Emotionally Immature Adults Are Poison

Contrary to the Disney mythology, falling in love is a transaction: Two people find each other sexually attractive and work like hell to convince the other person that they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

When the brain’s flooded with oxytocin and every fiber of your being is vibrating with sexual energy—you tend to focus on the good stuff and ignore some pretty obvious warning signs.

I have nothing against falling in love. It’s one of the greatest feelings and experiences we get in life. 

Here are a few examples of what it looks like when someone’s actions don’t line up with their talk:

• They tell you that they’re fine with you spending time with friends on 
• Saturdays but then give you grief about it all week.

• They say work-life balance is really important but routinely spend late nights at the office.

• They explain how open-minded they are about your unorthodox political views but make sarcastic comments about them whenever politics comes up.

No matter how gorgeous or funny they are, if you get involved with someone who can’t consistently line up their actions with their words, you’re going to be miserable with them.

Guilt-tripping… Gaslighting… Call it whatever you want, but when your partner constantly makes you feel bad for feeling bad, it’s time to move on.

One of the problems with dating someone who’s emotionally immature is that the relationship always ends up being about them. People with chronically low self-esteem and major insecurities are always looking for ways to feel better. And often this comes at the expense of other people.

For example, emotionally immature people tend to criticize others often. By pointing out how someone else is bad/incorrect/stupid, it makes them feel good/clever/smart. Because they can’t figure out a healthy way to feel good about themselves, they point out flaws in other people which, temporarily, makes them feel better about themselves in comparison.

One particularly subtle but pernicious form of this is emotional guilt-tripping—making someone feel bad about feeling badConstant reassurance-seeking is often a sign of chronic anxiety and dependency issues.

Perhaps the biggest myth people buy into when choosing a partner is the idea of complementarity as a good basis for a relationship:

• I love how clever and funny he is. Our conversations always make me feel so much smarter.

• She’s so independent and creative. As a life-long rule-follower, she really helps me push the boundaries when I need to.

You hear couples say stuff like this all the time. And while there’s nothing wrong per se with a partner who’s temperament or preferences complement your own, it’s dangerous to rely on them or think that they’re always beneficial:

• No matter how confident you are, it’s never going to fix your partner’s insecurities.

• No matter how sociable you are, it’s not going to change the fact that your partner’s an introvert who generally enjoys low-key activities with a few good friends.

If you’re dating someone with significant issues of self-worth, anxiety, and low confidence, you cannot fix them no matter how many times you reassure them and tell them it will be okay. In fact, there’s a very good chance that you reassuring them makes their anxieties worse.
What’s more, it’s very likely that over a long enough period of time you begin to resent them for it. You will resent the fact that they increasingly rely on you to make them feel secure and confident, and consequently, that they use your confidence as an excuse not to work on themselves.

Does this always happen? 

Of course not.  Yet, I see it constantly!

Now, having a clear set of values and principles is a complicated thing that often evolves over time.

For example: When you’re in your 20s, maybe friendship really matters to you as a value. But when you’re in your 40s—with 3 kids and mortgage—maybe hanging out with your buddies isn’t quite as important as it once was compared to other values like family and financial stability.

So when I say be careful of dating someone who doesn’t know what they want, it doesn’t mean they have to be strictly adhering to this or that formal value system.

What you’re really looking for is someone who regularly thinks about their values, can articulate them reasonably well, and actively works toward them.

Keep a close eye out for the following warning signs of emotional immaturity:

• They’re All Talk and No Action
• They’re Unwilling to Be Vulnerable
• They Make You Feel Bad for Feeling Bad
• They’re Unwilling to Try New Things
• They Insist on Getting the Last Word In
• They Constantly Ask for Reassurance
• They Don’t Know What They Want

This is true for men and women.