The Answer That Will Never Be

The Answer That Will Never Be:

 

Oh, you really want to know what I know about emotional maturity?

Apparently, emotional intelligence 101 speaks about the four elements of an apology. Without these elements, there's no real apology:

1. “I’m sorry for…” (insert here the thing you are apologising for).

2. “I made you feel…” (mention here the feelings of the person you hurt).

3. “I will do this and that to make it right” (where “this and that” means a concrete plan of action according to the situation).

4. Follow through on the plan, because that is its purpose. After all, the best apology is a change in behaviour.

Advanced emotional intelligence says (by following the logical conclusion of this reasoning) that an apology without reparations is just manipulation.

Does that mean people who cannot make reparations when apologising are manipulative? Of course not. A very common form of gaslighting is saying, "You're overreacting" or "You're too sensitive, too intense, too dramatic." Everyone I know has said that here and there (myself included). And most people are by no means manipulative. Immature people believe that if they manipulate, they're manipulative; they believe that if they do a bad action, then they're a bad person. Fortunately, human life is much more nuanced than that. And most of the time, we do things unconsciously and we hurt others unintentionally.

People don't do stuff to us personally, it's nothing personal: people replicate their patterns, we replicate our patterns. Even if somebody hurts us, that's just a pattern of that person. We are mirrors of each other, so looking inward to catch our patterns in action and sever them is a goal of the emotionally mature.

 

About emotional maturity, there's something else:

If you tell an immature person, “You‘ve hurt me,” they will immediately get defensive: they might offer excuses, give an incomplete apology as a way to dodge the conversation about the conflict—meaning one or more of the four essential elements of a genuine apology will be missing—or, for example, might try to blame you by saying that you are the problem because you are “too much” for them: too sensitive, too dramatic, too exaggerated, etc. In doing so, the person who hurts you ends up evaluating your pain, robbing you of the ability to assess your own suffering, determining that you shouldn't feel hurt and, if you shouldn't feel hurt, that is because they never really hurt you. None of this happens out of malice or as part of any grand plan of world dominance; it is simply immaturity and is perfectly normal. An emotionally immature person cannot take accountability, as that would mean looking inward, and they’re not ready to do so.

By contrast, a mature person, when you say, “You hurt me,” will approach the situation with humility, empathy, and curiosity, and might respond with, “Help me understand; your feelings matter to me—can you explain how I hurt you?” or perhaps, “I’m concerned about how my actions and words impact you even though I didn’t intend to hurt you; can we talk about this?”

A person without emotional intelligence sees conflict and wants to be right, to win the argument; the conflict becomes a struggle against the other. A person with emotional intelligence sees conflict as an opportunity to connect with the other person and build a common front to overcome the problem.

An immature person could tell you that they want to listen to your emotional story but then, in the moment of truth, they might not have the emotional bandwidth to hear it, which is perfect in itself. But they're immature; they don't know themselves, so instead of telling you, "Hey, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to listen to you right now," they might try to defend themselves or attack you. That just happens if whatever self-image they have feels threatened.

For instance, a person who was taught as a child that opening up emotionally equated to being a burden or being manipulative will make themselves small in order to be loved, will trade their obedient silence regarding emotions for love, and will create a personality around their emotional independence stemming from that trauma wound that says you must be a certain way to earn love. Then, they will feel threatened by a person who receives love all the time, including when this person shares their feelings, as they will inevitably believe this person is indeed a burden or manipulative yet somehow still receives unconditional love. What happens is that this person who simply receives love unconditionally is a mirror, as it reveals there's no need to not open up emotionally, because love is something you receive and not something you earn. And that can be threatening to anyone who bases their core identity on emotional hyper-independence to earn love and approval, which is a trauma response.

Isn't it curious how we unintentionally try to impose our self-image, our trauma wounds, and our worldview on others?

It seems almost inescapable.

Immaturity tries to protect the person from the discomfort that admitting mistakes creates. Unfortunately, admitting our mistakes is the only way to change. Immaturity guarantees that we will repeat our mistakes; it's the essence of Greek tragedy. And some people never mature, so the question here is: "Who do I want to be?"

 

Also, some people have problems understanding empathy, and they mistake empathy for judgement.

Empathy is the opposite of judgement. Judgement asks: “What would I do if I were the other person?” or “What would I feel if I were the other person?” and thinks that this is empathy. Furthermore, judgement is so limited that it has to agree with the other person’s reasons; if it doesn’t, it feels no empathy—a very basic kind of empathy, at that. Judgment cannot go further; it can never touch the heart of another person and connect—it needs to feel that it is right, that it somehow controls the situation because it knows what is correct. Judgement, therefore, can dismiss other people's feelings when it doesn't understand where they come from.

Empathy asks: “What does it mean to be this other person? Where do their reactions, feelings, and behavior come from?” Empathy seeks connection, not control. That is why an empathetic person confronted with an interpersonal conflict will ask questions and try to understand, even if they do not fully grasp or agree with the other person’s reasons for feeling a certain way. The key is compassionate curiosity.

Empathy makes us equal: it ensures no one can be beneath us.

Boundaries make us equal: they ensure no one can be above us.

 

When I fell in love with you almost a decade ago, I asked the logical question by bypassing my fear, my limbic brain, and my need to protect myself by blaming something external to me. I asked, "Why do I find a twenty year old person romantically attractive?” The answer was that I wasn't ready for a relationship with an emotionally available person because I lacked emotional maturity, availability, and responsibility myself; I couldn't be with people my age. And observing the answer was my door to emotional maturity. Changing was painful, of course, because when we change, we have to look at parts of ourselves we do not like. We get rid of parts of who we are, and that is painful even if those parts were unhealthy bits. In truth, that is what protecting ourselves really means: growing.

I wanted to give you that gift by letting you know he was not interested in you so that you could start asking the right questions. I remember thinking a year ago, “She will be brave; she will learn; and she will grow.”

When you fell in love with that eighteen years old, did you question why you fell in love with somebody who was eighteen years old? Why did you idealise a person you barely knew? Did you listen to maturity calling you? Or did you get afraid, perhaps trying to protect your self-image from the discomfort those questions bring? Did you project your own immaturity onto somebody else in order to blame them for your situation? But then, is love something to feel shameful about? Did people judge or mock you? Did you judge and mock yourself for loving another human being? There was nothing bad there; you were intensely in love, making those beautiful gestures that characterise you, wanting to write, wanting to feel, and that’s beautiful. That will never be a mistake. You made no mistake by falling in love. Yet there was a door for you to open. A door that can only be opened if you don’t blame others but look inward. Did you open it in the end? I hope you did. If not, please know you just need compassion for yourself, people around you who love you as you are, and courage; that’s all.

 

Do not lose sight of the essential: life is marvellous and our self-image is not who we are. With that in our hearts, it is easier to appreciate beauty in small things.

Now, do you want to have a real conversation, or do you want to stop here?

The answer is "No" because the version of you who could read and understand this is the version of you that only exists in myself, of course. Because the truth is: when I saw potential in you, I was staring at myself.

The moment has come, and I must say goodbye to both the real you and the mine you, as I don't mean to impose. I couldn’t anymore as my trauma was over the moment I cut you off from my life, my worldview is hardly mine, and my self-image was an illusion created by a mind that needs to fill awareness with the idea of an I, so nothing to protect anyway.

No, I don’t mean to impose.

Because I love you as you are.

I will always feel grateful for this chapter.

Goodbye.

 

    The Answer That Will Never Be  © 2025 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/