever, constantly reliving the glory days of his, like, teenage years where he had fun and he never had to be an adult and there was no responsibility. Wendy, named after Wendy Darling, who was another character in Peter Pan. Wendy syndrome describes the woman or the women who enable those men. Who enable their boyfriends, sons, friends to be that way without even realizing it. A Wendy is empathetic, she is nurturing, she picks up after Peter, she makes excuses for Peter. She often takes on a motherly role with Peter, she's trying her best to protect her Peter.
30:02 Jemma Sbeg? Because she thinks, much like the parent, that she is helping him. It's not helping. It's keeping them in this dependent state where oftentimes they've just found somebody to replace their mother. And they get the benefit of a romantic partner. There there's no incentive to change there, they get the both, the best of both worlds. The thing is, a study from the University of Granada in Spain from two thousand and seven. Found that Peter Pan's, Peter Pan types tend to gravitate towards the Wendy archetype and vice versa because.
30:39 Jemma Sbeg? You know, Peters are often charismatic in their chaos, they're often quite enjoyable to be around. And a Wendy often really wants to be in service to somebody else. So at first, it's like this perfect. Match made in heaven because each person feels like they're getting something. But over time, Wendy just makes it easier for Peter to never grow up. Even as she believes she is helping him to grow up, and this eventually becomes exhausting. Like, the person with Wendy syndrome will eventually realize that Peter isn't gonna change. And they begin to feel taken advantage of, even though like the behaviors have probably been the same from the beginning. The person with Peter Pan syndrome, also we can't forget them, they also start to feel like, why am I being lectured, why am I being.
31:23 Jemma Sbeg? Dominated, why am I being forced to do things I don't wanna do? Why is this person so demanding? And so, this is often how this relationship ends. Wendy burns out, Peter sulks, and the relationship ultimately fails.
31:36 Jemma Sbeg? But for the Peter, the cycle continues with somebody else. Again, remember, this is somebody who doesn't want to be an adult. So who doesn't want the responsibility of a committed relationship. So it's very easy for them to jump into another non-committal relationship, which is very fun and freeing and teenage-like. And it's very likely that that person they jump into the next relationship with will probably be very much like the same Wendy character they found themselves with before. So if this sounds eerily like your situation as a sibling, as a friend, as a partner, do you correct the behavior? What do you do? It's a hard question, but I don't think it's your job to fix somebody with Peter Pan syndrome,
32:20 Jemma Sbeg? particularly if you recognize the traits of Wendy syndrome in yourself, either as a partner or a friend or somebody else. Because you will just find yourself most likely in this situation of differing interests, differing desires, differing goals and sadness. You also cannot shame somebody into changing because that builds, we know this resentment long-term. It's just a really sad reality we see time and time again in like human behavior. But like people do not change for others, they change for themselves. This is like the classic theory of intrinsic motivation. The strongest form of motivation is what comes from within. External motivation, somebody else telling you to do something, somebody else telling you to change,
33:04 Jemma Sbeg? just cannot be sustained no matter what people say. Like this, it's just so, it doesn't work. So what do you do? Well, you have to stop doing the things that have made their behavior and patterns easy for them. You stop taking over the responsibilities, you stop doing the adult things for them. And maybe you remove yourself and show them like, hey, if you want an adult relationship or an adult friendship or a roommate relationship even, we both need to be displaying adult behaviors and you're not. You have to make the option of being a Peter difficult for them. I remember, and and this is gonna sound so cooked, but when I had that roommate, who was definitely a Peter.
33:47 Jemma Sbeg? Bless his soul, but also bless us for dealing with him. Um. He wouldn't wash any of his plates, dishes, cups, anything. And so it got to a point where they were, like, they had mould in them. And so anytime I needed to use one, I would wash it, I would use it, I would wash it again, and I would store it in a box in my room. So that only I could use it, until he literally ran out of clean stuff to drink from. And he had to sheepishly be like, hey, where are all our plates and cups? Was it mature? Probably not. But did it remove the ease at which he could literally like, live like a pig and like remain childlike and dependent on us? His female roommates, like we were his mother, yes. And like his behaviour did change.
34:30 Jemma Sbeg? It felt weird, but it was kind of like, what else do we have to do? We can't just scold him. The only way to help a Peter is to make them wanna help or change themselves. Or to leave them to see out their prior decision of remaining childlike. And let them see the consequence of that. You can't show the consequence only through words. It needs to be through change or actions. Now, obviously, if their fear of growing up is derived from anxiety around aging, not being good enough, feeling like a failure. Encourage them, show them support, talk them through what they see as the worst case scenario and the other possible outcomes. Like, let's not conflate like depression or a real mental health struggle with being a Peter.
35:11 Jemma Sbeg? Like, some people are struggling with responsibilities because they're in a really tough and dark and hard place. Hence why they struggle to leave the house. Hence why they feel no sense of ambition or ability to be a committed partner or to show up. But the biggest way to differentiate that, like, is this person seriously depressed or are they a Peter is that Peters are otherwise quite active in ways that suit them, just not in ways that would force them to grow up. Like, they have no issue going out with friends, no issue working on, like, say their physique, no issue holidaying. That sort of thing. They don't seem bothered or even sad by their lack of progress. They don't seem despondent. They would be happy to continue the way they are.
35:56 Jemma Sbeg? This is what they've chosen. They want to be in this state. Depressed people obviously don't want to continue the way they are. They don't seem to be enjoying themselves, which sounds like the most obvious statement in the world, but like, I think it's important to clarify that there is a distinction, that like, there is somebody who is depressed and there's somebody who is a peter. Let's not get them confused. Also, somebody who is young and like financially insecure and a little bit directionless is also, again, not necessarily somebody with Peter Pan syndrome. Somebody with Peter Pan syndrome wants to remain where they are. They have an aversion to growing up. Somebody who's just like young and figuring things out would take the opportunity to change if it was presented to them. The peter wouldn't. So let's finish up with this.
36:42 Jemma Sbeg? Do people ever grow out of this? Like, is there hope for these individuals? The answer is yes, they do. People do grow out of this. There's been studies that show, um, there's often a social turning point for the people who do change, especially around when their friends, like all the people they know start getting married, start having families of their own, and their social circle kind of shrinks and it means that the other side of things start to seem more desirable.
37:13 Jemma Sbeg? Whether that happens at twenty seven or thirty five or forty, who knows? But there's been additional work showing that when people realize that adult responsibility is also at times very rewarding, they also change, especially when they feel like they can continue to have their fun, their joy, their childlike nature alongside this new way of living. Like, I think, sure, cleaning your house every day is really annoying, but it's also really cool that you get to live alone or that you get to keep your space exactly how you want it. Independence is pretty cool. Like, having your job is most of the time, sometimes very frustrating, but so is being able to afford your own travel. Items that you want, getting to save and meet your goals is also really rewarding.
37:57 Jemma Sbeg? Getting older doesn't just mean losing parts of yourself, it also means gaining access to new parts of yourself and new versions of yourself. So it's kind of like at some point the pro-cons list shifts to the cons-pros list, like something flips for them. And alongside that, I think as well, at some point, again, they realize.
38:19 Jemma Sbeg? You can still have fun and be an adult. We did a whole episode on this the other day, the psychology of whimsy. Like, that is a big realization, I think, for a lot of Peters. But as the saying goes, like, they have to realize that themselves. You can take a horse to water, you can't make it drink. Somebody you love, like, if they don't wanna change, if they don't wanna grow up, nothing you can do is gonna make them. There's no forcing them. There's no arguing with it. Sometimes it's just about, they have to see all the things that they're also losing by staying the same. They think that they're gonna lose so much by growing up. They think that that's where all the loss comes from.
38:59 Jemma Sbeg? At some point, I think, people with Peter Pan syndrome realize all that they lose by choosing not to grow up. And as we said, there's often a social turning point. There's also, I think, an emotional turning point. When they realize that their capacity and their ability to connect with others, there's a ceiling to it. Unless they take on some responsibility. And as the quality of their relationships get worse, and if there's somebody who is self-aware enough to see that they're getting worse, things will hopefully kind of start to change, hopefully. So there you go. That is our episode on Peter Pan syndrome.
39:39 Jemma Sbeg? I had so much fun researching this and looking into this. It is honestly so deeply, deeply fascinating, especially Wendy syndrome. So if you have made it this far and you were listening on Spotify, leave a little fairy emoji down below to represent Tinker Bell. And so I know that you have listened to the very end. If you know somebody who was a Peter, feel free to DM me, tell me a little bit more, see if it matches up with the description. I feel like this is such an interesting. Concept and idea of people that's gonna become a lot more popularized as we see more like manosphere content and we see more increasing difficulties around like getting employment and like getting a job and like shifting gender roles. I just feel like
40:24 Jemma Sbeg? it's gonna become a much bigger part of like our social conversation. So yeah, I'm glad we could do like a full episode of it after waiting all these years. Thank you as always to our researcher Lucy Davidson who helped with this episode. She did so much fantastic research and did some really great deep diving that allowed us to make this episode what it was. What's the other things we need to say? Instagram, Substack, Netflix, all those things in the description. If you want to check them out, you can also share this episode with a friend. Maybe somebody who you share a mutual Peter with if you think that they would enjoy it, learn from it, laugh at it, maybe, maybe not. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will talk very, very soon.
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