... but I am also concerned (and so is the last T) that it will make him throw up his hands and say forget it.
This is a real and legitimate danger and one of the reasons why I do not buy wholesale into Schnarch. Learning to differentiate and “hold onto yourself” is great goal, but for those of us who are more dysfunctional, moving to that state is a humongous undertaking. In fact, I believe it can be so great that a person like your H cannot even begin to understand what it means or how he cold possibly do it. So he just gives up.
That is why I have been pushing on this board the idea that Schnarch needs to be modified for certain people. The Adult Attachment Theory and the process used for post traumatic stress victims seems to me to fill the gap in Schnarch. Offering some validation, but in continually smaller doses allows a person to ease into differentiation at a measured pace. This seemed very obvious to me when Schnarch was on the Dateline TV show. One couple was able to make the transition, the other was not and ended up divorcing. I think that marriage could have been saved.
This is why I have been cautioning you to give a little to your H, offer him the carrot of your approval and your love as he undertakes the stick of reform. Victims like him need a LOT of the carrot. If you can take two steps forward for each on back (or maybe 4 forward for every 3 back), then you might be doing quite well. But remember, because of the ongoing enmeshment that still exists, you have much more power in this process that another wife would with a more functional H. That H might be able to make a jump to differentiation all by himself, without any input from the wife, and then come to decide he does not need the wife at all. IMO it can be a two edged sword.
