8 Ways Good People Invalidate Their Partners and Ruin Relationships
Good people with good hearts do this all the time.
By Matthew Fray
That’s an important word — “invalidate.” But I haven’t always thought so.
My wife would sometimes ruin an otherwise perfectly good night at home or dinner conversation by accusing me of “invalidating her feelings,” to which I’d usually roll my eyes at my silly, overly sensitive wife and her cute little feelings.
Feelings aren’t facts, right? So facts matter and feelings don’t — a convenient excuse to fall back on any time the topic was about something impacting her emotionally but not affecting me.
“It’s always about what Matt wants,” she’d say. I’d get angry (and all of the sudden feelings mattered!) and remind her that she’s the one who started it by freaking out because I apparently didn’t do or say what she wanted me to. I’m not a mind-reader, freak-o!
Even today, I’m guilty of thinking back on my marriage as a relationship with fights about things that didn’t matter. Little, insignificant things we’d blow out of proportion. A dozen years of being unable to see the forest for the trees.
EVERY one of those fights mattered. They signaled that something was wrong and I dismissed…
