I have been puzzling over this. I am not sure how it builds a healthy relationship if being a well differentiated adult means learning to validate ourselves. I can try to validate H and I can accept he doesn't have the skills or capacity to validate me, and as an adult I need to be working towards self-validation. But then don't I want to be in a relationship with someone who can self-validate too? Doesn't dishing it out just stop him learning to do it for himself, and isn't withdrawing validation a part of going dark and removing the benefits of being in a marriage from the spouse who has BDd?
Just curious as to what people's thoughts are on this.
Alison you are exactly right, the goal in a healthy relationship is two-way validation. In a DB'ing situation we're obviously not talking about healthy relationships, so validation is very much a one-way street as LB so aptly described a couple pages back. Now in your case and a few others, the situation is even more complicated because you are dealing with a full-blown narcissist and validating a narcissist can backfire because it's basically feeding their narcissism. So you can still validate, but you have to be careful to do it in a way that he can't interpret as you opening the door to more emotional/ verbal abuse from him.
