That’s really right out of Schnarch, though maybe not in so many words. What I am alluding to in your sitch is that I think the idea that “you cannot force someone else to change” is holding you back. I understand the value of this idea, I know you do, but does your BF?
You know he has to make his changes for himself, that you cannot force him to. Intellectually he knows this too, or at least he has learned it from you and his AA meetings. But that flies in the face of everything he has learned all his life. When his mother steps back from him, she does it because she is pissed at him for not obeying her wishes and it is her way of controlling him.
He has be trained to internalize this and feel guilty for it. He has also been trained to believe that this is really how his mother shows her love for him. He feels loved when his mother in all in his stuff, fussing over him, telling him what to do and how to do it. That is when he feels connected. As dysfunctional as it may be, that is what he is.
When you leave him to tackle his own issues, I am guessing that he feels you are withdrawing and punishing him. He internalizes it and feels guilty. But he does not get the other enmeshment from you that his mother gives him. So he feels the negative part but does not get the positive part (at least what he considers to be positive.) What works for a healthy person in an adult relationship, with healthy boundaries, does not seem to work for him. How can it? He is a traumatize 10 year old. He has not really had any training in how to transition those previous feelings into more healthy feelings. To tell him to act like an adult and be responsible may be more than he can face or wants to face.
That is why I have always had a hard time with the idea that “you cannot force someone else to change.” What if they really want you to force them because that is all they know? I see this along the same lines of a healthy, controlled level of jealousy. So I think the idea that “you cannot force someone else to change” should be a goal, not something put into practice all at once or too soon. A lot of other stuff needs to come into alignment before this idea can take hold. So not forcing someone else to change may feel like abandonment to them, KWIM?
