Learning To Be More Immature

Most of us need, of course, to make every effort to behave more maturely around other people: that is, to be more patient and forgiving, to extend greater understanding, to develop readier sympathy. We need to read more books about grown-up conduct, we need to learn from our errors, go to therapy and generally edge towards the more balanced, serene and thoughtful adults we should long ago have grown into.

But there is a small subsection of the population that needs to undertake a slightly different and more paradoxical exercise. They need – through concerted effort and a lot of reflection – to get a bit less mature around other people, especially if they have fallen into patterns of emotional repression in relationships.

They need, when the occasion demands it, to be readier to get more incensed, to more freely access reserves of self-righteousness and to more directly express their annoyance. These extremely kind and very thoughtful people need to work at getting more straightforwardly pissed off when the world has wronged them.

When Maturity Becomes Silence

They might need thoughtful classes in how to say, ‘That isn’t fair, you promised to do it and you haven’t.’ They might need to get less panicky around their longing to walk out of a room. They – unlike almost everyone else – might need to get less tolerant of other people’s bad moods. They may not need to do yet more thinking of the reasons why their partner is badly behaved: they may not need to reflect further on this partner’s difficult childhood, their tiring job and the stresses they’re under with their parents. They may just need to say quite curtly, at times: ‘You’re driving me crazy and I think I’ve had enough!’

We stress: this is not counsel for most of us. Most of us hardly need encouragement to be yet more babyish and yet more selfish.

The Origins of Emotional Repression in Relationships

However, some of us have grown up in environments where immaturity was never an option, even for a moment; even when one was – in fact – a child. There are homes where parents are so under psychological duress, where they are perpetually on the edge of rage and collapse, that the child – though only four or seven – may have no option other than to step into the adult role that the adult themselves can’t occupy. They become – as it were – the parent to a dismayingly child-like parent. The parent’s immaturity robs them of any chance to be the young person they are.

Such children are often praised for their wisdom ‘ahead of their years’. It sounds like an achievement; it is in reality the result of a hidden form of coercion. No child actually wants to be anything other than a child – with all the freedom implied to be, at times, intemperate, selfish and direct about their needs.

Learning to Risk Being Difficult

Later on, these very well-behaved people can wind up in unhelpful knots. They aren’t without the feelings of frustration and rage that beset all of us. They simply have an extraordinary inhibition around expressing it. They grow up unable to tell their partners what is on their mind – and thereby clog up the arteries of love.

Health requires frank arguments. It might even involve some raised voices, some sharp-tongued moments – in order to recover connection with authentic affection.

The road to real maturity has to be allowed to pass through what looks like extreme childishness. What a privilege it is to be not always thoughtful and quiet, not always considerate. To have been the recipient of enough love and tolerance to be able, at moments, to tell others frankly how maddening they are – and to know that tension and irritation can be a safe gift, not always a prelude to catastrophe, but a necessary antidote to emotional repression in relationships.