This book was born out of the desire to tell you the words I wish I had heard when I was your age. It comes from the wish to show you a different and healthier way to be male and a man (I am already a man, you are almost one), a way that will lead us to greater balance with ourselves and with others – a way different from what previous generations have inherited to boys.

Alberto Pelai

Alberto Pelai is a doctor and psychotherapist for children and adolescents. The impetus for this book was the mental crack that opened within him at the beginning of the summer of '22 when he learned from his teenage son that a classmate had been murdered by her father. The scandal, touching on filicide, femicide, and incest, struck him with such depth and breadth, although he himself was mentally fortified as a psychotherapist, that he wondered in horror whether and how his son and generally today's adolescents in Italy can endure and handle it. His answer was "no," they cannot, because they are emotionally untrained to face great challenges whether they come from joy or from pain. They are unprepared because they are trapped in the myth of the "tough man" who has no feelings or, if he does, must not express them.

From the foreword by Athanasios Alexandridis, psychiatrist – psychoanalyst