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China Elevator Stories
What Every Man Needs to Learn: Growing Through Life
Healthy men go through several stages in life.
06/11/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
What is something every man has to learn? Being on his own, doing things alone, and not relying on outside opinions to live his life. He has to be independent if he wants to have a chance with me. Why? Because if he isn’t able to do even this simple thing, it shows he is codependent and hasn’t gone through the steps of growing up. Growing up, ideally, comes with different stages. There’s individualizing from our parents, including setting boundaries with them and not living a life where we’re still enmeshed with them, not making our own decisions but allowing them to make our decisions instead of us, and there are also things a man needs to learn, such as putting a romantic partner first, not his parent, ex-girlfriend, friends, or anyone else he considers more important. This is part of any mature relationship, and I will throw any man out who doesn’t do this (goodbye, German singer who didn’t do this and has harassed me endlessly constantly citing an ex-girlfriend whom he thinks is so superior that I have to pray to her and consider her above anyone else, and having to put her before me as well, since in his eyes, I amount to nothing and am “nothing”).
Stages of Individuation (Childhood to Old Age)
Childhood (Ages 3–12)
Early self-awareness (3–6): Children start to recognize themselves as separate from parents, expressing likes, dislikes, and small preferences.
Autonomy (6–12): Kids learn to manage small responsibilities, navigate friendships, and develop personal skills. They begin testing limits and understanding rules outside the family.
Adolescence (Ages 13–18)
Identity formation: Teens explore who they are in relation to peers and society. They question parental authority, experiment with independence, and start forming personal values.
Young Adulthood (Ages 18–30)
Separation and self-reliance: Adults leave parental homes, make significant life choices, and build careers, relationships, and their own routines. Romantic relationships require balancing self-interest with the needs of a partner.
Adulthood (Ages 30–50)
Integration of self: Adults refine their identities, pursue passions and hobbies, and achieve emotional maturity. They learn to navigate long-term partnerships, friendships, and social networks without losing individuality.
Midlife (Ages 50–65)
Reflection and adaptation: Individuals evaluate life achievements, reassess priorities, and may adapt their goals to match inner values. They become mentors and guides to younger generations.
Old Age (65+)
Wisdom and self-acceptance: Older adults reflect on their lives, embrace their unique identity, and often focus on legacy, relationships, and personal growth rather than external validation.
A man needs to have his own hobbies, ones that aren’t just imitations of what I am doing, and he can’t be fixating on boring interests that don’t interest me (if he wants to be a match). He can’t pretend he’s into the same stuff I am into to become more interesting, since this will make him extremely boring to me because it shows a man has no individual self, no distinct personality. I am also not interested in men who saw what I was interested in (e.g., through spyware or online), who then made up their mind that I must be into the topics I was googling or writing about, to then bore me endlessly every day with the topics of narcissism, relationships, …
Some narcissists will research narcissism endlessly, to then talk about it all the time, to constantly point out and tell you that every person you come across is a narcissist, and they may constantly tell you, “oh, this person is Machiavellian,” and “that person on YouTube is Machiavellian,” as though you asked for their “precious” opinion.
Certainly, I also am not interested in men who don’t evolve with life, who don’t go through a process where they mature into adulthood, and mature through having had certain life experiences. In my case, men my or around my age are sometimes so extremely immature, it feels like you’re going to kindergarten every day, where one of them then “plays with you,” since that is how they think life works. This kind of play may involve constantly forcing childish communication onto you, talking to you as though you were dumb and can’t understand normal, grown-up language, and painting you as “not funny enough” because you don’t think having a kindergarten programme imposed onto you by him is funny (one where you need to play with him, and participate in the boring programme he has planned for the day, without being allowed to tend to your own priorities and issues, him then forcing you to adapt the belief that this is how life is to be lived, and that your life now has meaning because he has coerced you into participating in life with him planning your whole day).
Individuation happens naturally for those who are healthy enough to grow into responsible adults, but for people suffering from the Peter Pan Syndrome, it doesn’t, since they see life as a childish game to be played, where nothing serious ever happens and nothing is ever taken seriously enough, but everything’s a game, even when you’re already half dead from the game they played on you.
When you individuate in a natural manner, this means that at certain ages, you will have gone through specific individual steps and you will have learned from them, to now be a more whole human being than you used to be.
This may mean, for example, that you enjoyed playing when you were a child, but are now a serious grown-up who doesn’t enjoy to play as though you were still a child. A person who hasn’t gone through this process will constantly want to play, as though they are fleeing from reality, and will never act in accordance with the seriousness of a situation. This may include not taking your own work seriously, or that of another person, and constantly interrupting her when she works – doing so in an immature, childish, and obnoxious manner, where you risk her losing her job because “you wanted to play” or “talk about her clothes, and the lint you found on them” instead of allowing her to just concentrate on her job and the things she needs to do in order to function as a full-grown adult. This also means constantly pushing unimportant priorities onto her, and ones where the ones that are important can’t be tended to. This can include a man constantly talking about things that don’t exist, and only talking about shallow topics that don’t interest you at all, while putting aside those topics that truly matter or which are deeper, and whenever you think about such a topic, this kind of person may force you to shift your attention back to a more superficial and shallow topic.
When you haven’t individualized, you’ll simply run around in groups, never questioning if what these groups proclaim is valid and in alignment with reality. You’ll take on any subconscious belief that suits you, not those that are actually the truth. You may act recklessly with regards to other people and their life, and put their lives in serious danger because all you care about is talking about shallow “relationship talk,” “narcissism,” “looks,” and “makeup.”
A person in my situation has much more serious issues to deal with, and a stalker like the one who is the most shallow person I have ever met isn’t on my list of priorities at all.
They must have their own inner identity and a well-formed opinion, not various opinions on various topics which are all taken on from the outside, and don’t come from thinking for oneself and truly thinking about what’s going on in the outside world.
Naturally, a person who is allowed in my life must also be courteous, respectful, and allow others to speak (or be quiet if they wish so). A person who only revolves around themselves is the most boring person anyone can imagine, particularly if that person is shallow, never shares anything of essence about themselves, and hides behind a computer stalking women and watching porn, to then push his flawed beliefs about women onto them, without asking them what they truly think or allowing them to say “no, that’s not the truth about me or who I am” or “no, I don’t want to talk to you.”
A person has to be tolerant enough to be in my life, and they have to be non-violent, and when I say so, please don’t start telling me your feelings all the time, since I can’t stand anyone doing this in a manner where they have clearly taken on the methods described in the book about non-violent communication, but they are using it to emotionally blackmail other people. I enjoy it the most when others don’t mention their emotions at all or when they do so, they do it in a manner that is appropriate, which only needs to be explained to sociopaths who have no clue how normal human beings interact with one another.
Please don’t make my life heavy by forcing your emotions onto me, either in words or through throwing them around while you’re suffering a narcissistic injury of some kind, since I am well versed in the world of emotions and know which facial expression is which emotion (and thus, don’t need to have emotions mentioned, since they are usually self-evident).
When a person says, “I am angry,” I don’t want to hear it, unless they are taking responsibility for their emotion and say it in a situation where this is appropriate. Emotional knowledge includes knowledge about when and how to mention your emotions, or if you should mention them at all. If you are a certain person, I don’t want to ever hear your emotions, because they are not my responsibility and you have not fulfilled the requirements needed for consensual communication (such as in the case where you are a stalker constantly forcing me to listen to you talking, which is different from me choosing, on my own accord, which people I am willing to listen to, which are then people who I enjoy listening to, since they were chosen by me. You can’t become a person I enjoy listening to if you don’t accept that communication requires consent and that there are certain people who aren’t ever going to get that consent from me, because they have already violated my boundaries to such an extent that I would never agree to hearing their side of the story, which is usually full of gaslighting and blaming a woman for not wanting to have contact with them).
Not everyone is deserving of me spending my time on them, and certainly, no stalker who is constantly pushing himself, his father, his ex-girlfriend, or topics I am not interested in onto me, which now take up all my time, so I won’t have that time to spend it on truly important and more pressing issues, is ever going to be allowed to talk to me.
Have you ever been harassed by a stalker who wouldn’t stop bothering you with his unimportant issues?