Why is my new boyfriend so dramatic?

Hi Chris,

I’ve recently started a new relationship and it’s full of drama! My new boyfriend is constantly throwing temper tantrums over stuff that I think is nothing,

What’s going on?

Drama

Hi Drama!

Probably your new boyfriend is emotionally immature.

That doesn’t have much to do with his age. There are 40-year-olds with less emotional maturity than a teenager. Although you do need a certain amount of life experience to build maturity, it’s mostly a learned skill.

Keep Reading

So if your new boyfriend hasn’t learned that skill, he won’t have a good understanding of his emotions, and he won’t communicate well. So you’ll have some totally ridiculous arguments.

He’ll lack self-awareness, and so his words often won’t match his actions. Like he’ll tell you how tolerant he is, and then give you a hard time over some small mistake you’ve made. That’s because he knows that qualities like tolerance are admired, and so he wants you to think that’s him. But he can’t see that his behaviour doesn’t match up.

He won’t easily let small things go, and won’t cope well with not getting his way. Even just being bored can turn into a huge issue.

The obligations that come with relationships can be hard for emotionally immature people to deal with, so he’ll probably go quiet when you need help, such as falling ill or losing your job.

And yet despite that, he’ll expect you to bail him out whenever his life gets tough!

He’s probably bad at paying bills. He’ll avoid conflict, and yet there’ll always be at least a couple of people mad at him all the time. He’ll never reach his goals, because he doesn’t like hard work. Or make big decisions, because he never knows what he wants or keeps changing his mind.

His life will always be full of turmoil, and no matter how hard you work on things with him, nothing will ever improve. Because you can’t help someone else become emotionally mature. Only he can do that. Let him do it on his own.

All the best,

Chris