The Four Stages of Maturity for Men

There are four stages that men must navigate to reach maturity and wisdom. It's a path along which many men get stuck—and a path we're not encouraging our young men to take.   

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WHEN I was in my forties, I was shocked to be told by the Jungian analyst I was seeing that I was not at all grown up. How dare you, was my initial response. I took home the book that he pointed me to: The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, by Marie-Louise von Franz, a protégé of Jung, and devoured it. What my analyst had said was true to a degree that shocked me. Although it was written around the time I was born, some passages in the book could have been lifted right out of my life.

I was more horrified when I looked at the world around me. I was not alone. The city teemed with such men—youth-obsessed dreamers with their heads in the clouds. Tech bros in T-shirts. Bearded hipsters on scooters. New age drifters in tie-dye and sandals. Men, the book told me, do better with their feet on the ground. Yet, here was a whole generation of Peter Pans, who had lost that footing. And while some men seemed to take pride in their deliberate youthfulness, I was more convinced by what the book suggested: that to grow up, a man must grow down.

I thought of my late father, who was of a generation before my friends' fathers. I was raised on Frank Sinatra—not just the songs but the swagger and the style—while other kids had Seventies rock in their homes. I had rebelled—it's a long story, for another day—and it was that rebellion that had me stuck in a version of eternal boyhood. This insight set me on a journey to explore and understand male maturity.

At the foundation, I believe, are these four stages. I've adapted them from the work of Robert Bly, Carl Jung, and my own decades of personal experience and careful observation. (You can find more detail on these sources at the end of this article.) Each stage occurs within an approximate age range and has its own dominant theme and is represented by a colour.

The Four Stages of Male Maturity

The four stages are as follows:

1. Age range: 16-25; dominant theme: rebellion; colour: red.
2. Age range 26-35; dominant theme: compliance; colour: white.
3. Age range: 36-55; dominant theme: integration; colour: grey.
4. Age range: 56+ dominant theme: wisdom, colour: black.

It's important to note, however, that not all men successfully complete all the stages. Many get stuck in grey, or even the earlier stages—white, or red. And that's where the value of this model lies. I will explain what that looks like and why it's a problem.

Stage 1: Red (rebellion); 16-25

If you've ever been a parent and tried to tell a teenage boy what to do, you'll know all about this stage. He'll deliberately do the opposite. This is fuelled by testosterone, plus other biological, neurological, archetypal and behavioural forces. Mostly, it's about his individual ego wanting to retain a sense of its own identity at the same time as it's being forced to give up that identity to become a useful member of society. In other words, he's resisting the inevitable call to go and work, or—historically—enlist as a soldier or sailor.

Because that's what we did, historically, with men in red. We sent them to work or to war. We couldn't contain all the red energy within the home, so we put it to work. We made it useful. We used it to make things, to move things, to hunt, fight and protect—all of which was necessary when you lived in a village with wild animals—and other men in red—roaming beyond its fences.

Other characteristics of the "red" stage are rudeness, arrogance and rebellious behaviour. Rowdiness and drunkenness, too. So we were generally happy for men in red to live outside the village too. We kept them away from the young women and girls. We didn't want our daughters to marry them while they still had too much red. Yet, when they were home, we cut them some slack, we gave them their space, we allowed them to let off steam.

As Bly points out, there are no good or bad stages. What's important is to complete the stages. "Men must stay in red for ten or fifteen years. During that time girls will make love with them but never marry such a man, because he is still unfinished; he has no respect, the elders say, he is too red."

These days, we don't allow much red. We have the view that all behaviour is learned through modelling and conditioning. This "red" behaviour must come from somewhere. Where? Oh, it must be the older men who themselves were once this way. Therefore, this red behaviour must be unlearned, it must be conditioned out of our young men, perhaps by keeping them away from those older men. With that as our core assumption and belief, we don't allow our young men to express their red energy and thereby complete their red stage.

These days, we don't allow much red. However, that energy doesn't go away. It goes underground and gets projected onto an enemy—the enemy that is woke thinking.

However, if you believe people like Jung, that energy doesn't go away. It goes underground and comes out in other ways. It gets projected onto an enemy. The enemy in our modern world is woke thinking—the same woke thinking that suppresses the red energy. Hence the angry young men who voted for Trump and who search online for people like Andrew Tate (7 million searches on YouTube for the month of April 2025 according to VidIQ) and for variations of the phrase "reject modernity, embrace masculinity" (more than 600,000 for the same month). Could it be an attempt to get their red energy back?

What's more, if you listen to both Bly and Jung, men who don't get to spend their red energy carry it forward, unresolved. They never fully grow up, and then we complain about those immature men in their thirties and forties, and we wonder where our strong, mature leaders are.

The good news for society, at least historically, was that those wild "red" men would eventually spend their red energy and calm down, perhaps even become tamed. This was driven by a number of forces: firstly, you've learned to manage your testosterone, which has ; secondly, by taking a few knocks and being put in their place; and thirdly, by their desire to choose a woman and breed, start a family.

When a man was ready for this, he was ready to move to the next stage.

Stage 2: White (compliance); 26-35

By the time men reached their late twenties and early thirties—once again, historically speaking—they would have learned a craft, completed their apprenticeship, and were moving into positions of responsibility; or they left the ranks of soldier or sailor and moved into the rank of officer. In modern times, they will be moving into their first management or leadership positions. They would also have tamed their red and absorbed some culture—usually driven by the need to woo women—and they would be ready, and hopefully mature enough, to marry and raise children.

That shift in context—from soldier to officer, worker to manager, or playboy to parent—has a profound effect on one's psyche. Anyone who has been through it will know that your whole perspective shifts. You find yourself representing all the values, norms and rules that you once rebelled against. Where once you were a worker agitating against the company, as a manager you represent the company to the workers. Where once you were a revolutionary waving a flag from the rooftops, as a parent you're calling for calm negotiation between the opposing sides.

You might even find yourself becoming a bit of a crusader for stability and rules and social norms. After all, you're determined to bring your kids up right and make sure they live in a stable, organised society that can provide them the same, or better, than what you've received. You need your job in order to do that, and for all of the above you need a stable society.

This stage has been symbolised mythologically by the colour white. The most obvious and familiar symbol of this is the white knight. Here's Robert Bly on the subject: "A white knight is gleaming and shining. We usually make fun of that, but a white knight is also engaged. He fights for the good and he is no longer randomly [rebellious]."

White is a stage of complying with norms and rules and standards, and enforcing those—whichever ones the man believes will be best for raising his children in.

So we can say that white is a stage of complying with norms and rules and standards, and enforcing those—whichever ones the man believes will be best for a stable society going forward. For some, that may mean taking a conservative view; for others, a liberal one. Either way, both will be out there, believing that they are right and fighting for it, not in a violent, "red" way, but in a "white" way: having intellectual arguments about things like constitutional principles versus science-based studies. We see a lot of that today on both sides of what we call the left and the right.

Importantly, Robert Bly said, "without the red, no white!" In other words, a man can't function properly in white by skipping red. "We try these days to move young men by compulsory education directly from childhood into the White Knight," says Bly. "And we could say that sometimes a mother wants her son to be white when he is […] in red."

An example of skipping red would be a man who never rebels against his parents, studies what he is expected to study, marries whom he is expected to marry, and works his way carefully and predictably up the corporate ladder—despite secretly wanting something else. It's important to note that qualification. Some men might naturally follow the path that is expected of them and have no real inner need to rebel or do anything differently. They are simply steady men, and they are fortunate in many ways. It's the ones who secretly hate themselves for it, who have to hold themselves in place by suppressing a deep desire to rebel, who are the concern. They will often appear to be the most "white" of all, meaning they'll be quite rigid in their approach to life and their insistence on things being done "the right way", not only by themselves, but by their spouse and children too. They could be mini-dictators. These men will have the hardest time holding it all together in midlife. The cracks will start to show, and things might fall apart. That's as inevitable as when you plant a tree and its roots eventually burst through the concrete paving.

The flipside of skipping red is when a man gets stuck in red well into his thirties. A man like that might struggle to commit, either in relationship or in career. He'll tend to bounce between jobs or business ideas, always rebelling, giving up too easily, looking for the easy path, wanting to have fun. He might have children, but will not change his lifestyle for them. There are a lot of men like this in our modern world that idealises youth and discredits mature masculinity.

Whether a man is productively in white, has skipped red to get to white, or is old enough to be in white, but remains stuck in red, he will inevitably face the next stage, the stage of grey, which is the domain of the midlife transition—which may or may not manifest as a crisis.

The third stage: Grey (integration); 36-55

When a man goes through red and white, he is on an outward, expansive journey. He is not prone to much self-reflection. He achieves what he needs to by force, whether that be physical or mental force, or simply life force in the form of one's will and drive. During all that time, he will employ an unconscious strategy that he believes works for him. For one man that strategy might be literal force of character, like the command-and-control style of leader. For another, their strategy might be generosity and putting others first; for another, diplomacy; for another, their ability to see and think strategically further ahead than anyone else. For the most part, that strategy will go unquestioned. It will get them somewhere, and they will credit the strategy for having gotten them to where they are. "I got here because I did this or that…" And then they'll tell everyone else that they should do the same.

However, at the same time, that man will have been around long enough to have received feedback—performance reviews from his boss, from his colleagues and subordinates via workplace 360s, and from his wife and children—that his strategy doesn't always work. For example, the command-and-control guy will have been told that sometimes he breaks people. The helper will have suffered burnout or will have been told that he's never there for his family. The diplomat will have missed out on a few opportunities for having been too quiet. The keen strategist will have found himself so far ahead of everyone that he makes no sense and can't get his plans implemented the way he wants. And so on.

His response can be one of two things. The first is to try to shut it all down. Because to let in all that data might mean that he's been wrong all this time. Instead, he denies everything and goes harder at it. He does the same thing, only harder, faster, louder, insisting that he's right and everybody else must catch up. His wife and children despair. Perhaps she leaves him, or threatens to. Or he leaves her, saying she is unfairly critical, unjust, and he just can't go on like this. Either way, he starts again, this time with an even "better" wife. I'll show you all, he says. I'll prove how wrong you all are.

A man in midlife might shut down all the feedback he's receiving and just go harder at life—the typical midlife crisis. Or he can accept the data and allow it into full view—the path of integration.

That's the classic midlife crisis scenario, and it happens because of a refusal to move forward into grey, which is to accept and receive all the data that's coming through and allow it into full view. So he'll either get stuck in white, which means being rigid in the way that I've just described, or he might go all the way back to red, to try to start again. That's when he'll do all those things that he never did when he should have, like play guitar, or own a motorcycle. He might also do that if he skipped red. And sometimes, he might move successfully into grey and still do those things, so don't be rigid in your interpretation of things here, these are all just possibilities.

The grey phase is also when things catch up with a man who doesn't take the path of integration. For example, the command-and-control guy will command one too many times, and lose his trusted assistant, or lose the trust of his whole team because of it. A man who has been a bit of a swindler will swindle one too many times and get caught. A man who is careless with guns, or cars, will have an accident. If you scan the news you'll find many such cases where bad behaviour catches up with men in their forties.

A man who moves successfully into grey will find himself opening up to the feedback and expanding his range of possibilities. What initially feels like defeat—do you mean I have to give up being that way?—will eventually be seen as an expansion. To use a Jungian term, he will begin to integrate his shadow side. All those things he could never be—too soft (the command-and-control guy), selfish (the generous guy), forthright (the diplomat), operational (the strategic visionary) will be allowed. New possibilities open up and he finds himself expanding to become a more integrated human being.

Not all men take the path of integrating their shadow. Many would rather not. It feels like loss and often entails more loss. By opening up, a man might find that he took the wrong path, married the wrong woman, does not like some of his friends, and so on. To admit this can feel like a failure, and to deal with it might mean painful decisions and separations. Ironically, if he doesn't take the path, these same consequences might be forced on him. He becomes unbearable to live with and finds himself alone anyway. There is great comfort in denial and blaming others, however. Some men build mansions there.

The bottom line is that grey is about loss and to navigate grey successfully and reach the next stage, the stage of wisdom, a man must accept that his strategy is no longer enough; instead of force, he needs to use all the passive approaches: acceptance, surrender, listening, yielding. While he will experience that as a loss, he will discover it is in fact an expansion.

The fourth stage: black (wisdom); 56+

Only when a man has integrated his shadow is he ready to enter black, the stage of wisdom. As we've seen, this will mean dealing with and accepting loss, both external and internal loss. It will mean adding the passive elements to the active. In other words, being goal directed and also accepting the paths not taken or when things don't work out; being strict and also forgiving and understanding. By drawing on his own journey, he will know when to complete this session sentence and when to pardon. People will experience him as having an expanded sense of self and an expanded range of possible responses and behaviours. He will therefore be less predictable and will make decisions that are not always easy to accept or understand, especially by men in white who are rule-bound, but most often, with time, the wisdom of those decisions will emerge.

Robert Bly gives the example of Abraham Lincoln who pardoned a soldier who had fallen asleep while on guard duty and was due to be executed by firing squad. This was in response to a desperate plea by the soldier's mother. A man in white would have said no, we must stick to the rules and do what's right. Another example is Nelson Mandela, who allowed the sport of rugby in South Africa to maintain its Springbok emblem, which was strongly associated with white Afrikaner authority. The team went on to win the Rugby World Cup in 1995, and that victory did a great deal to develop racial tolerance and unity in the country. It was a masterstroke by Mandela and would not have come about if he had not been in black, if he had been fighting like the "red" soldier he had once been, or all about "right" and wrong" as a man who was still a "white knight" would have been.

A man in black becomes less judgemental, can tolerate ambiguity, and will yield to the demands of the situation without losing his moral compass.

It's clear that in today's politics we see too much white and not enough black. We can also see why Bly calls black the stage of "humanity", of "giving up blame", of wisdom, of humour in the face of adversity. A man in black is able to see that every person, including himself, has both good and bad within them. He becomes less judgemental. He develops a sense of humour around things that younger, less mature people take very seriously. He can tolerate ambiguity and will yield to the demands of the situation without losing his moral compass.

The theme of loss continues in black. Eventually a man must retire or hand over his business. We see many men struggle with that. Various studies have shown that mortality rates for men spike in the range of two to five years after retiring. Could it be that they can't handle the loss of status or that there are no distractions anymore from having to face themselves? That's what we might expect for men who have not reached black. Some are stuck in grey, still not accepting any loss.  In fact, if a man doesn't do the work in his forties, the same questions will very likely resurface around sixty, at which time he still has one chance to open up and begin the path of integrating. If not, he will very likely harden and go into old age with bitterness, anger and resentment. Some men reach retirement age and remain stuck in white, still fighting the good cause, crusading one-sidedly against "wrongs". RFK Jr and Robert Reich are two examples. Then you get some older men who are even stuck in red—you can see them, those men of seventy-plus speaking of expansion and war and conquering enemies. There are quite a few on the world stage at the moment. How did we become so woke and still end up with so much red and so little black? Maybe it's because and not despite. This is something to ponder.

As a man ages further, beyond retirement, he will lose his vigour and health, lose friends and peers, perhaps a spouse, and very likely use up his money, until he becomes dependent on others, until he himself must face dissolution. This is a great reckoning during which a man must face his choices and find his meaning. This will be made easier to the degree that he has successfully navigated the four stages of maturity.

Sources and credits

I've adapted these four stages from the work of Robert Bly, author of Iron John and a major figure in the mythopoetic men's movement. He identified the three stages of red, white and black. He based those on patterns drawn from ancient mythical tales, in particular the Iron John myth. I've separated out grey from black, to better reflect our modern lifestyle where we live longer and more individualised lives. For those who know Jungian psychology, you'll recognise that the four stages can be mapped loosely to Carl Jung's four stages of the animus, which he described as the masculine aspect of the female psyche. Those are:

• The wholly physical man, eg. Tarzan
• The "romantic" man, eg. the poet Shelley and/or the "man of action", eg. Ernest Hemingway
• The bearer of the "word", eg. the great British orator Lloyd George
• The wise guide to spiritual truth, eg. Gandhi

 

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