Quote: Allowing her to continue making irrational conclusions and validating them is NOT going to help her or me - for instance, when she says are marriage was terrible from start to finish, I might ask her "Do you remember any good times - we did get married for a reason, don't you think
Guy, this VERY thing is often used as an example in DB/DR and most places discussing the idea of validation in relation to one partner thinking the marriage has gone bad. What you are doing is OPPOSITE of what is suggested. You are 100% invalidating her when you say this. You say it would do neither of you any good to do otherwise and I disagree. IF you learned to validate her, i.e. "Yes, I can see why you may think our marriage has been $hit.", you can let her see that you support her and HEAR her, which is something she DOES NOT think right now. She keeps telling you there is nothing to work on, that the marriage is crap in her eyes, etc and you keep on going as if her ideas are complete lunacy. THEY ARE NOT lunacy at all, they are HER ideas, formed based on HER experiences, which you are invalidating and making her feel stupid for having/feeling. The more you do this, the more she feels resentment for you.
I hope you understand that validation IS NOT agreeing with her, it is merely hearing and accepting her point of view, then letting HER know that you heard her and accept what she said. You can then disagree all you want but to disagree with someones feelings is usually unproductive at best.
Not understanding about validation played a LARGE part in the issues in my marriage. I would CONSTANTLY invalidate my W's point of view in a constant struggle to be "right" all the time. I never even knew I was doing it. Then, when I started to learn about how to validate I thought "yea, but I DON'T agree with what she's saying so why act like I do?" It took awhile, and more reading (Mars/Venus is another good place to read some of this) to understand that what I was really supposed to be doing is letting my W know that I was listening and respecting her feelings WITHOUT offering MY opinion most of the time. Again, saying you know how SHE could FEEL or THINK that the marriage was crap is not the same as saying YOU think it was crap. There is a difference, one that can mean your W thinking "wow, he's really listening to me" and "this man will NEVER listen to or understand me."
Please, I really think some of what you are doing is having the opposite effect as you think it is. The more you question her, attempting to get certain answers from her, the more you push her away, IMHO.
Also, BTW, YES she knows there were good times mixed in with the bad but clearly she is focused on the bad times, something that SHE doesn't think YOU know much about.
If you have not read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, I would suggest it to you TODAY. It WILL help you understand why some of what you are doing (not validating and taking your W's irrational rants as fact rather than temporary venting) is probably not the best course of action.
