Marrying Peter Pan
Reality dating shows highlight the absurd risk of marriage, especially for women
The finale of Love is Blind, which just dropped, has me thinking a lot about how many women spend their lives trying to save emotionally immature men. “Peter Pan syndrome” is not a real thing, even though it’s a popular topic on TikTok— it’s a pop psychology concept that refers to people who become adults without really growing up, supposedly affecting men more often than women. One definition: people who exhibit “difficulty expressing emotions, procrastination, vague or poorly defined life goals, and ‘magical thinking’ about mistakes or responsibilities, as well as blaming others for their problems and attempting to escape their reality to make their problems go away.” Most women I know apply this general concept to a lot of the cishet men they have dated.
Not surprisingly, there are many loosey goosey definitions of the concept online that trace the phenomenon back to mothers, or to overprotective parents. In this way, the concept is similar to momism, a theory outlined by Philip Wylie in the 1943 best-selling book Generation of Vipers, which I’ve written about before:
Wylie’s theory of “momism” was deeply rooted in homophobic logic, characterizing over-attached sons as weak and psychologically compromised… But Wylie’s distrust of maternal desire outlasted the book’s momentary popularity. In the 1946 book Their Mothers’ Sons, Edward Strecker drew on Wylie’s writing, issuing a finger-wagging to overbearing mothers who had failed to wean their sons emotionally, preventing them from becoming a “man, in the truest sense of the word.” As one reviewer put it, Strecker’s project explored how the “Great American Mom” emasculated her sons, creating “soft spots which made them incapable of independent, mature action in the face of even minimal difficulties”…
Variations on this theme persist today. Helicopter Moms, theories of overprotection, mom-as-meddler, mama’s boys, Matthew McConaughey’s pathetic role as Tripp in Failure to Launch—all are reverberations of momism.
Peter Pan syndrome further draws on our shared understanding of fairy tales and fantasy, giving the manchild both a diagnostic and folk quality.
In this week’s finale of LIB, Clay decided not to marry AD, a woman who has patiently put up with Clay’s extreme anxiety about commitment, fidelity, and marriage all season, as well as some tactless fatphobic comments eariler in the season. Clay grew up around his father cheating on his mother (the two have a pretty harrowing and thoughtful conversation about their history in the finale) and Clay seems to be just starting to explore how his childhood has affected him. Ironically, though, it’s this final move—Clay’s decision not to marry a woman he has known for only 2 weeks because he feels he’s not ready—that is his wisest and most mature one.
AD doesn’t see it this way, though, and while she says there was nothing he could have done to make her say no to him at the altar, in fact, there was, and he did it—his refusal to marry her after such a short time is a deal-breaker for her. He wants to go to therapy and do something related to (his? her?) finances, he still loves her, but she ends things. She is clearly embarrassed, shunned at the TV altar, all dressed up in a wedding gown. Why didn’t he tell her this was coming sooner, before she got her hopes up? That sort of thing.
But the high stakes decision-making of reality dating shows like LIB also highlight the more ordinary risks of marriage and the absurdity of undertaking them only armed with the kind of cliche qualifiers contestants regularly trot out, like “marriage is hard” or “I know it won’t be easy.” Then there’s the one-time performative utterance made contractual of it all, wherein a moment of infatuation or even deep love is projected forward and expected to apply without reservation to the rest of their lives. We feel the outrageousness of the contract more intensely in these shows because the timeline is so compressed (and the music so dramatic), along with the taboo couples face around giving any voice to their own hesitations or anxieties—that would break the spell of love! Clay finds it overwhelming, and is honest about it—he gets shunned.
But who can blame him? Even before he declined to go through with the quickie TV wedding, it already sounded crazy: Was this woman really going to marry a guy who seemed so clearly not ready for marriage? Were Johnny and Amy, this season’s most “wholesome” couple, really going to get married without ever having sex or (presumably) solving their birth control issue? It doesn’t matter, because within reality dating, the villain is the person who “isn’t ready for commitment,” that is, the person unsure about buying into the institution.
For women like AD, who nevertheless take their chances, betting on unstable relationships while steeling themselves for a life of caring for a man who needs some work, there’s another absurd risk to marriage that feels stark: the possibility of being yoked forever to someone in need of constant emotional assistance.
After I wrote about Travis Kelce’s little-boy blowup at the Superbowl, I tore through an early copy of Ruth Whipman’s forthcoming book Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, which explores how we lose boys to masculinity and misogyny. She looks with empathy at how male loneliness and entitlement take root in young boys and how we can parent toward something better.
I agree that we have to do better by cis boys— by all kids, of all genders—so they can grow up, connect, heal. But as boys age into men, I have to admit, there comes a point when my empathy drains. Don’t ask me to pinpoint when this happens— 18? 25? 32? It’s not a science and I’m not selling a political program here. What I’m saying is that the work of parenting boys and kids with tenderness is not the same as sitting patiently with grown men’s weaponized incompetence or the kind of abuse now regularly documented on social media—like the guy who went viral for insisting his wife make him a roast when she was 2 days postpartum.
Eventually grown men have to take responsibility for themselves, to choose to do the hard work of trying to liberate themselves, the way every woman and queer person I know is desperately trying to do, and to stop expecting women—wives, mothers, or colleagues—to teach them how to be.
The psychological notion of the puer is another iteration of this Peter Pan idea. I've only encountered it in a single former partner and it was, honestly, a bizarre experience.
Thank you for this clarifying article. I just watched the final episode last night and Clays mom Rita’s cogent insight run adjacent to this last point-Women. Are. Not. Here. For. Your. Growth. And while histories, lineages, traumas, early wounds are real and impactful, (saying this to Clays dad and other men who struggle too turn towards their own accountability/harm they’ve caused to others!), don’t diminish your own capacity for change-your own human agency! YOU CAN BE BETTER and don’t need a woman to do it! I found that convo btw them the most compelling moment of all six seasons!