Second Adolesence:
Delivering True Manhood
December 2000

Adolescence starts with a hormonal invasion. Second adolescence starts with a hormonal retreat. Adolescence begins around puberty. Second adolescence begins when puberty seems to be ending. I consider the time in life that is described as midlife as a second adolescence, because many of the important, unresolved issues of adolescence arise again at this time. Some call this time middlescence to convey the same thought.

One issue that arises in both adolescences has to do with sex. To the young adolescent, the hormonal invasion, a term Malidoma Some uses, comes quickly and most often pleasurably, though the quickness is confusing and the pleasure rarely guilt free. To the second adolescent, the hormonal retreat comes slowly. It sneaks up, starting about 40. It is equally confusing, with the pleasure seeming to recede inexorably. In both adolescences, sex seems to be the threshold to the rest of the struggles with manhood.

Though it is a natural part of aging, a process that Jed Diamond describes very well in his book Male Menopause, the hormonal retreat for many men seems more of a rout, the rout that seems to lead to certain defeat. For them, the sexual battleground has become the site of the decisive battles in the crusade of manhood. Losing this battle feels like losing the war. This explains the explosion of commercials, aimed at beleaguered midlifers, touting the latest herb or snake oil that will restore sexual potency and replenish masculine vigor. We are told that reinforcements are at hand. We are promised that we can return to former glory.

The connection between sexual prowess and masculinity is an adolescent issue, especially in our culture. Before an adolescent can learn of empathy and mutuality, he learns that his performance is what makes him important. Performance in the public sports arena seems to take precedence over private performance in the classroom. Performance in marketing relations takes precedence over performance in human relations. Marketing the self takes the place of finding the self.

Sexual performance becomes one of the performances that symbolizes success in all the others. Men perform outside the bedroom to lure the right woman inside the bedroom. Then the performance must continue. Success means selling a woman, not relating to her. Sexual performance is where the rubber (pun intended) meets the road.

Consider the word impotence, used to describe the inability to sexually perform. Impotence is a word that means to be powerless to perform. How does the lack of sexual performance end up with such a globally descriptive word? The paradox, here, is that the majority of erectile dysfunction problems has been found to be caused by medical conditions, not the assumed psychological weaknesses of conflicted men. Again, the traditional, prevailing ideas of masculinity are naively adolescent in origin.

So what happens when the second adolescent finds his sexual desire or prowess starting to go south? He either either realizes he has been stuck on a detour for a long time, and humbly retraces his steps back to the better road. Or he keeps running down a dead end road, with herbs and a hard-on and hubris. If men could use the second hormonal disruption as a signal that a new stage of life is at hand, we could use this biological flag for our good. If the menopausal change signals the first signs of a terminal illness, then no wonder men want to go out with a bang (pun intended) rather than a whimper.

The autumn of our life, as Jung described it, is really the time of harvest, not the time of decay. This is the time men are able to become the persons they were meant to be. By this time men have the strength and experience to go through a true initiation into manhood. In many ways the first half of life is preparation for this time. Hopefully, earlier in his life a man has borrowed a good persona for himself from his father or other older men. With this persona he has, optimally, been a good father to his children and a good citizen of his community. But, at this point he is ready to find the richness beyond that persona, the person behind the persona. He is ready for a true initiation into the mystery of manhood.

It is interesting to note that some men find great benefit coming out of their slowly diminishing testosterone levels, especially in their sex lives. They report finding more solace and peace from what was previously considered only foreplay. Now, men find the holding , touching, and emotional closeness to be at least as good as the main attraction. Men also find that sex need no longer be a command performance. Sex becomes a different thing. Sexuality starts to flow from their evolving self, not from their devolving groin. It is at once less compulsive and more impulsive. There is nothing to prove. Men start to experience the true mystery of sex.

Midlife adolescence can lead to the richness of the life of the elder, the next step on the road of manhood. It takes work to be an elder, not just the taking on of years. Much of that work initially involves the acceptance of loss. But the work yields a man who treasures the richness and sacredness of life so much that he devotes himself to insuring that life for his community. He becomes responsible for the world beyond his family, having discharged his responsibility to his family. He finds a potency that some call generativity. He finds he has many children, in a larger family, that he gladly takes responsibility for.

All this transformation starts with a man facing his decline courageously. Initiation always starts with the facing of loss. Sexual decline can become the loss that triggers the psychological push towards initiation. The dreams of a man can replace the fantasies of a boy. Midlife can become a time of completion not depletion. But to do this a man has to give up his old ideas of manhood, symbolized by his old ideas about sex. Those losses are hard to take. It's hard to leave boyhood behind. Yet second adolescence can actually deliver much more than this culture promises to its young adolescents. It can deliver manhood.

Larry Pesavento, Copyright © 1999, 2000  

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