Emotional age?

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I get accused of 'acting like a child', mainly whenever I'm in an argument with someone close to me...

I'm 28 and people ask if I attend the local high school. (nothing like being hit on by a teen esp. considering they don't know what to do after they do their pick up spill). I don't drink, but no doubt I'd be carded.

As far as EQ, I think it depends. My husband is 15 years older than me. I have friends of all ages, but there will always be something about hanging out with a 6/7 year old. I have endless fun with my daughter.

Emotionally i still act or try to act about the same as when i was physically 10/11. I say try to act as i recognise some behaviours will cuase me more trouble with people so i suppress them to avoid drawing attention. I can act like a child when driving sometimes I still get asked for ID when buying alcohol on rare occasion I buy alcohol for friends.

I had a friend who was a teacher, in his thirties, got carded regularly. I didn't get in to drinking really, never learned to enjoy beers and wines until I was much older, in my thirties.

I have that same feeling with children, a youngness, and our natural openness and trusting feeling attract them, as they sense we are not as "staid" as other adults. They sense that we understand them better.

I feel emotionally very 12, just before 13 and puberty, and have felt that way for 50 years. Never started desiring sexual contact with the opposite sex until about 18, after public school and social opportunities were now limited to what social activities and groups might be available outside the un-natural school environment.

Some kids, too, probably both NT's and aspies, have written about same-sex "fooling around" when they were young and discovering sexuality, which helped them to feel more comfortable with their sexuality, and later with relationships with the opposite or same sex, whichever, but this seems to be the exception not the rule.

We often still have these same feelings that those kids had and experimented with, but we did not, so we still have these "young" feelings of sexual curiosity, and are in contradiction about these feelings, especially because they involve kids on the same emotional level but different physical age.

I deal with this the best I can, in the fantasy world of my imagination, where I can play any roles with anyone in any way, knowing that the social reality of the real world is in a completely different space, playing by a different set of rules, that I have to play by when I move through the every day "real" world.

My public age is therefore different from my private age, and this is obviously true for most if not all of us who feel this way.

Good thread, I've been thinking about this a lot at this time.

Your Obedient Brahmin,

I think the old popular nickname for it was "Peter Pan syndrome." Honestly, since I have never married, I have no idea what my emotional age would be. However, chronologically, I am 51, and, biologically, my left knee feels like it whenever I stand up, too.