Validation and Your Relationship

You and your partner want to change the way you communicate with each other. You want to be truly understood and cared for, with your feelings recognized and seen as valid.

You’ve probably heard about validation before and you know it’s important. Maybe you’ve experienced the peace and comfort that comes with being validated. When your partner makes you feel emotionally valid, your relationship grows. You feel closer to them. You feel understood by them.

Oftentimes, the thing a couple lacks in conversation is validation. It’s the piece of communication that could give both partners understanding, trust, and security.

Validation from your partner, feeling valid and cared for by each other, is at the foundation of understanding and communication in your relationship.  

 

What emotional validation means

Validation is about getting a response, some sort of feedback from your partner that tells you that you matter to them. It’s being present and seeking to understand your partner and sit in their experience with them. It’s recognizing their experience as real and important. Validation says “I care about you. I care about your story. Your feelings matter to me.” This emotional validation is a way your partner tells you they appreciate you and can listen even if they don’t agree.

Validation is how you respond to your partner, letting them know that you want to hear them, to listen and truly care about what they have to say.

You don’t have to agree with someone to be validating. If you and your partner are arguing about a difference of opinions, you can care about their feelings and recognize their perspective as important, while also respectfully having a different perspective.

Offering validation is also not about recognizing an issue your partner is experiencing and trying to immediately solve it for them. It’s about letting them share their feelings about the issue with you, and you listening and understanding where they are with this- how they feel and what they think. It’s about acknowledging that their feelings about the issue are valid.

Whether or not you disagree with your partner, or even if you see a clear solution to the problem, remember, that’s not part of validating. Before going to the problem-solving and coming up with a clear solution, it’s important for you to be able to simply sit with your partner, hear them, seek to understand them, and validate them, letting them know that their feelings matter to you.

 

The dos and don’ts of validating

Dos in validating

Do listen first. You can’t be validating of someone if you don’t know what they’re trying to communicate to you. So, focus first on just listening, without getting stuck thinking about how you want to respond. Just sit in their experience with them and listen. Try to understand how they’re feeling.

Do focus on the feeling in your response. Your partner vents about a frustrating day at work. You can sit, listen, be present for them, and say “Wow, yeah that sounds really frustrating.” Or “It sounds like this feels really upsetting for you, or maybe even disappointing.” It’s that simple- you’re not telling them what to do or trying to get them to see another perspective right now. You’re trying to recognize and hear how they’re feeling. You’re building empathy with them when you take in this experience and truly understand and know that feeling.

Do ask to know more. This can be a helpful step to take if you want your partner to be able to talk with you more about the issue. It’s easier to be truly validating of someone if you deeply know and understand their experience, so it’s ok to ask your partner for clarification. You might say, “It sounds like this issue with your parents is making you really sad, is that right? What else are you feeling?” or “I can hear that this does sound really sad and upsetting. Help me understand what that’s like for you.” You aren’t jumping to any problem-solving or identifying who’s right or wrong. You’re just truly helping your partner feel heard and cared for. You’re letting them know that their feelings matter to you.

 

Don’ts in validating

Don’t say “but.” “But” invalidates whatever words or phrases came before it. If your partner is trying to talk with you through a disagreement the two of you are having, and you immediately form a rebuttal with “but…” (“But you didn’t do what you said you would.” Or “But I’m frustrated too.” Or “But you didn’t tell me that.”), it feels invalidating of everything your partner just shared. It might make them feel unheard, like their perspective and feelings don’t matter to you. It can hinder further understanding and communication.

Don’t problem solve or offer instructions of what to do, at least not in this part of the conversation when you’re trying to be validating. If you see your partner hurting in some way, it makes sense that you want to solve that problem and take away the hurt for them. But your partner is probably coming to you to vent, hoping you’ll hear them and be a comforting space for them to share. So when they’re venting, or just trying to talk with you, don’t immediately begin telling them what to do next. Just listen and offer emotional validation. Then, if they need help problem solving, they know how to ask and talk with you about that.

Don’t pull away. If your partner is sharing with you in a safe and healthy way, stay engaged. It can be easy to back out of offering validation and empathy with someone for a variety of reasons. Maybe you get bored, or you’re thinking about everything else you need to do. Or you might not like talking about emotions, so the conversation is a bit uncomfortable for you. Don’t let those things keep you from staying engaged and in the moment with your partner. Allow yourself to be a safe space. Sometimes validation doesn’t even happen in words. Sometimes it happens through your peaceful and accepting presence.

Don’t make what they’re sharing about you. Sometimes when we try to relate, it can come across as not caring about our partner’s story. We begin talking about ourselves or our perspectives and we just kind of ignore theirs. There might be times that it makes sense for you to say something like “I think I know how you feel. You know how that issue happens between me and my parents too.” Just be careful sharing like that, because this time is about your partner’s feelings. When you share with them and seek validation, you want them to listen to you. It would probably be hurtful to you if they just talked about themselves. So, if you relate to them through a personal experience, be sure to make it about relating to their feelings, by saying something like “So I can imagine that you do feel really hurt by what they did. Is that right? How are you feeling about it?”

Don’t tell them how they should feel. Your partner is going to feel however they feel, and if you tell them they should feel something else, like happy, or grateful, or less stressed, or whatever it is, your partner will probably end up feeling unheard. Or if you tell them they shouldn’t feel the way they’re feeling, that can be harsh and shaming. Remember, sometimes we all are going to feel certain ways. We are still responsible for our actions, and we don’t have to act the way that we feel. But this conversation is about your partner’s feelings. So, if your partner feels a certain emotion, don’t tell them what they should or should not be feeling. Instead just validate that they feel that way, and then the two of you can work together to figure out the healthiest way of acting or responding to the issue.

 

 

Remember that you both seek to be loved, understood, and cared for. You want to know you matter to your partner. So, when you try talking through different issues, whatever they may be, focus on emotional validation first. When you both know you are loved and matter to each other, it’s easier to solve any problems.

 

Special thanks to:

Will Gladden of LEVEL Digital Music Entertainment for making the music for the podcast.

http://www.leveldme.com/

 

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