Emotional Maturity

Emotional maturity is at the heart of a positive relationship with others and ourselves. As Esther Perel puts it, “The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.” Without emotional maturity or at low levels of emotional maturity, relationships will be challenging, unhealthy, and, in some cases, unsustainable. I like to say that chemistry brings people together in romantic relationships, but emotional maturity and behaviour sustain relationships. Emotional maturity is a learned skill that requires self-awareness, education, intentionality, and hard work. It doesn’t just happen accidentally. It’s also not just about cognitively understanding emotional maturity. 

Any authentic, personal transformation is a full-body experience. It requires us to move beyond our intellect and incorporate the heart, the soul, the body, and relationships. Sometimes, more content isn’t the answer. It is learning to sit with the content—a word, phrase, or sentence that speaks to you—and reflect, meditate, journal, and externally process that material. Emotional maturity looks like growing an emotionally healthy ego, being strong enough not to personalise or get offended when others tease you, being humble enough not to allow your ego to be inflated when you receive a compliment, having enough healthy self-confidence to hear constructive feedback and make the necessary changes without it negatively impacting your ego.

First, when someone teases you, keep in mind that you hold the power over how it affects you. You have the power either to give it more energy or to let it go. Offense often comes from a place of insecurity, a fragile ego. With enough self-confidence and self-acceptance, teasing will reduce the intensity of its negative impact. And most teasing says more about the one saying it than it does about the person receiving it. If you want to grow in self-confidence and self-acceptance, it’s important to dive deeper and do shadow work to learn to accept and integrate the unwanted parts of yourself.

Second, for some people, receiving compliments is difficult. The unwanted attention, coupled with a poor self-belief system, causes them to deflect compliments, while others give too much weight to compliments, allowing them to feed their ego. Responses sit on a continuum. You might either dismiss external validation or give it too much power. The goal isn’t to push compliments away, nor depend on them. As a note, compliments usually say more about the person sending the message than the person receiving the message. They often speak to the value the sender gives to that particular quality.

Third, you’re not perfect. Perfection is an illusion. Over the course of a lifetime, you will receive constructive feedback from time to time. When you do, process it as information to work with, not as a personal attack. Take a deep breath. Remind yourself that your value isn’t dependent positively or negatively on external feedback. Hold the feedback outside yourself, and reflect on it. See what fits and use it to change and grow, and discard what doesn’t. You are strong enough to hear feedback. Some of you may not believe it now, but with dedication and hard work on yourself through reflection, meditation, healthy relationships, spirituality, and therapy, you can strengthen your sense of self.

Emotional maturity looks like letting go of your attachment to how you believe life should go. Demanding life to match the picture in your head of how you think life should go leads to misery. Happiness increases when we learn to consistently accept circumstances, events, and plans as they are rather than get so attached to certain outcomes. The human brain naturally processes the world in narratives. You intuitively create stories and pictures of your future, and it’s important to have dreams, desires, and goals. 

However, reality often doesn’t match the story you’ve created. When you get too attached to a desired outcome, and it doesn’t materialise, it can lead to anxiety, depression, and misery. Emotional maturity means growing in self-acceptance and accepting life on life’s terms. I find those clients who have gone through a 12-step programme or done significant therapy work—in particular, Carl Jung’s shadow work—or who have radically faced themselves as a result of a loss or failure, or have a depth to their spirituality have more emotional maturity and are less attached to outcomes and life going the way they want it to go.

Emotional maturity looks like knowing romantic chemistry draws people together, but that without emotional maturity, a relationship will struggle to survive. Romantic attraction is a powerful, emotional, and physical energy that pulls people together. This works in the short term to keep two people close. However, for a long-term relationship to thrive, there needs to be relationship-building behaviour. Maturity requires listening, growing, changing, and understanding your partner. There are a few essential ingredients for a relationship to survive.

To achieve relational health, you need to manage your emotions and reactivity, take responsibility for your unhealthy behaviour, apologise, practice self-awareness, be strong enough to self-correct, strengthen your conflict resolution skills, be reasonable, be a patient problem-solver, be humble, initiate connection, and be strong enough to hold onto yourself. These are just a few ingredients that are an absolute must for a relationship to be fulfilling and sustainable. Emotional maturity is knowing that chemistry doesn’t create a healthy relationship.

-Psychology Today