Self validation avoids these relationship problems, but it leaves a bad taste in people’s mouth because the pull of being desired and loved is so great.
Being loved and desired is great. *Needing* to be desired and loved (which I think is the same as the pull of being desired and loved being so great) is a big problem.
How can that part of other-validation be so bad?
Because no one can provide it to you all the time and what will you do when you don't get it? You've already decided you *need* it and now it's not being provided. Plus, to get what you *need*, you almost always mold your behavior to something that you believe will result in receiving what you need from the other person. This is the Nice Guy covert contract. "If I provide for you and help with the housework and support your activities and do whatever else it is you say you want, you will in turn provide me with what I want...sexual desire (or whatever else)." Now you're not *you*, you're the person you think will earn the love and desire you want. That's a recipe for disaster.
This reminds me of Don Miguel Ruiz's "magic kitchen", though it's not exactly parallel. (see Don Miguel's "magic kitchen"). Until you can love and accept yourself just as you are (which implies not needing outside validation), you're susceptible to letting someone else control you in exchange for giving you the validation you believe you need. That other person may have no early desire to control you and they may not want to be on the hook for providing the validation you crave, so you go out of your way to figure out what it is they *might* want and you start giving it to them so they'll give what you want. And you become pissy and resentful when they don't live up to their end of the covert contract, since it seems perfectly reasonable in your eyes. "See, I'm giving you what you want and what *I* want would be very easy for you to give, why won't you do it?"
...interdependence looks on the surface to be exactly the same as enmeshment. There is the deep involvement with the affairs of one another, the concern over how each other feels, and I suspect there is even the need to be desired and loved.
You had me right up to the last part. If you don't need validation you're MORE free to be deeply involved with another and have concern over how they feel, not less.
I think I agree with most everything else in your post, but I don't see the way you describe interdependence as being anything more than the natural state that would exist between two self-validating people who enjoy being in a relationship with one another. Interdependence isn't a separate entity.
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