Do Spouses Need to Validate Every Feeling or Emotional Upset? Episode 416
EmPowered Couples with The Freemans
Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman
5.0 • 589 Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When emotions run high in marriage, one of the most common traps couples fall into is what to do with each other's feelings. Should you validate them? Should you challenge them? Or should you just offer a quick solution so you can move on?
The truth is when emotional validation is missing or misunderstood, small hurts linger, conflicts spiral, and one or both partners can end up feeling dismissed, forced into solutions, or left unresolved. It's also one of the biggest complaints we hear from spouses…"you're not validating my feelings!"
In this episode, we unpack:
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Why couples often confuse validation with agreement
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The hidden ways spouses accidentally invalidate each other
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Why solutions don't stick if this piece is missing
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What actually creates the safety to collaborate, repair, and move forward together
If you've ever wondered "Am I supposed to validate even when I don't agree?"—this conversation is for you. Because the order in which you respond to your partner's emotions might be the very thing that determines whether you stay stuck… or actually grow closer.
Also, register for our LIVE + FREE Marriage WebClass coming up on: The 5 Root Causes of Conflict and Disconnection…and the Tools to Overcome Them!
Register For The Webclass HERE 👈
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Empower Couples podcast. We're here you get modern, non-boring relationship |
| 0:04.9 | advice for you and your partner to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay in the same team |
| 0:10.0 | no matter the challenge that you face. I am one of your host, Aaron Freeman. And I'm Jocelyn Freeman, |
| 0:14.2 | but you all just know it says the Freeman's. All right, so the question on the table today for this |
| 0:18.9 | podcast is do spouses need to validate every feeling |
| 0:23.0 | or emotional upset of each other? |
| 0:25.3 | This comes up often in sessions when one partner is really struggling with this idea that |
| 0:32.9 | they're supposed to, in quotes, validate their spouse's feelings, especially when they don't agree, |
| 0:42.0 | when it feels irrational to them, when it doesn't make sense, it doesn't feel based in logic |
| 0:48.6 | or the way they remember things. And it's a place I literally see people in their eyes are like, |
| 0:55.0 | wait, you're telling me I'm supposed to validate and then people get stuck on what does validation mean? So |
| 0:59.7 | we're going to really unpack that and make it clear. Even that, it is one of the main sources of |
| 1:07.7 | the conflict cycle. This is a principle that we teach in our coaching. And there was |
| 1:13.0 | some web classes that we've done. We haven't gone over that principle in the podcast here. But |
| 1:18.8 | one of the biggest sources of escalating or perpetuating the conflict cycle is almost verbatim, |
| 1:28.3 | one person saying, you're not validating what I'm saying |
| 1:32.2 | or I feel invalidated. |
| 1:33.6 | And so it's that feeling that then elicits |
| 1:38.5 | or triggers a reaction. |
| 1:41.3 | And even like me giving this example, |
| 1:43.7 | like my reaction is I have more emotion |
| 1:46.6 | maybe I get louder I'm pointing out this fact that you're not validating me so that's a reaction |
... |
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