“Everything’s great with me,” they say, as you sit there staring, confused, wondering what the hell you’re missing because you’re having a completely different experience from them. When is a relationship not an actual relationship anymore?
There’s a simple truth that many people in difficult relationships need to hear: If one person says things are going great, and the other person says they’re not, they’re not going great.
A relationship is only as healthy as the person who’s struggling the most.
This might seem obvious, but when you’re in the middle of a relationship where your feelings are constantly dismissed, invalidated, or minimized, you start to question your own perception of reality. You start to wonder if maybe you are the problem. Maybe you’re too sensitive. Maybe you’re overreacting. Maybe things really are fine, and you just can’t see it.
But when one person in a relationship is unhappy, confused, hurt, or struggling, and the other person responds with “What’s your problem? Everything is fine,” that response itself is the problem. It’s a refusal to acknowledge your experience. It’s a denial of your reality. And it’s one of the most damaging patterns that can exist in any relationship.
Someone wrote to me describing this exact situation. They were having issues with their wife and seeing behaviors of threatening, verbal abuse, and yelling. For the longest time, he thought he just wasn’t good enough as a husband. That’s what she was telling him.
He tried to make his feelings known. He told her that these things really hurt him. But instead of hearing him, instead of acknowledging his pain, she dismissed it entirely.
When your partner refuses to acknowledge that there’s a problem when you’re clearly struggling, you’re not in a relationship. You’re in a one-sided dynamic where only one person’s perspective matters.
The Foundation That Makes Everything Else Possible
Before you can address any specific issue in a relationship, both people need to agree on basic reality. If you can’t even agree that a problem exists, you can’t work on solving it. This is why dismissal and invalidation are so destructive. They prevent any real progress from happening.
Think about what a healthy response looks like when someone you care about tells you they’re hurting. A healthy response is curiosity, concern, and a genuine desire to understand. It sounds like “I didn’t realize you were feeling this way. Tell me more. Help me understand what’s happening for you.”
Even if you don’t fully understand their perspective, even if you see things differently, a loving response acknowledges their experience as valid and real.
But in difficult relationships, especially emotionally abusive ones, that’s not what happens. Instead, you get defensiveness, you get denial, and you get blame shifted back onto you. The message becomes clear that your feelings don’t matter, your perspective is wrong, and you need to get over it.
This creates an impossible situation. You’re trying to communicate about a real problem you’re experiencing, but the other person won’t even acknowledge that the problem exists. They insist everything is fine, which makes you feel crazy for thinking it’s not.
Over time, this erodes your confidence in your own judgment. You start to doubt yourself. Maybe you are making too big a deal out of things. You think maybe you really are the problem.
The person who wrote to me had been told repeatedly that he wasn’t good enough as a husband. He internalized that message. He believed it. And so when he tried to express that her behavior was hurting him, he probably did it from a place of already feeling inadequate.
He was trying to fix himself, trying to be better, trying to meet her standards. But the real issue wasn’t his inadequacy. The real issue was her refusal to take responsibility for how her behavior affected him.
When someone consistently tells you that your feelings are wrong or that you shouldn’t feel the way you feel, they’re not interested in a real relationship. They’re interested in control. They want you to see things their way, feel things their way, and accept their version of reality as the only valid one.
What Happens When Only One Person Gets to Define Reality
In a healthy relationship, both people’s experiences matter, both people get to have feelings, perspectives, and needs, and both people contribute to defining what the relationship is and how it functions. But in an unhealthy relationship, only one person’s experience counts.
This is what makes emotional abuse so confusing and crazy-making. The abusive person gets to decide what’s real. They get to decide whether there’s a problem. They get to decide whether you should be upset. And if you disagree with their assessment, they’ll make sure you realize you’re the problem.
The person who wrote to me also described trying to make his feelings known. He told his wife that her threatening, verbal abuse, and yelling hurt him. That’s a reasonable thing to communicate! That’s what you’re supposed to do in a relationship when something bothers you:
You talk about it.
You express how you feel.
You work together to find a solution.
But what happened instead? She likely dismissed his concerns, minimized the impact of her behavior, or turned it around to make it his fault. She probably told him he was too sensitive, or that he deserved to be yelled at because of something he did, or that she wouldn’t have to threaten him if he would just do what she wanted.
This is the pattern that keeps people trapped. You try to address a legitimate problem, and instead of the other person hearing you and working with you to fix it, they make you feel like you’re the problem for bringing it up. Over time, you stop bringing things up. You stop expressing your feelings. And you stop trusting your own perception of what’s happening.
And that’s exactly what the abusive person wants. They want you to stop questioning them and to accept their version of reality without pushback. They want you to believe that everything is fine, even when you’re miserable, because it’s easier for them if you just go along with their narrative.
The truth is, if you’re unhappy in a relationship and your partner insists there’s nothing to be unhappy about, you have all the information you need. That’s not a partnership, that’s a dynamic where one person’s feelings and needs are prioritized, and the other person’s are dismissed.
Recognizing the Difference Between Disagreement and Dismissal
Healthy relationships include disagreement. Two people can see the same situation differently, and both perspectives can be valid. You might think something is a big deal, and your partner might think it’s not. That’s normal! What matters is how you both handle that difference.
In a healthy relationship, when you disagree about whether something is a problem, you talk about it. You listen to each other. You try to understand where the other person is coming from. And you look for compromise or solutions that work for both of you. Even if you don’t end up agreeing completely, you both feel heard and respected.
But dismissal is different. Dismissal says your perspective is wrong and doesn’t deserve consideration. Dismissal shuts down the conversation before it can even start. Dismissal tells you that your feelings are invalid and that you need to change them to match what the other person thinks you should feel.
When someone dismisses your experience, they’re not disagreeing with you. They’re erasing you. They’re telling you that your inner world, your emotional reality, your lived experience doesn’t count. Only theirs does.
The person who wrote in was being dismissed. His wife’s behavior was causing him real pain, but instead of acknowledging that pain and working to change the behavior causing it, she made him feel like he was the problem. She told him he wasn’t good enough. She made him believe that if he could just be a better husband, she wouldn’t have to yell at him, threaten him, or verbally abuse him.
That’s a lie! Her behavior is her responsibility, not his. No matter what he does or doesn’t do, she’s choosing how to respond:
She’s choosing to yell.
She’s choosing to threaten.
She’s choosing to be verbally abusive.
And when he tells her that it hurts him, she’s also choosing to dismiss his feelings rather than take responsibility for her actions.
This is a crucial distinction. In a healthy relationship, when you tell someone their behavior hurts you, they show they care. Maybe they didn’t realize the impact of what they were doing. Maybe they see things differently than you do. But they are supposed to care that you’re hurting, and be willing to talk about it and work on it together.
In an unhealthy relationship, when you tell someone their behavior hurts you, they make it your fault. They tell you you’re too sensitive. They tell you that you provoked them and that if you would just do what they want, they wouldn’t have to treat you that way. They especially refuse to take any responsibility for the pain they’re causing.
Moving Forward When Your Reality Isn’t Acknowledged
If you’re in a relationship where your feelings are consistently dismissed, where your experience of the relationship is denied, where you’re told that problems don’t exist when you’re clearly struggling, you have to make some hard decisions.
You can’t force someone to acknowledge your reality or make them care about your feelings if they’ve decided not to. And you can’t have a real conversation with someone who refuses to admit there’s anything to talk about.
What you can do is trust yourself. Trust that if you’re unhappy, there’s a reason. And if something feels wrong, it probably is. Trust that your feelings are valid even if the other person won’t validate them.
You can also set boundaries based on your own experience rather than waiting for the other person to agree that your experience is real. You don’t need their permission to protect yourself. You don’t need them to admit there’s a problem before you can take action to address it.
For the person who wrote in, this might mean accepting that his wife is not going to suddenly start acknowledging the impact of her behavior. She’s shown him who she is. She’s shown him that she’s more interested in blaming him than taking responsibility. She’s shown him that his feelings don’t matter to her as much as maintaining her position that everything is fine.
Once you accept that reality, you can make clearer decisions. And you can decide whether you’re willing to stay in a relationship where your feelings are dismissed.
You can also decide whether you want to keep trying to get through to someone who has shown no interest in hearing you and then make another decision about what you need to do to take care of yourself, regardless of whether the other person ever acknowledges that you have a right to those needs.
The hardest part is often letting go of the hope that they’ll finally understand and finally see what they’re doing and care enough to change. But hope based on potential rather than evidence keeps you stuck. What you need is clarity based on what actually is, not what you wish could be.
If one person says the relationship is fine and the other person is suffering, the relationship is not fine. That’s not up for debate. That’s reality. And you deserve to be in a relationship where your reality matters just as much as the other person’s does.
 | Paul Colaianni Paul Colaianni is a Behavior and Relationship Specialist with experience analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in the mechanics of behavioral change and the identification of hidden manipulation. |
