What is emotional maturity?

In relationships we are continuously negotiating. We are negotiating to have others respond in a preferred way to us.
Sometimes we are direct in asking another for what we would like and we respectfully accept their response whether positive or negative.
Sometimes we know the other well enough to use subtle manipulation to get what we want without them being aware of the request but responding in a habitual pattern.

The point is that we are more often than not negotiating for something, whether it is love and acceptance or affirmation or soothing.

Most of us are simply trying to manage our internal experience, specifically the subtle and not so subtle responses of our autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system includes the parasympathetic relaxation restorative branch and also the sympathetic branch that initiates fight flight, and freeze responses in our bodies.

When our nervous system is responding to a threat, whether it is conscious or non-conscious, we experience to various degrees a change in our inner or body felt experience. Our body prepares to fight or flee; or in circumstances where we can neither fight nor flee successfully we can experience a freeze response.

In this modern culture we are seldom in danger of being physically harmed. Threats are perceived in the form of imagined negative future events or threats of a more personal nature. These threats are primarily relational. When my wife complains that she is tired and needs help, do I consciously or even non-consciously feel threatened? Is my core belief of not being good enough triggered and does my body go into a threat or fight flight response? Do I respond by defending myself, do I become angry and aggressive, or do I simply withdraw? This type of threat response cycle happens many times during the day for each of us as we engage in relationships.

Problems arise in our relationships because we are not aware of the primary reason we respond in a negative or less than helpful way to those around us. We have not been taught to listen to the subtle felt states of our autonomic nervous system. Instead we have been conditioned in our early relationships to ignore our internal state (or what is really true for us) and respond, hopefully, in a way that will promote the relationship. However, our capacity or desire to respond in a favorable way breaks down when we are experiencing too much stress (more than we can cope with) or when we feel resentful towards others.

In order to change the unhealthy and negative interactions we have with others we have to become emotionally mature. This means learning to be aware of the internal sensations of our autonomic nervous system and take responsibility for how we respond to our body's (and often our mind’s) response to a perceived threat. As in the example above, it is not my wife’s responsibility to ensure that my core belief of inadequacy (core beliefs exist, often below conscious awareness) is not triggered by her remarks that may stimulate a threat response in me. If I am going to be free to choose my response, I will have to learn to become aware of my inner felt experience and recognize what I am responding to. These patterns of response normally originate early in our lives and become stronger through our sensitivity to situations that support our core negative beliefs.

A ‘good’ relationship is not about teaching our partner how we would like them to respond to us. They will never get it just right and we will always be oriented toward changing their behavior rather than our own.
If we want to be free we will have to learn to be aware of our felt experience, stop thinking thoughts about how someone else (my partner) has done something wrong to me, and allow our nervous system to settle, as it will naturally do once the perceived threat no longer exists. We can focus on soothing ourselves in a healthy way by breathing consciously or walking away from what is stimulating us. When we cannot do this on our own after some practice, it is often because we are suffering from traumatic stress due to one or perhaps many overwhelming and threatening events in our life. Resolving our past traumas is not something we can do on our own. A significant component of every trauma is relational; trauma happens in relationship and is healed or resolved in relationship.