One of the best ways to make your partner feel valued is to validate their feelings, but you don’t have to stop there. You can also validate your partner’s personality traits and associated behaviors, helping them feel affirmed for all of who they are. Validation means offering understanding and acceptance, not necessarily approval, so that you can give it even in unhappy moments or when your partner is dealing with problematic aspects of their personality. It’s like saying, “I honor who you are.”
That can be a big asset in a relationship, because your nonjudgmental attention will speak volumes about how much you love your partner, and they’ll notice. Here, we’ll give you some ideas for validating an Advocate (INFJ) partner based on some common behaviors associated with that personality type. But these are just a starting point to help you practice validation, and you can certainly find many more ways to validate your partner’s unique personality.
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Advocate Qualities to Validate
Detailed Imagination
Intuitive personalities enjoy delving into their vivid imaginations, and Advocates have their own way of doing so. They don’t just play with possibilities in their minds – they try to arrive at some degree of certainty or, at least, well-formed, purposeful beliefs. Even when contemplating the intangible or unproven, they have a tendency to commit to their views – a structure that’s not always easy for them to undo in response to external input. That can be a beneficial or troublesome thing at times, as you likely know.
On the plus side, a detailed imagination can give your Advocate partner a passionate creative drive, helping them persevere through doubts, setbacks, or anything that would stay them from their chosen course. You’ve probably seen this personality facet at work when your partner is pursuing goals – imagination serves as a source of motivation in both the conception and execution of goals. Validating that merely requires remarking on it appreciatively for the personality asset that it is.
But it’s also likely that you’ve seen your Advocate partner have some trouble when something threatens an imaginative construct that they’ve attached a lot of importance to. A desire to hold on to their vision can easily blind them to new information or changing circumstances. It may even make them resistant to helpful creative criticism. You may observe your partner passing through reactions ranging from denial to despair as they try to integrate their own idea or belief with external factors, and that can sap their motivation and joy.
One of the best ways to validate your partner’s detailed imagination is to observe and be aware of what’s going on in it. It’s very supportive to show interest in your partner’s inspirations, but it also subtly equips you to help them when things don’t unfold as they’d hoped. You may be able to see objectively where their imagination and reality diverge and then step in with support. That means asking questions, encouraging them to share their ideas, and talking through possibilities together – but withholding your judgment or opinions, unless specifically asked for them.
Chances are your reflective involvement will help your partner access their own wisdom and adjust their views and approaches. That’s good, because Advocates don’t like feeling pressured or controlled. And frankly, you’re not responsible for making your partner’s dreams come true or grounding them when their imagination gets carried away. But when you offer understanding and acceptance for how their imagination functions, you can be a supportive companion as they move through their own experiences in their own way.
Emotional Symbiosis
Advocates can be very individualistic, yet when they care for someone – be it a friend, family member, or their partner – they often experience a kind of vulnerability through that connection. The welfare, emotional state, and life experiences of their loved ones can affect Advocates powerfully, for better or worse. If Advocates are choosy about truly opening up to others, it may be partly because doing so almost automatically includes this kind of sensitivity.
In your own relationship, you’re hopefully aware of just how much your Advocate partner’s mental and emotional state cues off of you – how your words, actions, and feelings resonate in their life. You may also notice how they look to you for your responses to their thoughts, feelings, and day-to-day experiences. Being aware of that kind of interconnectedness is the first step to validating this important part of your partner’s personality.
It’s also important to note that your way of showing an emotional connection may not be the same as your partner’s. That’s okay, and you can work to express yourself in your own way. (But do find a way.) For the sake of validating your partner, you can focus on understanding and acknowledging how your connection affects them, including showing that you understand and accept it.
That can look like being aware of how your mood can influence your partner, how your words sound to them, and how your choices affect their life. It also means being available to listen when they want to share their thoughts and feelings and knowing that your reactions will mean a lot to them. Validating their sense of connection just means being considerate of the fact that deeply bonded people share each other’s emotional consequences. Empathy is a double-edged sword.
You can also validate your Advocate partner’s emotional connection to others by understanding just how deep it may go. It may seem odd to you how happy or sad your partner can be about things that happen to other people, but you can show that you understand.
Impatience
Advocates are at the top of the personality scale when it comes to feeling impatient, but that may not always be obvious compared to more outgoing personality types. Advocates often internalize their impatience rather than expressing it openly, or they might show it subtly in secondary forms like stress, disappointment, or frustration. You may have noticed this in your partner when things don’t happen as they want them to.
Impatience often stems from a disparity between desire or expectation and reality. Given that they possess great vision and focused intent, Advocate personalities can be especially sensitive to such frustrations – the more passionate their desire, the more annoying it is when it seems out of reach. So validating your partner’s impatience is really more about understanding their intense desires, hopes, and expectations. Showing that you’re aware of why they’re impatient is a way to respect their personality without necessarily encouraging this behavior.
The core goal of validating your partner is to help them feel good about who they are and to accept themselves without judgment. Usually, validating facets of their personality means openly showing that you understand and accept them, problematic or otherwise. But openly acknowledging when your Advocate partner is being impatient is risky, no matter how you do it. It may make them feel flawed because it implies that their natural response is somehow wrong (which it isn’t, even if it’s sometimes unhelpful).
Instead, you can mix passive validation of your partner’s impatience with some subtle patience modeling of your own. Showing that you think their sense of frustration or urgency is a reasonable response will be supportive, but you can stop short of mirroring or feeding their negative responses. In fact, your partner may find it reassuring if you project confidence and optimism even as you offer understanding and acceptance of their impatience.
Conclusion: Seeing Their View
Validating an Advocate partner’s personality is easier when you can step inside their mind and see things as they do. You can’t force that entry, but it’s likely that your partner is constantly inviting you inside in various ways. Giving them understanding and acceptance means consciously taking them up on those invitations and taking a tour of whatever they want to share with you. You’ll be able to see how their personality manifests itself.
It’s important to remember that while romantic partners almost certainly crave and thrive on each other’s approval, validation is something different. You and your partner won’t always have the same thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and reactions, and validating each other’s personalities can allow those differences to coexist peacefully. It’s not always easy to fully love and accept oneself, so having a partner who makes their acceptance and understanding clear can be an amazing, wonderful thing.
Further Reading
- How to Ask Out an Advocate (INFJ)
- 7 Random Ways Advocates (INFJs) Are the Most Extreme Personality Type
- 4 Ways Advocates (INFJs) Can Spread Positive Change Even Better
- Learn more about what makes Advocates tick with our Premium Profile.
- Check out our other articles in this series for tips on validating your Mediator (INFP), Campaigner (ENFP), Defender (ISFJ), Consul (ESFJ), or Logician (INTP) partner.