Personally, in a past relationship, I found this to be incongruent to a functioning relationship where every single feeling felt by my partner were valid and I was responsible for managing all her triggers. Example was yelling followed by "you held my hand too firmly, and it made me feel trapped like I were in my childhood". I believe there should be a degree of moderation and assignment of responsibility and repair that is not only designated to the other person.
I mean, you halfway got there. Your partner's feelings definitely were valid, but the latter part of that sentence, where you were responsible for managing all her triggers, that's not fair to you, and that's not what anybody is advocating.
In fact, it would have been perfectly fair for you to respond and tell her that. It definitely sounds like not every time she brought these things up, it wasn't resolved mutually satisfactorily, and PLENTY of scar tissue built up instead.
You get to advocate for yourself just as much as she did for herself. And sometimes during these conversations, you uncover irreconcilable differences, sure. Some relationships just aren't meant to be. But boy is it ever nicer when you discover these differences earlier, after honest and reciprocal conversations, as opposed to years later when all the suppressed argument come bursting forth at once. (Speaking from personal experience.)
Some people aren't worth it. Some people are just miserable. Not depressed, just miserable. Some people are insecure, vindictive, manipulative, querulous, disagreeable. Having a relationship with them will be as much as 100x more difficult than another person. This is the hard lesson I learned after 4 years in a thoroughly depleting relationship where I tried everything to make it work. When I look at my friends in their 40s, some have great partners and some don't, and the ones that don't have a truly execrable life despite good health, jobs, income, cars, holidays etc. Choosing a good partner matters more than almost anything else.
Don't get me wrong - I am not advocating we put all the bad partners in a camp somewhere. They are fundamentally in a state of suffering, and benefit from help and support. But the way to deliver that support is not by being in a romantic relationship with them.
If you are good partner material, consider the following asymmetry: A good partner can be in a relationship with a poor partner, but two poor partners will almost never be in a relationship together. This means that being a good partner increases your chance of ending up with a poor partner.
Part of being a functioning, emotionally mature adult is being able to self-regulate. It sounds like your partner relied on you for regulation, which is exhausting.
Sometimes we have to help other people co-regulate, especially young children. It's a useful skill - basically table stakes any time you're talking to someone having a hard time.
But if you're spending a significant amount of energy co-regulating a partner, check out YouTube videos related to codependency and speak to a therapist about the situation if you're able.
[...] yelling followed by "you held my hand too firmly, and it made me feel trapped like I were in my childhood" [...]
That sounds a bit demanding and maybe even blaming. I think the point is to tell about your emotions, and just lay them on the table. Nothing needs to be done directly, first you both want a conversation. If anything would need to done or changed, you might agree on something. But demanding sounds wrong.
Yeah the first part was good, but he second part was dysfunctional.
They way my wife and I do this is we dig into the why’s of the feeling to understand where it's coming from and to work though past issues if needed. We do this by talking about how we reacted and using the other person to calibrate wether a reaction is useful or over/under-reacting. Then talking through what we think a healthy response would look like. As a simple example.
Otherwise this is avoidance and putting all the burden on you which turned into what you mentioned walking on eggshells.
While this might work for you, I caution others from taking this advice. Why’s tend to be accusatory and puts the responder on the defense. Try to re-word your Why question by using the other Ws (what where when and how).
Sure, I'm just describing the general approach, not the specifics on how to execute it. No matter how you word it you're trying to understand the whys.
You don’t get to decide whether someone else’s feelings are valid or not. Sounds like you were just in the wrong relationship. I would argue this type of communication helped you realise that sooner - imagine if your partner bottled that up without telling you.
> You don’t get to decide whether someone else’s feelings are valid or not.
This is a dangerous thing to tell people dealing with an abuser/a psychopath/BPD whatevertheyrecalled. I'm willing to state many people's feelings are not valid.
(Stronger statement: true selves don't exist and other people's opinion of you is often more correct than your self-identification.)
They’re not wrong though, they just left out that it’s two way street and just because you feel something doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for your actions.
The feeling is valid, but the action could be inappropriate or damaging and that’s not okay.
“I feel Z so you need to stop X or do Y for me” is not okay.
I think the phrase "feelings are valid" have ended up being... less than ideal for communicating the backing idea. When I talk to mental health professionals they tend to say "your feelings are valid" relates to two fairly incontrovertible things
1. You feel what you feel
2. It is not a moral failing to have a particular emotional reaction in the moment since these are not within our control (acting on the emotion is)
The word "valid" ends up granting connotations that the rationale a person applies to why they're feeling their feelings is somehow reasonable or correct. Many emotional reactions are not reasonable or justifiable and the most reasonable course of action may be figuring out how to repress that emotional reaction in the future - phobias are an excellent example here.
I think you're seeing that exact miscommunication here, others are reading "valid" in the normal use of the word while you're using it in this more colloquial fashion.
> Do you have a phrase that works for this, but isn't prone to misunderstanding?
Not a single phrase because there's a decision matrix around the reaction:
1. Do I think I understand why the emotional reaction is happening?
2. Do I think the emotional reaction is healthy?
3. Do I think the emotional reaction is reasonable?
And how I respond depends on the answers to these questions. When the answers to the questions are "no" I fall back to building a space of emotional safety things like:
"Thank you for sharing your feelings with me", "it's ok that you're feeling that way", "feeling that way doesn't make you a bad person". These statements tend more conservative if I'm feeling it's important to remove misunderstanding.
Sure, that's in an interaction, but that kind of phrase is a good starting point when talking about the situations in the abstract. As in any conversation, you then adjust and clarify as needed.
> However, does this claim not fly in the face of "identifying as" a particular gender, race, tribe, etc?
Yes, but it also implies people identifying as cis might be wrong about it, so it's a pretty equal if unpopular standpoint. Nevertheless.
There are a lot of real life self identification situations that aren't accepted by society - mostly ethnic groups. Rachel Dolezal, Elizabeth Warren[0], Europeans who get mad when Americans claim to be sixth-generation Irish, are different cases here.
[0] her situation is not that unique btw - it's actually very common for white people in Oklahoma to believe they're part Cherokee. Since they believe this because their parents told them so, I don't think they're doing anything wrong, but it's the kind of unpleasant surprise you get when your 23andme results come back.
