Regular readers of this couples therapy blog might have noticed something recently.  Nothing!  No me.  Where was I?

Well, you can go and check out what has been keeping me busy at www.continue2connect.com, a new online bit of fun with a serious purpose.  It’s focused around “Mike and Mary” who “do Imago” just after finishing an Imago couples weekend workshop.  On the website you can sign up for a whole series of 12 episodes, one a week.  They are designed for following up after a workshop, but most people would get something out of them, if not a giggle or two.

I’m writing the series as a I go, so if you signed up 4 weeks ago, you will be happy to hear I just put #5 online, and #6 which “in the can” is about validation.  When I was looking at all that had been published recently for inspiration on this post, I realized that I still have validation on the mind.

For those of you new to validation, this is what we call the second main step in a dialogue.  First you would mirror your partner, carefully repeating back what you had heard.  And then you “Validate”, which doesn’t mean any form of clerical processing, but just simply saying “You make sense, and the reason you make sense is…”

It’s very easy to overlook the significance of validation.  It doesn’t take very long in the overally process, and many people are uncomfortable with it because it’s a fine line between saying “You make sense..” and saying “You are right..”  Sometimes in the middle of a difficult conversation you may just not be ready to have your partner thinking that you admitted they are right, and therefore agreed to wash the dishes for the next 3 months.

Validation goes along with Dr. Harville Hendrix’s astonishing statement, usually delivered at high volume “Your partner is not you!  Got it!”  Er, well yes, thanks Harville, she’s much prettier than me for a start.  But what he is pointing out is that I quite often find myself saying things like “I can’t believe she said/did that - she must be nuts.” 

The easiest way to dismiss someone entirely is to say that they are “nuts”.  Then you can just ignore everything they say as being totally baseless.  Or you can decide that they are somehow deceptive or manipulative, and that they are just saying things to you in order to further their wicked ends.   What’s really underlying this kind of thinking is the assumption that if everyone behaved perfectly rationally and sensibly we would find out that they were just like us and agreed with everything we said.  We wouldn’t even need marriage counseling any more!

So here I am with my partner, and she’s upset because I have done something small and insignficant that quite obviously doesn’t really matter very much, but she has decided to make a big thing out of it.  She tells me about it, and of course I say “Don’t be silly, you know I love you, that’s just a silly little thing that happened that doesn’t mean anything.”

Funny thing though.  That approach doesn’t often seem to work.  Its a short trip from there to calling the couples counselor.

What validation is about at heart is recognizing that our partner really is quite different from us, and usually does make decisions that seem quite odd.  But that when they make those decisions, for our partner, they appear to be the most logical and sensible thing.  Not because they are stupid!  But because they are different.

When we don’t recognize that people are different, it often means that we aren’t seeing them for who they really are, and that makes deep connection quite difficult.  Validation is like saying “I see who you really are”.  You say instead, “I hear what you say, and it makes sense to me, because I understand how it is that you see things that way.” 

It leaves people feeling appreciated, and valued.  Try it when you can.  Next time you find your partner says something you really don’t understand, ask them about it, until you do understand.  In Imago we would often use the question “Is there more?” to encourage our partner to open up a little more.  When you’ve got it – then you can say “You make sense to me” and see how it changes the whole way they are responding to you.