Immaturity - The other factor

b. Immaturity is probably the background factor in most marital disorders, even when the presenting problem seems to be of some other kind. Marriage is meant to be a partnership between adults, and adulthood is not mainly a chronological matter, even though the law finds it necessary to regard people over 21 as adults. In general the personality of the immature person is basically sound, but untrained and undisciplined. This may bring about very intense strains and conflicts in marriage because the give and take and the responsibilities are too great for the undeveloped personality to cope with reasonably.

But as with ignorance, it is often quite possible to help people to overcome this personality deficiency. Considerable time and patience are required, but if the marriage can be held together for the necessary time and the people given enough encouragement and help, the marriage relationship itself can be a very maturing experience. Everyone has had the pleasure of watching quite immature youngsters growing and developing in maturity to a remarkable extent through the stimulus of marriage and parenthood.

Many immature people find it more difficult to develop because their immaturity is combined with some degree of neurotic personality structure that makes them unreasonably demanding, unreasonably anxious, dependent or obsessional. This will be dealt with in a later section of these intra-personal factors.

Immaturity, with or without obvious neurotic trends in the personality, may well cause serious marital disorder because it may have led to hasty or unwise choice of mate. The marriage would then have begun under a great handicap. Even from the point of view of chronological age the qualities which attract a boy or girl at, say, 23 are often very different from those which attract at, say, 18; and it is what attracts at 23 that is more important for continuing marriage. This is not to suggest that people should not marry under 21, but that such early marriages may provide more and deeper challenges to people.

Another common effect of immaturity which may bear heavily on marriage is that either partner or both may have failed to cut loose from emotional dependence on their parents when they are still financially dependent on the parents, or have been so for a long time. In such cases of emotional dependence the parents themselves will often be unduly involved in any marital conflict between the young people, because they feel unable to stand by while their son or daughter is unhappy or in any marital difficulty. In many such cases the entry of parents into the situation, however well-meant and even necessary, may make the conflicts still more intense and less open to reconciliation.

Most of these situations will be helped much more by a trained marriage counselor who is not emotionally involved in the situation than by any parent or close friend. When they come to the marriage counselor the situation often demands great tact and patience, and considerable emotional stability in the counselor-particularly when he has to handle hostile and interfering relatives as well as the two young people in conflict. It helps greatly if he can win the trust and the cooperation of the worried parents, which he has to do without disclosing the confidential material given to him by the partners. Then he might be able to induce the parents to keep their hands off the situation so that he has a more straightforward opportunity with the partners.

Tags: Counseling