How to Work Out the Level of Emotional Maturity of Prospective Partners

Part of the difficulty of forming good relationships is that we can’t easily tell what the level of emotional maturity might be of the people we meet. There are few outward signs of the quality Someone might ostensibly seem very grown up while still being stubbornly a young child inside. They might have have lots of degrees testifying to their ‘intelligence’ and yet still be highly primitive in their psychological functioning. They could be eloquent about the theory of sound psychological conduct – and hopeless about the practice.

Nevertheless, it can help to at least begin with a sense of what it is we should be looking out for in terms of markers of emotional maturity, so that we may know as early as possible who we have on our hands and what our options might be. 

Here are some of the key questions we might ask ourselves of our new partners:

1. Could this person bear the terrors of opening themselves up to another’s love and acknowledge without too much fear the depth of their need for someone else? Could they let you look after them? And in turn could they look after you? Could they bear to love without holding on to excessive independence? Could they temper their dread of being engulfed? Could they be part of a couple without feeling they were dissolving as a person? Could they avoid managing fear through coldness or suspicion and anger? Could they, in short, manage the anxieties of being adored? Or if we can put it another way: could they not hold it against you if you liked them a lot?

2. Could this person understand what they were feeling? In other words, when their feelings were complicated, in the sense of being less than acceptable to them in relation to their self image, could they nevertheless perceive that they were (for example) angry or sad, sexually restless or envious? Could they regularly (every day) put aside distractions and go into themselves to ask: What is going on for me? Could an observer-self inside them be able to listen to the hubbub and murmurs of their unconscious? Could they write a convincing diary entry titled: how I am feeling?

3. Could they have the strength of mind and faith in dialogue to be able to tell you the difficult things about themselves? Could they avoid sentimentality and obfuscation, lies and prevarications? Could they calmly and diplomatically talk you through their complexities? Could they be trustworthy enough to be able to explain themselves cleanly if ever they needed to leave you? 

4. Could they take criticism without defensively reading it as an unfair attack or proof of being disliked? Could they accept that they – like everyone else – had much to learn? 

5. Could they have understood a sufficient amount about their pasts not to project onto you an anger, a suspicion or a longing that would more rightly have been meant for someone else, probably a disappointing mother or father long ago? 

6. Could they have accepted the fundamental premises of psychotherapy: that we are all damaged by our childhoods, that we all have issues we need to work on, that we all have to apologise for ourselves on a more or less daily basis, that we must all be committed to learning – and that we should all probably be a bit embarrassed of who we were last year?

But then, when we are done with asking questions of the other person, we should turn and direct a few equally probing enquiries at ourselves:

1. Could we bear for a pleasing seeming candidate to turn out to be – in fact – rather wrong?

2. Could we go back to the drawing board and wait exactly as long as was needed in order to find the necessary grown up candidate?

It’s part of true adulthood to be able to absorb with courage the idea that unless the constituents of emotional maturity are in place in a person, however seductive, funny, beautiful, rich or accomplished they might be, however fun the sex or exciting the first minibreak, a relationship with them is unlikely to prove salutary or worthwhile. It is an ultimate proof of maturity and loyalty to ourselves to be able to say, whenever the occasion demands it, a polite and prompt goodbye.