In the process of getting close to people, we may encounter an unexpected and painful reality: the need for someone to revisit an emotional stage of life that they may not have completed properly at the appropriate time. Without realizing it themselves, they may need to return and do things that seem inappropriate for their age, as if making up for lost time before they can truly embrace adulthood.

A way to make sense of what is happening is to understand that our emotions are designed to grow and develop alongside our set biological development. Every stage of life can be mapped to an archetypal psychological development that should develop (assuming everything goes well) in synch with our physical changes.

From ages 0-6 for example, we should learn about trust, autonomy, and initiative, picking up lessons about who to trust, our sense of independence, and our abilities to do things. Between 6-18, we should start to develop our self-confidence, experimenting and finding our roles in society so that later in adulthood we can successfully establish meaningful intimate relationships with others and contribute to society.

The problem is that most of the time things don’t go well.

All kinds of traumatic events get in the way of someone completing their essential emotional courses. There may be a pandemic, a death in the family, or an abusive caregiver.

What makes it worse is that it can be very difficult for the person involved to see the gaps within them and therefore to warn those close to them of their need to revisit some missing years.

A person at age 25 may appear to us as having all the key emotional accomplishments expected of someone of that age. They can tell us that they are looking for a long-term relationship, that they want to be committed and to settle down.

But at age 32, despite the marriage, and other adulthood responsibilities, they may be drawn to clubbing every weekend, or going on dating apps flirting with strangers, or perhaps making drastic changes in their career.

They may not be able to explicitly say what is happening to them, but they are having to go back and complete lessons that they skipped a while ago, maybe at the age of 14 when they had to deal with a sudden death of parent, or perhaps they happened to have been assaulted.

There isn’t really such a thing as being too mature for one’s age; it’s only a facade for being denied growth that should have been allowed.

We need after all to do exactly what our emotional stages ask of us, and if we skip ahead, we will simply have to go back and complete the lessons we should have learned.

The emotional curriculum demands to be completed.

So if our once stable partner has now changed their closet and is clubbing away every weekend, we may get mad and sad of course, but it may be, worthwhile to explore their need to be younger than they are and consider the traumatic events that a long time ago forced them to be older than they were.