For most of my life, I have been an emotionally immature man. I can function well in social situations, I can handle friendships and relationships in a way that is not alarming, and I understand what good emotional health looks like. But I believe, like many survivors, I was stuck emotionally at the age when I was molested.
If you feel the same thing, I believe that are some valid reasons for us being emotionally stagnant. All of the energy that it takes to develop those parts of our brain were shifted so that we could survive our situation. We also had to understand sexuality and sexual relations at an age when our minds weren’t fully developed, so our brains compensated. Additionally, we had to become adults in other ways, a role that we were not prepared for, so our emotional health was sacrificed.
This emotional immaturity can manifest itself in different ways for each individual. For me, I struggled with any kind of friendship. I thought that I had to do things for others so that they would like me. I had to change who I was so that people wouldn’t think I was strange or weird so that they would accept me. I had to assert myself with others so that I could ensure that type of friendship that I thought we should have. At best, those strategies kept people in a surface-level friendship with me. At worst, I separated myself from those people, never to speak to them again. This has also affected my marriage in a number of ways. When anything was wrong between my wife and I, I took complete blame and responsibility. This then caused me to be moody, brooding, and depressed. So, my wife would have to help me out rather than focus on fixing what was wrong in our relationship. Eventually my wife stopped bringing things to my attention because I would turn things around so that the focus would be on fixing me. Now, things are better, but there was a long time where this situation was the case.
There is nothing that fixes this except good therapy and time. It’s not an easy process to go through either because it requires a lot of self-reflection and behavior changes on your part. And if you’re like me, I make mistakes all the time, which only drives me to feel moody, brooding, and depressed, much like I was before. I don’t like that feeling! If you want to change this aspect of yourself, give yourself a great deal of patience and time to work on yourself. Don’t be afraid to communicate your feelings, no matter what you perceive them to be. And finally, persevere because the change is worth it.
Harry L. Estes 