The Golden Rule of Couples Work

Working with couples is really different than working with individual clients. Individual work requires personalized and eclectic approaches. There is the occasional very unique case I’ve seen with my couples, but for the most part, the needs and challenges are really similar. I don’t have a “golden rule” for my individual clients because the opposite of what works for one might work really well for someone else. For couples, I have a golden rule and technique that tends to work without fail.

Most couples that I work with are people that really care about each other and care about the relationship, but struggle with communication. We have an innate need to be understood, heard and seen. Couples typically come to me because they are looping in their conversation and can’t seem to find a common ground. Couples tend to repeat what they’re saying over and over again, only to feel misunderstood.

If this is a problem that you face in your relationship, I have the answer. Validation. If we can validate our partners perspective, they feel less of the need to argue their point, dismiss your point and escalate the conflict.

If you’re finding it difficult to validate each other you both need to ask more questions. If you approach each other with curiosity, you will eventually be able to understand the other person enough to provide the validation that they need. If it seems impossible to validate your partner, try approaching with more curiosity.

If you think your partner is being a jerk there’s often a vital piece of information that’s missing.

Asking questions help fill that gap.

OK, enough about the why how do we validate?

We start with a partner, any partner. This is easy in session because I can pick, but challenging outside of session because one of you needs to initiate the validation when you’re currently experiencing the need to be understood.

In order to be understood, we need to practice understanding.

It starts with partner A, sharing their perspective, and partner B fully listening. Partner B does not argue, or say their perspective, even if something Partner A said seems so objectively incorrect, impossible, hurtful! This looks like an I statement.

“When you (fill in the blank), I felt (fill in the blank)”.

All that Partner B can do is paraphrase what they heard.

“What I hear you saying is…”.

Then partner A has the opportunity to correct anything that was a missed or misunderstood.

“No that’s not what I meant. I meant…”, or “Yeah that’s right but you’re missing when I said…”.

Partner B then either validates or needs to ask more questions until they can validate.

“I can see why you would feel (blank)”. “That must have sucked”. “I would feel that way too if I was in your shoes”.

This continues until partner A feels validated and then the roles reverse.

It’s that simple… in theory. In practice it can be more challenging. A big challenge I see is people tend to struggle to fully validate if they disagree with someone’s perspective. That’s what tough, we live in different versions of reality. Remember, we’re not trying to get to a shared perspective, the goal of validation is to understand each other’s perspective, and feel understood in our own.

Try it and let me know how it goes!