"I feel worthless," Alex told me recently. Why's that? I asked. "Because my wife doesn't love me." That's an awful thing to feel. Why don't you think she loves you? "She's just not excited when I walk in the room anymore."

I asked Alex several more questions about his relationship with his wife. They were having regular sex. She was respectful of his requests and things she asked him to do. She fulfilled her responsibilities around the home and they maintained a reasonable budget with an exceptional income. They didn't argue very often. For all practical purposes, from the outside looking in, a casual onlooker would have assumed they had the perfect, American-dream marriage. But Alex was broken. Why? Because his wife didn't feel excited about him. His sense of self-worth was completely dictated by his wife's feelings rather than his own accomplishments, life purposes, motives, etc.

Validation is one of the core issues underlying every aspect of human existence. I have yet to meet a single person who doesn't require any validation. As a Christian, I believe that God has intentionally placed a longing in our hearts for something beyond ourselves (Ecc. 3:11; Genesis 2:18), but even if you want to take an evolutionary psychology approach, we have been conditioned for millennia to be an interdependent species, needing community and relationships to advance, and those in isolation and outside of community fall victim to "survival of the fittest."

Validation-seeking is not unique to men, but the way we are meant to engage with it is certainly distinct from women. Biblically, men are to find validation from God and not their wives, but women are designed to find their validation through their husbands. I'll let the evolutionary psychologists among you figure out how this plays out in the secular world. Suffice it to say that men don't need women; we just prefer to have them around, for a vast multitude of reasons. Women, on the other hand, do need men - whether you want to say this is because of how God created the world or to satisfy their biological hypergamous drive, I don't care (they're really the same thing, from my view). The point is that women will always seek validation from men, and we can't (maybe even shouldn't?) change that; but for men there are both proper and improper ways to approach validation and seek it from others.

HEALTHY VALIDATION

Validation is the product of evaluation. It presumes a judge over your identity. In the absence of perfect faith or a mental health disorder, I believe validation-seeking is at least subliminally present in virtually everything we do as a species.

For most of the world, the best form of validation-seeking is when we are able to function independently, setting up standards of self-evaluation and letting ourselves or our self-created goals be the judge over our sense of self-worth and accomplishment.

A man who sets no goals, merely scathing by in life, will (appropriately) feel as though he has nothing to offer his world, creating a negative feedback loop that then discourages him from setting any goals. This is my brother, still living in my dad's house at 32, drinking beer and playing video games every night until 5am, having given up on women since his ONEitis left him several years ago.

On the other hand, my friend Dan is self-motivated. He doesn't care about how the world judges him; but he does have an internal drive to succeed. There's a stirring within him that won't let him sit idly, so he sets goals and experiences internal fulfillment when he accomplishes them. He is validated by self-created objectives. I suppose a man could experience self-validation even in the absence of external objectives that he creates, simply liking himself for who he is regardless of any other judgments on him, but even that becomes dangerous, lending itself to a feminist mentality: "You're perfect just as you are," which often translates to: "You don't need to improve or have ambitions - you just need to be placated in your place in life, and not challenge anything I try to do to you and our country."

For the Christian, the answer is similar. God sets the goals, but there is an incredible biblical latitude we have in the way we go about accomplishing them or how we evaluate our successes, and there is even greater grace from God in the evaluation process than we might otherwise give ourselves if we were self-evaluating. This creates an exceptional balance in that grace gives us freedom to fail, thus we can remain objectively validated by God through our efforts to grow and accomplish even when we fail from time to time - which is furthered by the fact that God is perfect and stable, so we know the standard he sets is reliable, unlike other people whose standards over us are imperfect and unstable; and having an external standard from God also prevents us from being lazy with our goals and squandering our lives, overcoming the trap that many people like my brother fall into.

There are other ways that validation-seeking can be helpful as well. For example, if you want a promotion at your job, you're going to want to seek the validation of your boss, as he is the judge over your qualification for the position. If you want to win a court case, you must seek validation from the judge about your arguments, honesty, and competency, for the judge is the actual judge over your case. It's appropriate for him to validate your arguments, honesty and competency. The difference is that he is not evaluating you as a person - in both cases, they are evaluating your behaviors and what you produce.


HARMFUL VALIDATION

I opened this post with a brief snapshot of a conversation I had with Alex - and that is a shining example of harmful validation-seeking. He allowed his sense of self-worth to be dictated by something external and didn't allow any room for grace in his failure to live up to the self-imposed judgments he created on his life. He didn't merely look to his wife for validation on certain behavior patterns he had; rather, he extended it to his internal sense of identity.

And that is a significant thing to consider. Harmful validation seeking is not merely letting someone else be the judge over your life, identity, and sense of self-worth. In most cases, the person from whom we seek validation never signed up for that role. We are voluntarily giving them that job, often-times not even telling them we are - and then they don't communicate validation because they never knew that was their job in the first place.

Men, this is a significant thing in your marriage and it's the reason why I started with the difference between men and women in validation seeking. Your wife needs validation. If you want to have a successful marriage, you must validate your wife when she acts appropriately within your judgment, because she has allowed you to be a judge over her. This is healthy and appropriate.

But a man should never voluntarily allow his wife to become a judge over him. Doing so is grossly inconsistent with biblical theology, the history of any successful society, and basic principles of underlying evolutionary psychology. Men are conditioned by God or by time to set goals outside the home and strive to accomplish them. Making your home your goal sounds nice, but we're not here to be Nice Guys - and Nice Guys are the biggest validation-seekers, and one quick glance at NMMNG will show you how that validation-seeking can ruin a man's life.


MANIFESTATIONS OF VALIDATION

So here is a non-exclusive list of different forms of validation-seeking that can get your wheels spinning to help you recognize when you're in that rut or if you're on the right track. If you're having trouble feeling a sense of wholeness as a man, look to see if you fit the bill in any of these areas.

  • OVERT: When my 5 year old daughter shares her candy with her siblings, she runs up to me and says, "Daddy, I just shared my candy. Wasn't that so nice of me?" This is an obvious and overt example of validation-seeking. She is directly asking for my validation of her behaviors. Sometimes it goes even further and my son will ask: "Because I did this, doesn't that mean I'm a good person?"

  • SUBTLE, INVALID: Picture a husband who plays video games all day while his wife is away. She calls and says she'll be home in 10 minutes. He continues playing for 8 minutes, then turns off the game and starts cleaning the house. She comes home and sees him cleaning, which he timed so that she would be impressed with him. He's not overtly asking her for validation, but he's implying it. It's invalid for two reasons: (1) because it's false validation; her being impressed by him isn't for his actual character, but for an image he fabricated for her to see; and (2) because this demonstrates an internal insecurity in him that he must impress his wife or that she is somehow a judge over him. Her feelings toward his behaviors becomes the judge over how he acts and behaves. What's interesting to note is that the man doesn't care to actually be a valid person under his wife's standard, otherwise he would have been cleaning the house the entire time she was gone. Instead, he only cares that she perceives him in a way that validates him, as evidenced by the fact that he only lives up to that character when she is watching.

  • SUBTLE, BUT VALID: I've already mentioned that there are healthy forms of validation-seeking. Unlike the man above, the case of the employee or the attorney show us that we can do things without directly asking for approval, yet knowing that our superior's validation of us can have a positive impact on our own agendas. So, if a man sets a goal to have a certain level of income, seeking the validation of his boss to get that raise by exceptional performance in front of his boss is perfectly appropriate. If a man is wise, he has incorporated into his own goals the prerequisites of external interpersonal dynamics necessary to achieve those goals.

  • COVERT: Alex's story is a great example, and this is the most common form of validation-seeking. This is when a man's emotional state is dependent on how his wife (or anyone else) feels about him or acts toward him, and he may not even have processed himself the connectivity between his emotional state and her feelings and behaviors. Getting butthurt is a clear and obvious sign that a man might struggle with covert validation - because if he were self-validated, then her feelings or behaviors toward him that caused him to get butthurt would otherwise have rolled off like water on wax. He doesn't need her to feel or behave in a certain way toward him in order for him to experience fullness in his life, so her negativity doesn't diminish his fullness either.

  • COMPARISON: When one person's validation comes not from how someone feels or behaves toward them, but from their superiority to them. A sports team feels validated in their skills and accomplishments when they win a game against another team. Similarly, the losing team feels de-validated at the loss. In marriage, one person's sense of validation may come from feelings of superiority over their spouse, and this can lead to significant troubles when the allegedly "lesser" spouse either (1) accomplishes something that threatens this superiority, and therefore he cannot rejoice with his wife or empathize with her successes, or (2) attacks the superiority of the validation-seeker by criticizing aspects of his life that validated his feelings of superiority. He will then do things to re-establish his superiority as a means of seeking to re-validate himself. Note: the "I am the prize" mentality doesn't mean a man should seek validation in the fact that he is better than his wife; rather, it is a simplified way of communicating confidence, independent of validation-seeking, that cuts out a lot of the nuance.

  • PERCEPTION: When a person's validation comes not from who they are, but in how they think and what they know. A philosopher may recognize that he is of little value in the grand scheme of the universe, but finds validation in the fact that he understands how that universe functions. When something challenges his understanding and perception of how the world and people function, he must argue against them to maintain his sense of validation - that he was right and they are wrong. This can also apply not only to one's perception of the external world, but also a self-perception. An athletic man who looks to his physical accomplishments as the foundation of his identity will lose that sense of validation when: (1) even though he is still athletically successful, a higher priority in life comes along that stretches his sense of self into an area where he is less successful (ex. he has a kid and realizes he is failing as a father), or (2) he is no longer able to compete with other athletes, such as due to age or injury, and thus he has to redefine his sense of self and identity.

  • CONTROL: Some people find validation in life through power and control. They don't care if they're better than someone or not, or if their wife loves them or not, or if their perceptions are right or wrong. If someone else is better, that's fine - as long as they can control that better person. It doesn't matter if his wife loves or cares about him, as long as he has adequate assurances that she'll behave the way he wants her to. As long as he is in control of his world and anything that might threaten his world, he is happy. If something happens that is beyond his control, either he emotionally unravels or he takes measures to regain control.

  • PURPOSEFUL: When a person looks to an external objective and allows the accomplishment or failure of that objective to be the source of validation in his life. This can either be healthy or harmful, depending on the appropriateness of the objective. It would be harmful if a 4-foot-tall white man sought validation in his mission in life to be an NBA star. It would be perfectly appropriate if that same man sought validation in his mission to become a partner with a major national law firm.

  • NEGATIVE/INVERSE: When a person takes on the victim mentality and refuses to be happy, despite opportunities for happiness that are thrown their way. They refuse to feel or accept any suggestion of validation over their lives, determined to live in the view that they are invalid, worthless, broken, unloved, or the like. If someone tells them they're beautiful, they snap back and honestly believe, "No, I'm hideous." If you tell them they're successful, he replies with sincerity, "No, I'm a failure." It's virtually impossible to convince them otherwise. Why? While they may seem to reject any validation-seeking on the surface by their direct denials and refutations, they are actually trying to find validation in their own self-perception. That is, they care more about being right about their worthlessness than they do about finding value in their lives, and thus they feel validated when something else goes wrong for them, as it proves their perceptions right. This is where many people with depression, mood disorders, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder live.

This is, of course a non-exclusive list, and many of these things overlap one another. They're just common ones I see among my clients and people and general.


OVERCOMING VALIDATION-SEEKING

I'm sure there are a multitude of strategies for dealing with harmful validation-seeking. Here's my suggestion out of those options, but do what works for you.

FIRST: Figure out when you're validation-seeking and when you're not. Look for signs of emotional instability, a controlling nature, an internal need to win debates, a desire to show off your accomplishments, etc. are all indications (though not de facto criteria) that someone is validation-seeking. The list of indicators can be very large and wide because, as I said above, validation-seeking is inherent in the motivation for most human behaviors.

SECOND: Once you've identified when you're validation seeking, figure out if it's helpful or harmful to your life and mission. Is it increasing your power, wealth, influence, etc. over your environment and those around you? Continue doing it. Is it causing you to become emotionally volatile, unattractive, and destroying your sense of self-worth? Cut that crap out.

THIRD: Once you've identified the negative forms of validation-seeking, two things can work in-tandem for you to overcome them:

  1. You must find another source of validation. No one can be functional in the world without any validation at all. The primary safe sources are God (for Christians) or oneself (for everyone else).

  2. Second, you must experience failure in your destructive validation-seeking tendencies in order to shift your psychological foundation from the old source to the new source. That is, you must see, experience, and understand that the new source of validation is sufficient for you even when the old source fails.

In order to accomplish these, I recommend specifically placing yourself in situations where you know you may not get the validation you seek. For example, if a guy sees his wife's attraction to him as a source of validation (covert, perception, subtle, etc.) he should initiate sex with her a lot. For one, he will likely actually end up having more sex that way. Second, it will also give him an opportunity to recognize that he can be stable and hold frame on the inevitable times that she turns him down, thereby learning to rely on his newly found internal sources of validation.


CONCLUSION

In all of this, remember that Thoreau is not the model man we should all be striving to become. We should not all be leaving society to become hermits in the middle of the woods. For some, if that's your goal, go for it. But the majority of people are rightfully interdependent with others. We cannot isolate ourselves from all relationships. And interdependency brings with it an inherent drive for validation from others, lest we be involuntarily cut off from the community and forced into the Thoreau life.

In his book Understanding People, Dr. Larry Crabb hypothesized that all men have two core longings: (1) relationships with others and (2) to make an impact on our world. If he is right, and I believe he is, we will always be finding some way to look for validation in these aspects of our lives.

What I propose is that we take control of the means by which we experience validation, not placing it in the hands of our wives, friends, or societal perception, but by recognizing that we are in control of who we allow to judge our lives and placing the degree of validation we seek from different sources with the appropriate sources and in the appropriate weight - validation in our work performance from our boss, validation in our sense of identity and self-worth from ourselves (or, for Christians, from God), etc.