Welcome back, everyone, to the A Torah Marriage Series with Rabbi Ali Cohen. I'm a marriage counselor, and I do marriage counseling. If you'd like to reach me and get your marriage in order, or get to a place you'd like to be, 917-837-0102, or you could email me at alcohen at layoftodah.org.
Okay, we're talking about validation today, and I have been speaking a lot about this because, as is the case with many pop psychology ideas, they're getting misunderstood, misconstrued, and applied in the wrong area. Then there are parts that are taken too far that are not for people of the Torah, and these things are important. A lot of these concepts are good, and they're very helpful for marriage, especially these days. However, they have to be understood correctly: what applies and what doesn't.
Validation is one of the popular terms being used. He needs validation. She needs validation. “You're not validating me. I don't feel like you're validating me enough. I want you to just listen.” Therapists will say he or she needs more validation. When I talk to people who call me, I started to see that people are not understanding what this means. So we're going to explain what it means, what it doesn't mean, and, if you've heard this already on my TorahAnytime or on a few other platforms that I have, there's an extra point that I want to mention.
Let's start with validation: what it is by definition and how it's implemented. If you are telling your spouse, let's say you... Okay. This Shiur (class) is for you, not for your spouse. It's not, “Let me get all the information and send it over to them.” For you, the listener: if you feel like you're not getting the validation you need, if your spouse is not validating you, and you want them just to listen and validate you, it's very important to understand, before we get into what validation is, that there's a reason why you feel like you need them to validate you.
See, this needs a little bit of validation. This needs a little bit of paying attention and thinking. Many people think, “My spouse makes me feel invalid. That's why I need validation.” That's not true most of the time. From the couples I see, most of the time a person—again, a man or a woman—feels insecure and invalid, and not good about themselves. They need from—they need to be validated, or else they feel bad and down on themselves, or bad about what they do or what they've done, or about their thoughts or emotions. They don't feel valid, and they need their your space, whoever the situation is; they need their spouse to just validate their thoughts. It means to accept their thoughts and just to let them know, “You're okay.”
That means that you don't feel okay. You don't feel that your thoughts and your feelings are okay. Again, if you're needing validation all the time from your spouse, for everything that you say, in every conversation—“I need you just to validate me”—it means you feel invalid, or that your thoughts and feelings are invalid.
I'm stressing it because the concept, I don't hear spoken about at all, so it's important as the one that says you need validation and you should ask your spouse for validation. I don't say you deserve it, but that would be very helpful for the relationship. It's important: there are two people here, and things go much better when two people are working at it. The one who feels they need the validation, their job, I believe, is to understand: “Why in the world do I need so much validation? Why in the world am I telling my spouse all the time, ‘Just validate, validate, validate me’? Why am I doing that?”
Most likely, that's an internal thing that you need to work on, and that is not something that I want to get to right now. I plan on making a series about psychology topics. I'm not a therapist, but I have what to say, and that's not for this topic. So it's very important to just think about that. Really think about it. It's most likely not that your spouse makes you feel invalid, and now you need to be validated by them because they make you feel invalid. That doesn't make too much sense.
There are situations where people are told that they're, you know, Lo Aleinu (God forbid), told that they're wrong, that you're mistaken, that you're a problem. That's not a matter of not being validated. You're just not being treated right. It would look like, “Oh, I had an awful day today. You wouldn't believe what happened. I got cut off in a road-rage incident. It was terrible.” And then your spouse will say, “Oh, so what'd you do about it? Should have called me. You should have, you know, whatever.” Their thoughts would be, “That's not what I want to hear from you. I want you just to say, ‘Okay, I hear.’” I mean, that means that you need someone to validate your thoughts.
Okay, enough of that. Now, on the validation end, again, men or women. I'm repeating that because it's not just a man problem, where they don't know how to validate, or a woman thing, where they need validation. Let's start with what validation doesn't mean, and I speak about this often. It doesn't mean agreeing with your spouse. I would love for this message to get around to everyone because it's dangerous to have these ideas misunderstood, especially since they're not written in the Torah. We have to understand it for what it is.
It doesn't mean you agree. People tell me all the time, “How do I validate her, but I don't agree, so I don't know what to do?” Like, “Yeah, okay, your mother—my mother—is not such a great person. Yeah, you're right.” And then they get upset. No, they're getting upset because that's not what validation is. It doesn't mean you agree. Validation has nothing to do with agreement or not. You can completely disagree with someone and validate them. Now, they might not be fully happy with it, but that's not what it means.
Validation, what it does mean is: you're having an emotion, a thought, or an opinion, and I'm letting you know that I get you, I understand you, you're valid, you make sense. There are people that react like that. You're normal. Maybe I would react the same. Maybe I would feel horrible also if that would happen to me. I totally understand you, and I'm letting you know—not by saying it, but by letting you know through however I tell you—that you're okay, you're valid.
That's just a rough day. Someone would say, “You wouldn't believe it, parking was a disaster, and it was just terrible.” The reaction would be, “Yeah, it sounds terrible.” Very, very nonchalant: “Sounds terrible. What else happened? So what'd you do?” “I don't know. I circled around the block so many times.” “Yeah, sounds terrible. Who wants to do that? And then did you make it to the appointment?” That's validating. I'm asking questions. I'm showing interest. I'm showing that you're valid, you're not crazy, you're not nuts. That's what validation is.
Now, if there's a situation where you disagree and it's an important topic, then let your spouse know, “I feel sorry for you. I feel terrible. I don't see it like that, but it's terrible.” Again, that's only if there's a need for you to speak up. Most of the time, there's no need for you to speak up. Somebody is just venting, and it's an art to learn how to listen and validate.
But if there's something important where your spouse will say, “I've had it. We're moving. We're moving to Texas. We're moving to Florida. I'm done here,” “Wow, it must be really stressed out. I hear. I don't think that's something that we should decide so fast, but I hear. It's terrible. What's the matter? What's happening? It's a drastic move.” You don't have to agree with them, but don't tell them, “That's crazy. What are you doing? Who does that?” Don't say that. Who does that? Don't say that. Who does that? Don't say that. They do that. Who goes surfing in the winter? People go surfing in the winter. Who goes fishing all the time? People go fishing. I hear these lines all the time, just saying them.
These are important concepts. I'm really trying to unpack it in the short seven to eight minutes. We're already almost at nine minutes, but I want to be clear, and I want people to understand it, both sides. The one that needs validation has to understand themselves. The one that is validating has to understand the other one. You'll both have to know what to do.
And another point is that the one who needs the validation also has to understand that it's very hard on your spouse to validate you, even if they disagree. It's very hard for them to do that and maintain this composure of, “Wow, I hear. That's terrible,” and then you expect them to voice their opinion. It's not an easy thing. I know this from experience, from dealing with people. Think about it for yourself: if your spouse tells you they disagree with you, how do you feel? And it doesn't feel so great. So, okay, you get the point: it's not easy, and these things need to be worked on.
Like I said, you can reach out to me, and like I always say, every class has to either start or end with this: You have to pray to Hashem. You have to pray for clarity in your relationships. People tell me miracle stories all the time: “I stumbled upon this and that class and that rabbi and that, that rabbits in; they would help me, and one-liner told me something that changed my life.” You need to reach out to this...