What’s the Deal with Validation? An Introduction to the Woman Cave
How to offer solutions without getting in trouble!
Lots of TRP, PUA stuff, FDS talks about the need for validation. In this guide, we finally explore what “validation” actually means.
A fantastic video by Alexander Grace has a breakdown of the four steps to take when a person tells you about a problem. It describes the mistake that most men feel they make when jumping into problem-solving mode. He has a great line at 1:10, describing that a lot of men get excited when a woman has a problem because this is a great opportunity to demonstrate masculinity and play the hero. This is the performance review: the quicker the man can diagnose and solve the problem, the more masculine he is. “This is what hours solving engineering problems, chess, and video games have prepared him for. The quicker he fixes the problem, the more appreciative she would be!”
Alexander Grace then describes how wrong this is and describes four steps to use instead. The four steps are:
Validate her emotions
Fully explore the problem
Help her find her own solution
Support going forward
I recommend watching this. He is the first person I have heard use the phrase “replenish her fuel” as an important reason to validate her emotions—an impressive new framing. He describes her problem as actually two problems:
The problem
Her diminished self-worth and self-doubt that comes from having the problem.
The validation serves to replenish her “fuel” so that you two can actually talk about the problem.
My own thoughts about “validation” are below.
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The idea of “validating” a person sometimes rubs people the wrong way because of three key concerns:
Alice does not want to encourage negative feelings in Bob by seeming to respond well to the negative feelings or giving positive reinforcement, versus signaling that she would rather not feel the second-hand effects of his negative emotions.
Alice does not want to accidentally enable Bob to wallow in negative emotions, especially if his problem has a solution, especially when her absence would otherwise allow Bob to learn to self-regulate out of the negative emotions
Alice does not want to encourage Bob to over-index on his emotions, versus learning to think through and solve problems
Therefore, even when people read that they should validate other people’s emotions, they have good reasons for being skeptical of this advice to the point of not taking it, even when they want to take this advice seriously because other people seem to take it seriously. Most articles and videos talking about validation do not address or take seriously above concerns 1-3.
Here, I will take those concerns very seriously. I generally think these concerns are not wrong to have, and that they have not been addressed is a major oversight.
Here’s the thing—you don’t need to get the negative effects you fear to get the positive effects everybody talks about.
This is because validation, as described in these articles as something you need to do before trying to solve your person’s problem, is not actually about giving validation as conventionally meant by the word ‘validation.’ It is not actually about telling your person that he is correct to feel whatever she feels, regardless of what he is feeling. It is, actually, about solving the problem.
Wait, what? This is the opposite of what everybody says.
To illustrate my point, I will flip the conventionally described gender placement and describe what men stereotypically do when they have problems. When a man has a problem, he may mention it once or twice in passing, but usually he does not complain about the problem very much. Usually he goes and plays video games, or goes alone in his room to think about the problem. Or he goes on the internet to look up answers, or he goes on a walk alone.
Just as many men seem to do the wrong thing when a woman has a problem, women also sometimes do the wrong thing when their man has a problem.
A man, when a woman has a problem, often genuinely wants to help her so that she would be happy. But sometimes he has other goals, too. He may want her to stop overreacting to small problems. Or he may want her to stop complaining and do something fun with him instead. Or he wants her to help him with his problem that is more important!
A woman, when her man has a problem, often genuinely wants to help him so that he would be happy. But sometimes she just wants him to come out of his man cave. Or she wants him to stop being idle and actually do something productive, either at work, or around the house. Or she wants him to share intimacy with her!
Sometimes the man cave is not a real man cave. Sometimes it is a mental man cave.
This image of the mental man cave is important here. When you are in a man cave, what do you want from your special lady? Do you want her to barge in with solutions to your problem? Probably not, because:
You have been thinking about your problem for a long time. You are probably stuck on one particular part of it. She may be very helpful to you in solving the problem, but first you need to bring her up to speed on the problem, or else she will be repeating your work, or misunderstanding the main issue.
You may have been worried about the problem for so long, that from her, you may actually want permission to take a break away from thinking about it, and may enjoy something nice like a backrub. This doubles as reinforcement that you do, indeed, still deserve and can get nice things, and reassures you that she still likes you.
You may be extremely depleted and not be able to talk in a sane way about anything, including the problem. You mostly need food and water, and would really appreciate her bringing you some—and maybe a blanket. Then in 20 minutes maybe you have enough “fuel” to talk about the problem with her, or use a different strategy.
Different men create different versions of the man cave. Some go into their real cave. Sometimes it is a woodworking shop, sometimes it is a TV room, sometimes it is an office, some use their nightly run as man cave time, some man cave while cooking dinner. Some men hang out with bros at the bar as part of man cave rejuvenation.
Women also have a version of the man cave, that I will call the woman cave. It looks different for each woman, and like for men, ranges between solitary and same-gender activities. Some women dance, some take a bath. Some stay up late after everyone is asleep, doing extra work, or reading fanfiction. Some work out. Some go on phone calls with their friends.
I think this metaphor is far more powerful than the instruction to “give validation” because it more clearly explains what you should be doing and why you should be doing it. If your girl is coming to you and talking to you about her problem, she was likely woman caving about it, and probably either just emerged from her woman cave or is about to go enter her woman cave. You are not giving some kind of special, clinical, therapeutic treatment to your girl that she should not get too used to because it feels inorganic for you to do. Rather, you are simply considerate of the mental head space she is in.
This also kills the trope that women just don’t want solutions to their problems. Far from it: they do want solutions to their problems, and that is why they enter a head space around their problems. They want solutions as much as men do. If I point to a gender difference, I would point to something like this: Women are more likely in general, to mention their problems. They may not mention their most pressing problems. But they are more likely to mention some of their problems because they are socially allowed to, and it is a way for them to test men for their ability to take care of them, and make men feel good looking after them, and guiding men to do productive things with their time. But women do still go full solitary mode often enough.
Men, meanwhile, are more likely to go solitary when they have problems and not mention them unless pressed. This is because it is in their interest, socially speaking, to not seem too phased by problems, for worry that their women will become shaken that he is not able to solve problems. When a man seems like he cannot solve problems, this may make his partner worry, and then she will not be able to provide the care he hopes she would do for him. But men do go full emotive and chatty mode.
Both genders do both, but women are generally penalized for being too solitary and energy closed, and men are generally penalized for seeming like they do not have their problems handled.
Both genders take a self-esteem hit when they are faced with problems they cannot solve. Although women are not expected to be ‘providers,’ they are expected to have social graces, to have friends, to make things go well around them, and to be competent. Both genders have their feelings hurt when their bosses insult them, when their friends reject them, and when they fail at something they were trying hard to do. Both genders enter a vulnerable mode where they recollect themselves to figure out how to bounce back after a status and self-esteem hit. When a person talks about her problems, she is looping a trusted person into her downgraded, more vulnerable status, with the hope that even with the status hit, things will be okay because she has her trusted person there.
Being scolded, not taken seriously, or steamrolled in this vulnerable state thus makes the person feel worse, because she is both vulnerable and not taken seriously by the trusted person she chose to loop in. When people say to “validate her feelings,” in good faith, what they are really talking about is to make her feel safe even though she currently feels unsafe. You can do this without telling her that her response is necessarily the optimal response, or even admitting that the problem is a big problem.
People should be emotional! What is a life if not a life where you feel the world? And how else will a person release tension enough to make room to grow and change? How else will a person signal that she needs help? In this moment it is not very important for her to be right, either in the proportion of her emotional response or her analysis of the situation. It is important for her to be protected. It is important for her to be seen, but not seen in a way that you must admit her emotions are truth. Rather, what she wants you to see, is that her problem is important enough to her, that you would both track it and take care of it. (And there is a difference between dismissing a problem, and deciding that a problem is already taken care of. In the first case, you are denying there is a problem. In the second case, you have solved the problem.)
Once you remember that your main job as her man is to make her feel safe and protect her, this is easy to remember to do. A better term than ‘giving validation,’ is giving reinforcement. You are showing her that she is not alone in this fight, and that she has backup. You can also remember to give reassurance. Reassurance that you still like her and are still there with her.
The main problem whenever she has a problem is that she feels unsafe. When you reinforce her, she feels strong. When you reassure her, she feels loved.
When she feels extremely safe and has you there, all problems do, indeed, feel trivial.
