Cocklodgers - Myth or Reality? Vote please.

[GarlicMonkey]

Been chatting about my own short lived, but significant, historic cocklodger experience with DP. Mine was such an entited baby & although I got him out of my house (back to his mum's back bedroom) & my bank balance pretty quick, it took ages to shake him off completely. I'd wrecked all of his dreams, robbed him of his future, waa, waa, strop.... aye mate, your future of eternally living like a teenager while I provide for you.

DP thinks it must have been a one off because 'there surely can't be many people like that?'. My single friend has explained to him her online dating strategy for early cocklodger detection (it's great, she should publish it) after being stung once but he's still pretty stunned & in denial.

So, are they rare & me & my friendship group have just been unlucky, or are they a definite thing to be on guard for?

YABU - No, they're not a thing.
YANBU - Yes, they're a thing.

Any stories also appreciated.

@Zilla1

Picsinred, I expect his mother is using cognitive dissonance to avoid recognising what he was really like. I presume there is a dichotomy - if your child is exploiting then that is what partners do for love, share and so on. If your child is exploited then their partner is a CL.

Of course after she threw him out he went home to mummy. She was less vocal at this time. Until he got a new victim of course. She treated him like a prince, whilst giving her daughter zero support/money. She didn’t go to her daughters wedding as she needed to pay to travel there.

Very much a reality. I have suffered two.

OP - I want to see the list of questions!

When I was dating a couple of years ago, I was astonished at how shamelessly inadequate so many guys my age (mid 40s, then) are. I thought the ones I had encountered to date were just my bad luck, but no, they are legion. I didn't get close enough to them for them to start literally lodging, ie, moving in - I was only looking for FWBs and one of my rules was that they never came to my house (where my kids live). Of course, that ruled some out straight away, as there was no other realistic place to go!

Then I got used to expecting the Phone Call, or the Text Request, usually after I had seen them three times. Something has gone wrong, he needs help - money or some other kind of support. Sometimes outright asked for, sometimes hinted.

I would ignore. If the guy was fun and good in bed, i would just not do what he asked and give him a chance to continue our thing on the basis that I wasn't going to bail him out of anything or provide material support. I wouldn't argue, or justify myself, or apologise. I would just do nothing. Sometimes they accepted it, and the thing continued on those terms - quite often I would never see them again

@Meruem

At least a proper gigolo takes care of his appearance and treats his job as an art form, and doesn't just lie around drinking beer and farting on the sofa

This made me laugh but sadly there's more than a grain of truth in it! These men are often no great "catch" in any way so why so many women fall for it, I don't know. I guess loneliness.

This is what you always see in the Take a Break stories. "I fell for Joe's dark good looks and cheeky smile when he came into the shop. A week later he moved in." The bloke in the picture is always a rat faced weasel.

@honeylulu I have to laugh about it now. He lived in a house share, so he’d often come over to mine completely empty handed. I’d always make sure we went out for lunch and dinner just so that costs were shared.

I’ve slowly figured out a way to weed out these types. If they live in a house share, don’t drive, have no aspirations or career or really a desire for hard work and they can’t match my lifestyle due to any of the above then it’s an instant no from me. Or equally if they’re overly interested in my businesses. I had a guy recently ask me relatively personal financial info, I told him to piss off in no uncertain terms. I wouldn’t think to ask someone i’d just started talking to how much they earned.

I work hard, I like holidays and nice things. If you can’t go half’s or occasionally treat us to dinner then we won’t really be compatible long term. That makes me sound rather materialistic but ultimately I don’t want any freeloaders. I doubt I’ll ever want to live full time with a man again.

Spaceraiders, I find what you said about asking for financial information interesting. I'd view this the same as you though I've American friends for whom the norm seems to be very upfront about personal finances and education though as part of a process of assortive?dating, so that people date people of near identical background and earnings.

@ShebaShimmyShake

On MN, what I notice is that often cocklodgers get in because the woman has been conditioned to be strong and independent and, often, at some point has been so scared of appearing to be grabby etc that she over compensates.

I see this in real life a lot as well.

This. I think this is compounded by treating people how you would like to be treated yourself. My CL was just starting a new job, needed new place to live and didn't want to move back in with his DM. He had a credit card debt of a couple of grand. It seemed OK at the time to say move in with me as I can manage most of the bills on my own already. We agreed that his salary would go on paying off the CC so that in 6mths time he would be clear of debt and would then go halves on everything.

Needless to say it didn't get paid off and he just kept finding reasons why it couldn't be paid off and then started needing loans for xyz. The minute I stopped bailing him out, he found someone else to sponge off.

His mother encouraged his behaviour- she used money to control all the members of his family. He has been unable to sustain a relationship since and lives with her most of the time and she is unlikely to ever be rid of him as age is really impacting on his ability to charm women into falling for his cocklodging ways.

@Hailtomyteeth

Make a great article, this.

Right? After just a couple of intro posts from the OP I am fully expecting to see this in the Daily Mail.

I've actually got to the point where I am surprised if a man isn't a CL. Maybe it's because I live in Croydon, i don't know, but yeah, they are a thing (to avoid).

I may be wrong, but I don't think it's Mail fodder. They're more interested in things with a misogynistic spin that present women badly. That's why they creamed themselves over stuff like the woman who was upset that her husband machine washed and ruined her delicate underwear, or women considering fessing up to ancient affairs, or bridezillas, or women who want to be taken in and totally infantilised by a man. Something like this isn't really in the mould. I think.

Sheba, I thought the same. For some reason, I tend to think of CL and their mothers as being the Wail's core readership.

If the OP's friend is taking some time with her screening questions, could we have some suggestions?

Would 'what are your ambitions and what would you do if you don't achieve them?' be too overt?

@cees

What do you mean by "paddy strop"

It’s an old fashioned racist term that panders to the stereotype that Irish people are volatile and stupid.

It’s a shame we still have to see it being thrown around casually.

@Zilla1 @ShebaShimmyShake but the DM love getting their readers riled up too. It’s just about the clicks and number of comments.

It’s also mainly for me because OP has some promised “list of CL identifiers” that they’ve mysteriously failed to produce! Also I’m bored this afternoon. Must get one of those hobbies all the fellas mentioned on here seem to have

I tripped over an Italian semi-cocklodger a few years ago. An interesting variant within the species. He was a hardworking, well presented, good earner with his own apartment which was always immaculate. He paid his share of meals and drinks, gave me flowers, etc. There were no red flags and life was moving towards us moving in.

Then one day I needed to press a shirt and was looking around for the iron. There wasn’t one. It transpired that his Mama (in her 70s) came to his apartment twice a week to clean, do his shopping and pick up/drop off his laundry. He mused that it would be lovely for her when I move in as she would be able to stop having to do all this for him......... The plot twist when I left and never went back seemed to surprise him.

I think it was an Italian thing. He was an only child and his behaviour didn’t seem to surprise other Italian friends. Mama takes care of her little boy until he marries and she hands over to her daughter in law. Except that the little boy was in his 40s and I now have a fascinating insight into the reason for the drop in marriage rates in Italy.

*Please don't blame women for these men.

I don't know that I see any consistency in this and cocklodging is really more of a financial issue so not so much about mummy doing everything. From this thread alone, it seems half the time they're cocklodgers because they've been tossed out of their parents house!*

I'm just sharing my experience, it's certainly been a link in the ones I've known!

I remember a male boss years ago when I was in my early 20s who made me laugh because someone had suggested that perhaps they should introduce me to some guy who had previously worked at the firm, before I joined. And my boss said, in a flash, "Oh god no, Space would never date him - he still lives with his parents."

So maybe I was too quick to say that we shouldn't blame women/parents! .

But more seriously, I do think most CLs are very much misogynists more than anything else. And they're also the type who in the 21st century are struggling with this idea that actually they have to work and compete with the ENTIRE population and not just half the population (even more so if they're white men where they now also have to compete with men who aren't white) and they're just so bloody resentful and convinced the world owes them something that they're quite happy to sponge off a woman indefinitely.

I indirectly know a white man like this. He himself isn't really working. He's supported by the fact that he and his girlfriend live with his parents and his girlfriend works for his father.... It astonishes me that in their daily commute together the girlfriend and the father haven't worked out they're both being massively taken advantage of!

I think men are getting a hard time here. Before I get roasted please read on.

Normally no man will complain about weak men being mocked. As all men are competitive and will happily laugh at stories about a man crying on a door step for three days after getting kicked out. Or stamping his foot to get attention, getting free food, blaming, not contributing and other child like behavior of the cocklodger. Most men will laugh and say what a parasite.

Women wanted to go out and work and have careers. Its all good and women's lives are much enriched for it. Some men have seen an opportunity to enrich their lives, by not working and taking advantage. They ask, if two people are earning then do i have to? The work environment can be tough especially for a lazy man. So he likes to stay at home and chill at your expense.

The solution is simple no free lunch, no free board and no free sex. Stop being so nice to the parasitic cocklodger, who you think is going to change. Its his game not to change.

I hope i haven't been to harsh. Have a good day.

Definitely a real thing. Someone I thought wasn't in my life anymore told me his plans to move in with a girlfriend for the winter. A real user.

Incidentally - using paddy to mean anger has racist anti-Irish origins. I'm saying this to raise awareness, not guilt trip as it's so 'normal' many people don't think twice about using the word. Once you do know, it's good to avoid the word.

My cocklodger ex finally gave up pretending to work to pursue his dreams as an artist, when I divorced him. He had a very bad case of sexually transmitted debts and since his second wife divorced him, he's probably spread it a little further.

My first XH apparently works now he's given up booze so he's a reformed cocklodger.

My second hasn't had a job since 2008. Now I'm no longer in the picture he ponces cash off his mother. He's 50.

Agree about Paddy. And beyond the pale. And villain. (really).

I haven’t had a cocklodger myself, but my sister had a very obvious one a few years back. Was round for tea all the time, hung about so late he’d end up sleeping over, every night, never contributed to food bills or anything despite eating like it was an all you could eat restaurant, after a few weeks was on about moving in because he really had his feet under the table here (his words!). She saw what was going on thankfully and sent him on his way

Totally off topic and rather embarrassingly I always thought the term meant throwing a strop in a rice paddy field. i had visual imagery for someone in a huge temper jumping up and down in water!

I haven't met a lot of this type. One friend had one for a while - she had a terrible time with men in general, her first husband was a good earner but otherwise basically a man-child, though he improved after she left him. But she consistently chooses men with warning signs, probably a reflection of her growing up I think.

I know a female version as well, doesn't work at a job, doesn't clean, doesn't do childcare, doesn't cook, mostly plays video games all day. Her husband does the earning and some childcare, and I'm sorry to say that her 12 year old does a lot of the housework and childcare too. He's no great shakes either but does put in some effort.

@Theladyofshalot

Totally off topic and rather embarrassingly I always thought the term meant throwing a strop in a rice paddy field. i had visual imagery for someone in a huge temper jumping up and down in water!

This interpretation isn’t without its own racism tbh! Who is the “someone” jumping up and down? Not many rice paddy fields in the UK...