How Does a Boy Become a Man?

How does a boy become a man? What exactly is the rite of passage? Does he drink the blood of a deer felled in a hunt? Lose his virginity? Turn eighteen? Have a bar mitzvah? Graduate from college? Get married?

(Quick note: This is an excerpt from my book, Empower, and my writing is from the cisgender perspective. My boyhood years are from a period of time when gender norms were strictly enforced socially. I understand that my perspective can feel a little old school, but there are good nuggets of wisdom here.)

Hardly. Reaching manhood is not an event that is isolated in time. It simply can’t be marked by a specific age. A great man is the careful construct of an evolved physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional being.

I think it’s good to recognize milestones as a boy makes his uncertain journey toward manhood, but what should those markers be? A ceremony, such as a bar mitzvah, is valuable in that it recognizes the path being traveled and, in this specific instance within the Jewish tradition, it marks the time that a boy becomes fully accountable for his actions and decisions in life. This is an essential message for any boy to receive. Graduations and religious ceremonies, however, are only temporary summits. Becoming a man is an epic journey; it represents decades of development.

The real markers of a man are found in his core resources of emotional and physical self-control, not in his ability to withstand pain, bed women, or successfully defeat other men in hand-to-hand combat. Violence does not equal manliness. I wish I’d known this as a young man and understood a real man’s strength shows through his display of his core values, such as compassion and honesty, that guide the way he treats others and inform his decisions. It is ultimately resilience, emotional intelligence, moral fiber and character discussed in this chapter that defines a man.

During college, I was so desperate to be considered a man by my coaches, teammates and fraternity brothers that I took completely unnecessary action to achieve mythical benchmarks of manhood. For example, I believed only boys were virgins. I just happened to be one when I entered college, and it was my best-kept secret. Between academics and football, I found that I didn’t have time to develop dating relationships (not that one of those means you should be having sex, in any case). Losing my virginity eventually became a mission, which I fulfilled in a one-night stand.

Guess what? I didn’t become a man that night. What I did become was remorseful and worried about the potential consequences of the encounter. It destroyed a certain peace I enjoyed before having sex with this girl. That’s all I achieved from the experience.

This is what I know to be true now: Having physical self-control with a woman is being a man. Honoring the sanctity of a woman’s body and her emotional well-being is far more important than gratifying sexual desires. This is true for any guy who hopes to consider himself a highly evolved man.

The last thing I needed in my life at the cusp of manhood was more emotional distress and confusion about who I was. Yet all the things I was doing to prove myself a man—like having sex, acting like a tough guy, and drinking—were breaking me inside. The experiences in this realm  are transactional, not developmental, and I was running at a continual deficit. All this occurred at a time in my life when I very much needed to be learning and developing self-management, interpersonal skills, and emotional maturity. Instead, I sought to achieve the myths of manhood.  So I lived with the confusion of my efforts, and buried the emotional pain that followed me in these fruitless pursuits. But that’s what we’re supposed to do to become a man—be tough, be quiet and grow thick skin—or so I thought.