Emotional Distance Is Not Emotional Maturity

Sometimes I don’t realize I’m burned out until it’s already too late.

It’s less like noticing and more like waking up from a dizzying dream to find myself completely empty and suddenly on the edge of explosion.

This happened a few weeks ago with my husband. Everything was fine—until it wasn’t.

I used to think emotional maturity in a relationship meant containment. Choosing my words carefully before speaking. Following the right communication formula to increase the chances of being understood. Staying calm so I wouldn’t escalate anything. Being regulated before I said a word, even if my insides were already on fire.

At the time, it felt responsible.

Now I see it differently.

Looking back, a lot of that regulation wasn’t really about staying present. It was an attempt to control the outcome. If I stayed calm enough and said things the right way, maybe I could regulate the situation itself. Maybe I could make it more likely that I would be heard, understood, and validated.

It was partly a belief that I had more control than I actually did, and partly a fierce fear of vulnerability—of being seen in a moment when I wasn’t organized or composed.

I notice this more and more in the therapy world now. We’re starting to mistake emotional maturity for emotional distance.

Emotional distance can look very composed on the outside. It can sound thoughtful and carefully phrased. Sometimes it even wears the language of therapy. But underneath, muscles are still clenched and feelings are still contained. They’ve just been translated into something more acceptable.

That night, when my husband asked whether I wanted to be left alone or talk, I said, “I think it’s best if I keep to myself.”

That was me feeling my insides hovering right at the edge, knowing I might not hold it together.

Then he asked me a question.

And I did not keep to myself.

All at once, everything came out. All the ways I was overwhelmed. All the ways I felt like he was adding to it. His response matched mine. The tension escalated quickly. We went to bed angry.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t tactful. It wasn’t the kind of communication I know how to teach.

It wasn’t regulated.

It was human.

There was a time when I would have taken that moment as evidence that something was wrong. That I had failed to regulate. Failed to communicate correctly. Failed to be emotionally mature. Or that something about the relationship itself was unstable.

The next morning, we talked.

We repaired.

I apologized and shared what had been happening inside me once I had more space. He listened. He accepted my apology. He apologized, too, for his human reaction to my human reaction.

And we moved on.

The world didn’t come apart.

If anything, we felt closer afterward.

With every rupture and every repair, something between us strengthens. Not because the rupture is good, but because contact and connection survive it.

Sometimes I think about how the night could have gone differently. We could have just not talked. I could have waited until the next day and shared everything calmly and clearly. That would have been fine, too.

The problem isn’t that human moments happen.

The problem is when we interpret them as evidence that we are a problem.

These moments—the messy ones—are often where vulnerability actually lives. It is not in perfectly crafted sentences, but in the willingness to come back afterward. To feel the embarrassment or shame of our reaction and not hide from it. To let another person see us in a state we would normally conceal, even from ourselves.

Vulnerability often lives after the messy moment, not instead of it.

There’s courage in that.

Emotional maturity isn’t the absence of rupturing. It’s the capacity to repair. Again and again. It’s the willingness to stay in contact, even when something hard has happened.

In a way, this is what I mean by unbecoming.

It isn’t learning how to manage yourself so well that these moments never happen. It’s the gradual loosening of the belief that you need to get yourself right before you’re allowed to be in relationship.

That night, nothing about us was particularly organized. We were both reactive. Both limited. Both human.

The capacity to come back together was still there. It hadn’t disappeared just because the moment was messy.

I didn’t create that capacity by doing things correctly. It was already there. Even in the middle of the rupture. Capacity doesn’t disappear when we’re overwhelmed or reactive. It lives alongside those moments.

That’s something I think we forget.

We assume that if we react, if we say something imperfectly, if we feel overwhelmed, we’ve somehow stepped outside of our ability to repair or reconnect.

But the capacity doesn’t vanish when we’re human.

It lives alongside it.

Being human and trying to show up well are not opposites. They don’t cancel each other out.

We can care about being thoughtful, regulated, and clear, and still have moments where we fall short. We can want to do things differently and still react from old places when we’re overwhelmed. We can value connection and still create friction sometimes.

The contradiction is part of the territory.

That doesn’t mean we don’t try. Of course, we try to be clear, thoughtful, and do no harm when we can.

Sometimes we fall short, and falling short doesn’t make us immature.

Therapy culture can accidentally reinforce the illusion that if we say things the right way, regulate enough, or understand ourselves deeply enough, we can avoid the messy parts of being human together.

We can’t.

You can’t therapy yourself out of being human.

You might as well be human with someone else.