Oh, I hear you. And I want to sit with that for a second, because that sentence, “my partner never validates my feelings,” carries so much weight. There’s loneliness in that. There’s a kind of hunger in it.
Let me tell you what I actually see happening in most couples when one person is saying exactly what you’re saying right now.
Your partner almost certainly is not withholding validation because they don’t care about you. I know that’s probably not what it feels like from where you’re sitting. But here’s what I watch happen, over and over, in my office: when you bring your feelings to your partner, something happens in their nervous system. They get scared. They feel like they’re failing you. They feel like they can never get it right.
And so they do one of a few things: they try to fix the problem, they offer a counter-argument, they go quiet, they minimize. All of that lands on you as, “You don’t care about how I feel.”
But what’s actually happening is two scared people scaring each other.
Now, here’s what I want to name more specifically, because it matters for you. What you’re describing touches on something deep. Every one of us has a younger, more wounded part inside. The part that just needs to be *seen.* Not fixed. Not advised. Not told, “Well, you shouldn’t feel that way,” or “Have you tried looking at it from my perspective?” Just witnessed. Just held.
When your partner jumps to problem-solving or pushes back on what you’re feeling, they’re essentially walking past that younger part of you without acknowledging it’s even there. And that is a specific kind of pain.
The thing I also want to gently put on the table is this: there are two patterns I see most often when someone isn’t feeling validated.
The first is that their partner genuinely does not know how to hold someone else’s emotion. They were never taught. Nobody taught them. Nobody taught most of us. They’re not cruel. They’re unskilled and frightened.
The second is that the way the feelings are being shared has become wrapped up in a cycle. Maybe the feelings come out attached to a protest, an accusation, a demand for change. And the partner’s nervous system hears it as an attack and goes into defense. The wall goes up. And then no validation ever gets through, not because it isn’t owed, but because the system you’re both in makes it almost impossible for it to land.
This is what I call the Waltz of Pain. You reach for connection, they retreat or deflect, you reach harder, they shut down further. Both of you end up in agony. Neither of you is the villain.
The path forward isn’t getting your partner to finally understand that they should validate you. That strategy doesn’t work. What actually works is finding a way for both of you to step back and see the system you’re stuck in together, and then, from that shared place, one of you risks sharing the raw, soft thing underneath. Not the protest. The pain. The fear. The longing.
Because when you can say, “I get so scared that what I feel doesn’t matter to you, that I’m not important,” without it coming wrapped in anger, something different can happen. Your partner has a chance to actually show up. And that moment, when they do, when they cross the distance and meet you where it actually hurts, that is what changes things.
Where Does Your Relationship Stand?
Which pattern is running your relationship?
Take the free three minute quiz and meet the creature behind the cycle you keep getting stuck in.
Take the free Empathi Wisdom Score assessment. In 5 minutes, get a personalized snapshot of your relationship patterns and what to do about them. Take the free attachment style quiz to learn more.
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: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
Explore More Topics
Keep Reading
Every couple has a pattern they cannot see. Find yours.
In love, each of you is a Relentless or a Reluctant, which makes you one of three kinds of couple: Relentless and Reluctant, two Relentless, or two Reluctant. The free quiz reveals your creatures and the cycle they fall into together. About three minutes.
No signup needed to start.
The Relentless
The Reluctant
