When someone you emotionally depend on lets you down, how do you respond? According to The School of Life, this question is at the heart of what it means to be emotionally mature.
Beyond physical growth, managing their mental states is what separates adults from children — and the most difficult mental states to manage are the ones we’re in when others have hurt our feelings. Failing to handle our emotions in such situations won’t just cost us our peace of mind; in a worst-case scenario, it could mean the loss of a relationship with someone we love.
The School of Life suggests three characteristic behaviors exhibited by those we might call “emotionally immature.” They mark the opposite of a healthy response to a loved one disappointing us. If you learn to recognize them in yourself and others, you can avoid them — and thus cultivate the emotional maturity you need to live a calm, happy, meaningful life.
Here are the three default behaviors of emotionally immature people.
1. They sulk
If you’ve ever been late to meet a friend and ended up munching on your pizza in awkward silence, you know how damning it can feel to be on the receiving end of brooding. Sulking hurts because the sulker makes it obvious we did something wrong but won’t offer us a clue as to how we might fix it.
When you ask “Are you upset?” you’ll only hear “Of course I’m upset — you were late!”, but that’s not the real problem. Actually, your friend feels your lateness is a sign you don’t respect them. If they explained that to you, you could talk about it and probably resolve it. Since they refuse to do so, however, the conflict extends for as long as they keep moping.
We’ve all been the gloomy one more than once. We do it to keep our ego intact. As long as we maintain our composure, we’ll appear strong on the outside — or so we think. Meanwhile, our insides are crumbling, and we secretly hope the other party will magically guess what’s wrong and make amends, like babies, whose only means of garnering attention is crying.
Emotionally immature people punish themselves and others by swallowing their problems instead of sharing them. They turn disappointment into a toxic broth and then force everyone involved to take a bath in it — and they’re the first one in the tub. That’s not worth it. Don’t sulk. Talk!
2. They become disproportionately angry
When someone explodes in your face for spilling their $3 coffee, that’s not a good sign. After all, if their clothes are clean, it’s only a $3 problem, and that’s easy to fix. In the sequence of emotionally immature reactions, extreme anger often follows sulking, but its fuse may be long, short, or nonexistent.
Rage is our Hail Mary pass in trying to reestablish control. By yelling at the person who hurt us and wounding them with words, we prop ourselves up on what is, ultimately, a soap box made of fear, doubt, and helplessness. Sadly, a throne made of matches never lasts — it only catches fire.
The longer we chew on our hurt feelings without addressing them, the more lost at sea we feel in our inner ocean of emotions. With each passing day, an outburst becomes more likely. When it happens, it only leads to more emotional damage in ourselves and others.
If you want to avoid anger altogether, make sure you have an outlet to share your feelings and frustrations soon after they arise. This needn’t always be a friend you can confide in. You can journal, convert your energy into physical exercise, or even write a letter you’ll never send.
Whatever you do, don’t bottle up your emotions. Containers under pressure have a habit of exploding, and, in the case of emotionally immature people, it will one day be the only habit they have left.
3. They fake indifference
Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once said that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” It’s true. As long as we can get a reaction out of someone, at least we can tell they still care. When they give us the cold shoulder for weeks, however, at some point, it feels like they’ve abandoned us.
On the ladder of immature reactions, feigned apathy ranks at the top. It can follow an angry outbreak, an extended period of sulking, or both.
I have been guilty of all three, and I must admit: The time with friends I lost because I was too stubborn to concede that I care easily marks one of my top regrets in life. I have spent months ignoring people on WhatsApp, insisting that I was right and they were wrong, and if they wouldn’t acknowledge it through some grand gesture, they may as well be dead to me.
One of the saddest truths in life is that, unless you reconnect, one day, people might actually be dead — and then it’s too late to return what pride has taken: dignity.
Coldness is a fool’s errand, and one of the most painful ones we can err, but it’s not born out of a desire to pretend; it is born out of a desire to numb our pain. When we can no longer tolerate how much power others have over us, how capable they are of causing us hurt, we try to sew our wounds by turning our backs on the ones who have inflicted them — and it never works.
Faking indifference is exhausting because, in the long run, it is much harder than admitting what matters to us is not entirely in our control. Even worse, if we remain ice kings and queens for too long, the numbness will preclude us from feeling truly alive altogether.
Emotional maturity is the most important component of thriving relationships. Unlike age, it is not something we rack up simply by spending more years on this planet — we must nurture it through our habits.
When those habits are to sulk, get angry, and fake indifference every time someone hurts us, all we’ll do is stand in our own way. Worse, until we acknowledge our unaddressed pains, we’ll only project them on those around us, thus dealing more emotional damage to the people we love.
Emotionally immature behaviors lead to stress, anxiety, and remorse. Today, they might only strain your relationships, but if you continue down their narrow path, tomorrow, they might leave you with no relationships at all.
When your instinct is to frown, lash out, or go cold, ask yourself this: “What’s the emotion I’m not allowing myself to feel?” Whatever the other person did, they likely didn’t intend to hurt you, but it takes two grown-ups to make peace and move forward.
Learn to not disappoint yourself when others do, so that you may keep your calm, your happiness, and, most importantly, your connection with the people you love.