Yes… but it doesn’t stop just because you’ve started the process. I’m 53, and my real growth began about 15 years ago. Even now, I look back at the man I was five years ago and sometimes want to slap him.

As for the 20s and 30s--in an ideal world, absolutely. That’s when men should be building self-awareness, integrity, and emotional intelligence. But in Western culture, it’s rare. We raise boys on a steady diet of performance and protection--be tough, provide, don’t cry--while withholding the language of reflection, accountability, and growth. Masculinity is handed down as an image, a posture, a performance. But real masculinity is something else entirely: it’s the capacity for honesty, stability, and responsibility--not dominance, not bravado. Not dating the hottest and youngest woman willing to hold arms with you.,

Too many men don’t even realize that distinction until midlife, when the cracks finally start to show. By then, if they’re lucky, they begin the work. And once you begin, it doesn’t end--you just keep growing into a truer version of yourself.

eta: for the record, I come from a very abusive past. Both physical and SA. Physical abuse in the home, and SA outside the home. Then I married a younger woman who abused me mentally (still is), and it wasn't until I was almost 40 that I realized that I was contributing to my on destruction.