re: The adult male will mature only when he's exhausted all other options.

No, I matured at some point in there...on the cusp between wandering around and putting in 2+ all nighters a week studying enough to graduate in physics. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be for me and there were many 'come to Jesus' moments that pushed me toward maturity. Slowly, painfully...I also made a few friends who got me into climbing...that had a parallel effect to instill the 'giving up, failing, is not an option' part of maturity.

I moved to San Fran with my gf, wife of 12 years now, and left every security blanket and person that we knew. That wasn't the moment of maturity but a product of it.