Every person needs to have their feelings, emotions and words validated. When this doesn’t happen in a relationship it sends the message the other person is not valued, loved, supported or heard.
It always surprises me to see couples who either do not know how to validate each other or simply refuse to validate in our sessions.
This can be for a few reasons.
- It shows the state of their relationship.
- They have not modelled validation in childhood.
- The other partner has come from childhood trauma and had to turn their emotions off as a child to survive.
- They have a personality disorder and can not self-reflect, empathise or validate.
- They have ASD and can not empathise or validate.
It saddens me to see one partner in tears in our session longing for their partner to validate their feelings while their partner sits there with zero emotions.
Validation is a huge part of any relationship. It grows trust, vulnerability, compassion, empathy, friendship, loyalty, and emotional and physical connection.
Without validation, the other person feels lonely and will pull away emotionally and physically. Communication will stop as they become flatmates. This leads to criticism, contempt, annoyance, and short fuses. Neither of them will feel safe in the relationship. Past hurts will be brought up as well as deflection during the conflict. There may be name-calling and a lot of blaming with someone storming off during conflict resulting in no resolution. The D-word maybe thrown around at every argument. Relationships like this are looking at an expiry date.
But all is not lost. This can be turned around and love can be restored.
If this sounds like your relationship, don’t put it off any longer. Click on the link today for a booking.
