Adulting comes with as much responsibility as it does freedom: You may not love, say, cleaning your bathroom or owning up to your mistakes, but these are very real things all adults have to do, at one point or another. Some of us, however, may refuse to take on these responsibilities, consciously or unconsciously avoiding the realities of growing up—much like the character of Peter Pan in James M. Barrie’s 1911 novel Peter and Wendy and the movies and plays based off of it. Aptly termed Peter Pan syndrome, such a denial of adult obligations doesn’t fly in the real world, where those in relationships with a Peter Pan often have to serve as the Wendy, handling the tasks that the Peter pretends don’t exist.
Coined by psychologist and psychoanalyst Dan Kiley, PhD, in his 1983 book The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, Peter Pan syndrome is a pop psychology term—not an official diagnosis or mental health condition recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dis