It's that time of year. The holiday season is filled with constant reminders to be more grateful and count your blessings. This rise in gratitude is the result of extensive research in the field of positive psychology touting its benefits on emotional well-being, sleep quality, interpersonal relationships, and overall health (1-4). Considering these benefits, you might be eager to encourage loved ones to practice more gratitude as a way to better cope with life's challenges.
Emotional validation happens when your parents see what you are feeling, acknowledge your feelings, and seem to understand why you are having them. Just like adults, children's feelings are the deepest, most personal, biological expression of who they are. In order to feel seen, understood, and heard, a child must feel that their feelings are seen, understood, and heard. What happens when you feel seen, understood, and heard as a child?
Different couples make all kinds of different pacts with each other some spoken, some unspoken. In your partnership it seems you originally found parity; you both benefited from the arrangement between you. Aside from being happy in your everyday lives together, you were able to use your sexual creativity to satisfy him, and in turn perhaps he was able to avoid having to acknowledge aspects of his sexual orientation that made him uncomfortable.
