Appreciating Others and Being Appreciated

Validation communicates to a person that what they said makes sense to you. It indicates that you can see the information from that person’s point of view and can accept that it has validity -- it is true for that person.  Validation is a temporary suspension or transcendence of your own point of view. 
You are conveying to your partner that their subjective experience is not wrong or right; it has its own logic and is a valid way of looking at things.