Being Understood Is Not the Same as Being in a Relationship
Why validation alone cannot solve relationship problems
There is something deeply relieving about telling our story to someone who doesn’t interrupt, misunderstand or challenge our version of events.
Someone who simply says:
That makes sense. Your feelings are valid.
Sometimes, that is exactly what we need.
When we feel hurt, rejected or misunderstood by our partner, being validated can help us settle. It can reassure us that we are not imagining what happened or being unreasonable for feeling affected by it.
But being understood is not the same as being in a relationship.
A relationship asks something more of us.
It asks us to encounter another person whose experience may be completely different from our own—and to remain curious about it without abandoning what is true for us.
That is where intimacy begins.
Why validation feels so powerful
When something painful happens in a close relationship, we rarely experience only the event itself.
Our partner forgets something important, responds impatiently, turns away during an argument or fails to notice that we need them. Almost immediately, our mind begins to interpret what happened:
I’m not important.
They don’t care about me.
I can’t rely on them.
Nothing I do is ever enough.
I am alone in this relationship.
The story may feel inseparable from the event. By the time we tell someone else what happened, we are often describing both as though they were equally factual.
When that person validates us, we experience relief. We feel seen rather than alone.
There is nothing wrong with needing that. Emotional validation is an important part of any healthy relationship. The problem begins when validation becomes the only thing we are willing to receive.
If every conversation simply confirms our interpretation, we may feel increasingly certain that we are right without becoming any more capable of understanding what is happening between us.
The comfort—and limitation—of being agreed with
It has never been easier to find someone—or, these days, a remarkably articulate chatbot—to validate our version of events.
We can describe an argument to a friend, family member, therapist or AI tool and ask:
What does this behaviour mean?
Am I overreacting?
Is my partner being unreasonable?
Who is right?
The answer may be thoughtful, reassuring and even useful. But it is still based on the relationship as seen through one person’s eyes.
The person—or technology—responding to us was not in the room. They did not see our expression, hear our tone or witness the moments that preceded the argument. They know what we felt and noticed, but they do not have access to the whole relationship.
This becomes particularly important when using AI for relationship advice. AI can help us organise our thoughts, find clearer language or prepare for a difficult conversation.
But it can also become a very sophisticated echo chamber: one that strengthens our story without asking enough about the reality of the person standing opposite us.
AI may help us think about a relationship. It cannot do the relating for us.
Understanding your reaction is only the beginning
One of the valuable things that individual therapy, self-reflection and psychological education can offer is a deeper understanding of why we respond as we do.
I may recognise that I withdraw during conflict because anger felt frightening in the home where I grew up.
I may understand that I pursue, criticise or repeatedly ask for reassurance because emotional distance activates my fear of being left.
I may discover that I become controlling when I feel powerless, dismissive when I feel inadequate or highly rational when emotion begins to overwhelm me.
This understanding matters. It can replace shame with compassion and help us recognise that many of our difficult behaviours began as intelligent ways of protecting ourselves.
But insight alone does not change a relationship.
After asking, Why do I respond this way?, intimacy asks us to consider another question:
What happens to the person I love when I protect myself in this way?
My withdrawal may help me feel safer, but what happens to you when I disappear?
My criticism may help me feel less powerless, but what happens to you when nothing you do seems good enough?
My demand for immediate reassurance may calm my fear, but what happens to you when there appears to be no room for your own feelings?
Taking responsibility does not mean blaming ourselves for every relationship problem. Nor does it mean excusing harmful behaviour or abandoning our own boundaries.
It means becoming interested in the impact we have—not only the intentions we hold.
Most repeated arguments are conversations between two protections
Many couples arrive at couples therapy believing that their main problem is poor communication.
Often, however, both partners can communicate perfectly well when they feel safe. The difficulty begins when something important is activated.
One partner feels ignored and moves closer, asking more questions, raising the intensity or demanding an answer.
The other feels criticised or overwhelmed and moves away, becomes defensive, shuts down or asks for space.
The more one pursues, the more the other withdraws.
The more one withdraws, the more urgently the other pursues.
Before long, each person sees the other’s protective response as the cause of the relationship problem:
If you would stop criticising me, I wouldn’t shut down.
If you didn’t shut down, I wouldn’t have to keep pushing.
Both experiences contain truth. But neither person can see the whole pattern while they are busy proving that the other started it.
This is why determining who is right rarely resolves recurring conflict. The more useful question is:
What happens between us—and how are we each helping to keep it going?
Real intimacy makes room for two realities
Making room for another person’s experience does not require us to agree with their interpretation.
I can understand that you felt abandoned without agreeing that I intended to abandon you.
You can understand that I felt criticised without agreeing that everything you said was unfair.
Validation is not a declaration that the other person’s version is the objective truth. It is an acknowledgement that, from inside their emotional world, their experience makes sense.
This is one of the most important skills we develop in couples therapy: the ability to visit our partner’s world without immediately defending our own.
It is not easy. When we are hurt, curiosity can feel like surrender. We may fear that if we recognise the other person’s experience, our own will disappear.
But two realities can exist at the same time.
You can have been hurt by what I did, and I can have had no intention of hurting you.
I can need more closeness, and you can need time to regulate yourself.
You can experience my questions as pressure, while I experience your silence as abandonment.
Intimacy grows when we stop treating these differences as evidence that one of us must be wrong.
Three questions to ask before your next difficult conversation
The next time you feel hurt, rejected or activated by someone close to you, pause before asking someone else what their behaviour means.
Ask yourself:
1. What is happening in me right now?
Try to move beneath the first layer of anger, criticism or certainty.
Are you frightened? Ashamed? Lonely? Powerless? Feeling unwanted or unimportant?
Naming the more vulnerable feeling does not make it disappear, but it can stop that feeling from silently controlling the conversation.
2. How might the way I am protecting myself be affecting the other person?
You may be protecting yourself by withdrawing, becoming critical, explaining repeatedly, pleasing, controlling, intellectualising or insisting on resolving the issue immediately.
Ask what it might be like to be on the receiving end of that protection.
This is responsibility—not self-blame.
3. Who do I want to be here, even while I am feeling this?
You do not have to wait until you are calm, healed or completely certain before choosing how you want to show up.
Perhaps you want to be honest without being cruel.
Boundaried without becoming distant.
Curious without abandoning yourself.
Vulnerable without demanding a particular response.
We cannot always choose what we feel. We can gradually become more intentional about what we do with the feeling.
How to use AI more wisely for relationship advice
AI can be helpful when it supports a real conversation rather than replacing one.
Instead of asking:
Who is right?
What is wrong with my partner?
Does this prove that they don’t care?
Try asking:
“Help me separate what happened from the story I am telling myself about it.”
“What might I be missing from the other person’s perspective?”
“Help me express my feelings without blaming or diagnosing my partner.”
“What responsibility could I take for my part in this interaction?”
“What questions could I ask to understand their experience more fully?”
Used in this way, AI can help us prepare to relate.
It becomes less helpful when we use it to build a case, diagnose someone who is not present or avoid the vulnerability of speaking directly to the person involved.
The aim is not to produce the perfect message. It is to arrive at the conversation more open, grounded and responsible.
When relationship problems keep repeating
Every close relationship contains misunderstanding, frustration and conflict. A difficult period does not automatically mean that a relationship is unhealthy or failing.
But it may be worth considering couples therapy when:
You keep having the same argument without reaching a different outcome.
One partner pursues while the other withdraws.
Conversations quickly become defensive, critical or emotionally unsafe.
Resentment is beginning to replace warmth and goodwill.
You understand your patterns intellectually but cannot change them together.
You feel more alone inside the relationship than outside it.
Couples therapy is not only for relationships in crisis. At its best, it helps two people recognise the pattern they have created together and develop a safer, more honest way of meeting one another.
A relationship needs more than understanding
Our stories deserve to be heard.
Our feelings deserve care.
Our protective responses deserve compassion.
But a close relationship cannot survive on the validation of one person’s reality alone.
Real intimacy asks us to become curious about the world of another person while remaining connected to our own. It asks us to understand our history without using it to excuse our impact. And it asks us to choose how we want to show up, especially in the moments when our old protections feel most necessary.
Being understood can bring enormous relief.
Being in relationship asks us to go one step further.
Earlier this year, at the Love in Action Summit, I gave a session on how to use AI wisely in relationships—where it can support reflection and communication, and where it can quietly take us further away from one another.
This article was written by Dr Kalanit Ben-Ari, a senior couples and relationship therapist, author, trainer, supervisor and international speaker with more than 25 years of experience. She holds a PhD in Psychology and works with individuals and couples from her private practice in Hampstead, London.
Dr Ben-Ari is a faculty member of the International Imago Institute and served as Chair of Imago Relationship Therapy UK from 2003 to 2013. She is also a relationship expert on Married at First Sight Israel.
She leads The Associates Hub, a professional community for therapists, and created Awakening Love, an online programme designed to help couples understand their patterns, reconnect and build a more conscious relationship.
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