Oh, I hear you. And I want you to know that what you’re describing is one of the most painful things that can happen inside a relationship.
When you bring something to your partner, something that matters to you, something tender, and they come back at you with “relax” or “you’re making a big deal out of this” or “it’s not that serious,” what actually lands in your body is not just the dismissal of that one thing. What lands is: I am not worth being taken seriously. That is a very different, much deeper wound than it might look like from the outside.
You bring up something tender and hear that it is nothing.
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Now here is what I also want to say to you, because I think it’s important.
Your partner minimizing your concerns is almost certainly not about you being wrong or too much. In my experience, when someone jumps quickly to “settle down, this isn’t a big deal,” they are usually doing something very specific. They are trying not to feel bad. Because if what you are saying is real, if your pain is legitimate, then something is being asked of them. And for whatever reason, in that moment, that feels like too much. So they reach for the fastest tool available, which is to make the problem smaller. Make you smaller.
And here is the awful thing. The more they do that, the more you feel unheard. And the more you feel unheard, the more urgently you come back trying to be heard. And the more urgently you come back, the more they experience you as relentless or intense, which makes it even easier for them to say “see, you really are making too big a deal of this.”
You are both stuck in that system together. Neither of you is the villain. But you are both in real pain.
The question I would want to sit with you on is this: when you bring your concern to your partner and they minimize it, what happens inside you at that moment? Not what do you do next, but what do you actually feel? Because that is where the real work lives. That tender, hurt place that just wants to be met. That is the part of you that deserves to be witnessed, not managed, not talked out of what it feels.
And that is what I want for you. To be actually seen.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Communication Exercises for Couples (That Actually Work)
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