External Validation

This is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot, and Rachael wants to slow down and really define it, because understanding it will change how you see what happened to you. External validation means needing someone outside of yourself to confirm that you're okay. That you're good enough. That you're worthy of attention, of desire, of love. It's looking outward for the thing that's supposed to live inside you.
Nobody is born needing this. Babies don't wake up worried about whether they're lovable enough. That worry gets planted. Somewhere along the way, usually in childhood, somebody, a parent, a caregiver, an important relationship, sent the message, directly or indirectly, that this person wasn't quite enough as they were. And so they learned to go looking for proof otherwise. For some people that shows up as needing constant praise. For others it shows up as needing to be desired, to feel wanted, to feel chosen, over and over again, because the feeling never actually sticks. It fades, and then the search starts over.
This is a huge piece of what drives affairs. It's not that someone consciously decides "I need external validation, so I'm going to cheat." It's that there's a compulsive pull toward whatever makes that old wound quiet down for a moment. And it never actually heals it, because the wound isn't about whether someone finds you desirable today. It's about a much older, much deeper belief that got planted a long time ago. If this is part of what happened in your marriage, Rachael wants you to hear this clearly: it was never a math problem you could have solved by being enough. That need was already there, long before you.