Calming the Internal Storm

photo courtesy of Spencer Greet

September 26, 2008


Recently, my brother and sister-in-law achieved a milestone in married life. They have now been married (to each other) for 25 years.

That is a long time to spend with one person. My parents have been married much, much longer - 56 years at this writing.


Why do some relationships last and others fail? There are probably as many specific reasons as there are relationships. It would seem that couples married for a long time are at least somewhat happy with each other, or they would not stay together.

Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, "All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Certainly, happy couples must share some common traits, like mutual respect. It would be hard to be married for many years to someone you find contemptible. In addition to loving each other, happy couples probably also like each other a lot, and enjoy each other’s company. Spending lots of time with a really annoying person augurs trouble.

My sister-in-law Stacey once said that the best thing to do is to marry someone who makes you laugh.

Many books and magazine articles have been written about how to be a happy couple. Perhaps there is a recipe for such a thing, but emotional maturity probably plays a part. Also, the good luck and timing to meet a suitable person in the first place.

Balancing work and leisure, time together and time apart, communication and silence, knowing when to speak up and when to shut up - these things require a certain amount of emotional maturity. Mature people are centered people, meaning that you do not fly off the handle each time your esteemed partner leaves his size 12 brogans lying in the middle of the bedroom floor for you to trip over at 3:00 am when you get up to go to the bathroom. You sigh, take a deep breath, resist the urge to heave them at his unconscious head. You maintain your perspective.


Studies have shown that the seat of the emotions can be found in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, which contains the amygdala. This almond-shaped part of the brain controls how a person reacts to a situation. Memories, and how we react to events that trigger them, are stored in the synapses in ways that medical science is just beginning to discover.

It is known that the emotions prompted by the amygdala can overwhelm us very quickly, like a storm surge, before rational thought can take place, and the result is out-of-control behavior. It takes emotional maturity to calm those internal storms.

So, how do you achieve emotional maturity? Some people may be born with it. For others, maybe it takes a lifetime. Perhaps it can be learned, as Daniel Goleman writes about in his book Emotional Intelligence. Going back to old pal Socrates, knowing yourself is a good start.