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This may be the newest Top Tip I’m learning. Each of us has an emotional age. We do well to figure it out.
Recovery is not just about stopping our sexual behaviors. It’s about being transformed emotionally, relationally, intellectually & spiritually. All of the other areas work with the whole picture of sexual purity. Purity is a combination of a lot of things, not just behavioral.
So here’s something that will help us with our emotional growth. What is our emotional age? What age emotionally am I?
This is the year of my 40th birthday. Forty years physically, but that doesn’t mean I’m 40 years emotionally mature. Inside my heart and experiences and woundings I’m a different age emotionally. And we’re working on maturing. Working on growing up. A lot of sexual sin begins in adolescence.
Disclaimer:
I’m not an expert on this. I’ve heard a lot of counselors talk about it. So consult your counselor on this one for specific advice.
Sometimes our emotional age has to do with our time of exploration. My sexual sin began in Jr. High. Twenty-five years ago. That’s a long time. That’s when I began to explore my sexuality. For me it was masturbation, looking at soft and hard core magazines, and surfing the late night cable channels.
Sometimes emotional age is tied to a time we consider “ideal”. It might be our high school, college, or young professional years. But it’s a phase in life we’ve never grown up from. We constantly try to live in this part of our past. It’s more than a fond memory, it grows into a fantasy. It’s like the person who idolizes his college age & continues to party on the weekends with his frat buddies. An idealistic time you look back on. A key milestone. A key time. But unfortunately, it becomes a key barrier for growing up.
What’s the emotional age of the people you hang out with? This may be an indicator of how old you are emotionally. Maybe you still hang out with the frat buddies or sorority sisters to live the glory days.
Childhood woundings may figure into our emotional age. A friend of mine had a distant father and an emotionally abusive mom. It was hard for him to visit his parents and not feel like a 6-year old again. I can get stuck emotionally in my woundings. Woundings we need to heal from. Let God father us and mentor us back. Help us heal past that. This is a barrier to us growing up emotionally.
FATHERED BY GOD
John Eldridge’s book Fathered By God talks about different phases in life where we need to be fathered and mentored through. The book talks to men, but the phases and the principles apply to women. A lot of people never get past childhood.
One message Eldridge says we need to hear is “you are loved.” This needs to come from our parents, but often doesn’t. God can help with the deficiency through His Spirit and with other men and women.
Another childhood message is “you’re good”. You have value and worth. Some of us have never heard this growing up. It can cause a wounding and cripple us emotionally.
Figuring out our emotional age is a process of getting greater insight into ourselves.
USING SEX TO FILL THE GAP
This hits us sexually because we try to make up for the deficit through sexual acting out. We consider our times of sexual promiscuity, had a rockin’ hot girlfriend, having sex in college… we’ve idealized those times. We were really looking for deep fulfillment which come from healthy relationships and God. We thought we found it in sex and illicit relationships.
During my sexual addiction recovery I think my emotional age has gone from 7 years old to 13 to high school age. My idealized time was 11th grade for me. Everything seemed to be going my way. Sexual exploration. Achievements. Girlfriends that I think are making my life complete. Had a girlfriend in early college that I thought I was going to marry and didn’t.
There are a lot of times when I emotionally act like a 40-year old, but when the right buttons are pushed, I drift backwards to a younger age. When my stress gets high, I go back to early parts of life that I consider “golden”.
I think that having kids has helped me grow up. I think getting married, getting out on my own, having to earn a living… those have been steps to manhood.
John Eldredge says we need other men in our lives to father us. Other women for women. God has brought me other men disciple me and help me grow up emotionally.
It’s amazing to meet someone who’s emotionally their age. These people have had healthy environments or worked on it with healthy people. They are comfortable in their skin, and are living for God in the moment. .
It’s uncomfortable for me to be 40 physically, but emotionally younger. It makes me feel like I’m not a grown-up. There are a lot of times when I feel I’m a young man wearing older man’s shoes. Some of it has to do with that I don’t love me the way God loves me. I don’t like me, the way that I am & I refuse to accept it. I’m always trying to live back in those skinnier jeans.
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I hope my thoughts about emotional age will get your thoughts churning. Spend some time trying to figure where you are emotionally.
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