Emotional Age of People

Sustaining a loving relationship depends very much on both partners’ having achieved a level of emotional maturity at which they are genuinely capable of mutual concern, of consciously choosing to be there for your partner and to allow your partner to be there for you. This has nothing to do with chronological age, because emotionally we can be stuck at any age. Most people have no sense at all of the emotional age of the people with whom we choose to become intimate. It emerges only when we are sharing our lives. And it has nothing to do with how we or they handle a work situation. People who are extremely competent in their careers may behave like emotional infants at home.

In getting to know each other with an eye toward starting a long-term intimate relationship, we might keep these categories in mind. And we might consider them in how we interact with our partners at home now.

Emotional Infants

Chronological adults who remain emotionally infants are basically self-centred. They expect to be taken care of and to get what they want when they want it, without having to give in return. They know only what they need, see others primarily as objects to meet their needs and are incapable of empathizing with the needs of others. In their personal relationships, they tend to be tyrants.

Emotional Children

Chronological adults who behave like emotional children tend to be obedient, passive, placaters, appeasers or covertly rebellious. They say in effect,”Tell me what to do,” and expect to have their needs met in return without really having to spell them out. They assume that they will be taken care of if they do what is expected of them. When they are disappointed, they act out their feelings, often in covert or devious ways, such as lying, stealing, manipulation, foot dragging, deception, blaming, sarcasm, withholding, daydreaming, and withdrawing. They are not verbally honest about their discontent, nor can they negotiate openly for what they want.

Emotional Adolescent

Chronological adults who are emotional adolescents are stuck at the stage of working through dependence-versus-independence. They are still asserting their own right to decide for themselves, so their position is, ”Don’t tell me what to do.” Feeling that any expression of others’ feelings or needs is an attempt to control and exert power over them, they reject them. They see meeting them as being reduced to a child. They tend to see others’ pain, disappointment or requests as manipulations intended to control them, and defend against them by withholding the very thing their partners want. If you say “I’d like flowers for my birthday,” such a person may well bring you a card or nothing at all. He or she will wait until the last minute to meet your requests or will ignore them altogether, finding reasons why they are irrational. He or she cannot give you what you want without feeling diminished, and feeling a loss of independence.

Emotional Maturity

Only at the adult level of emotional maturity are we capable of empathizing with our partner’s thoughts, feelings and needs, capable of mutual concern, and self-sufficient enough to be responsible for revealing our own. Only at this level can we sustain a loving relationship, giving and receiving love.

Achieving an adult level of maturity requires a sense of your own worth and respect for the same in your partner. Otherwise you may efface yourself so much that your needs don’t get met, you may be so arrogantly overbearing that you ignore the needs of your partner, you may need so much reassurance that it becomes a burden to your partner.

Gordon, Lori H. (1993) Passage to Intimacy. Weston: The PAIRS Foundation.