Young men who get stuck doing nothing...

[Bunny890]

My younger brother is living at home with my parents and I know several other young men who also get 'stuck' at home - endlessly online, alienate friends, not able to even look for employment or engage with healthcare. I realise that there is a mental health element to this, but I can't help but feel frustrated - Mu

Often it’s because they have zero meaning or possibility of meaning to their life. I genuinely think Jordan Peterson is one of the very few people trying to tackle this.

If it's neither of these (and by serious mental health issues I mean suicidal, or unsafe to be left alone), then your mum is actively choosing to enable him.

National Service, doesnt have to be military. Get the young unemployable out in the community doing stuff.

It’s definitely not as simple as “just kick them out”. That would almost definitely lead to suicide in a lot of cases unfortunately

This was my brother. We’ve had the exact same upbringing/ parents. I went to uni, got a good job, got married and have two children (I realise not everyone wants to do these things, but I’m just illustrating a point)
my brother has no qualifications and was in my parents extension gaming all day, the room was disgusting.
I couldn’t understand why my parents were essentially allowing this to happen- he was wasting his life. Everyone was treading on eggshells with him and he became really socially awkward. On the rare occasions he would join us for family events it was painful to watch him talk to cousins/ aunts/ uncles. It really was a horrendous time, and it went on for a good ten years.
Anyway, I saw a few jobs that he might like and spoke to him. He expressed interest and I applied for one for him. He got the job and I can’t begin to describe the change in him. He has confidence, hardly games, has a girlfriend.
It was bloody heartbreaking and frustrating seeing him waste his life away. However, I do agree this seems to be a problem solely young men have. I can’t get my head around it. I love my parents dearly but can’t help think they enabled his behaviour. He was never pushed to find a job or move out- he was essentially a child.

I think kids are more anxious because parenting has become over involved. The university/a-level threads on here baffle me. My parents probably couldn’t have told you which a-levels I was even doing. A lot of parents seem to be unable to accept the fact their kid isn’t bright or just average, and try to push them towards a ‘good university’ anyway, ‘because we’re middle class and that’s what happens’. And the huge angst when their kid gets only fair grades and then misses this ‘big offer’ they’ve been offered based on the parents persuading the teachers to predict them grades they were never going to get.

Parents also seem unable to let their kids grow up. The number of hysterical threads from an upset parent who has going out their son/daughter is having sex at 16-17 is laughable. As are the threads where the 18 year old came home drunk ‘so we had a chat about alcoholism and choking on your own vomit’.

What would happen if you turned the internet off?

Or limited it ( you can do this per device, put it on a timer)

Who is paying for this as benefits for a regular person usually mean going out to sign on at the job centre and be actively seeking work?

I think the gulf between women as portrayed in porn (basically coerced automats) and real human beings comes as a shock to boys who’ve grown up literally physiologically conditioning themselves to respond to choking/ violence etc.

Unless your mum can man/woman up enough to make changes he won’t change.

Lots of interesting questions.

We had as similar upbringings as most siblings had. He wasn't babied, and our parents did expect a degree of independence and pitching in (although after this I expect much more of my DC). He had a nice childhood, an expensive education and has a degree from a very good university. He did struggle at his first job. The first sign he wasn't doing well as well as his school friends he literally gave up.

I suggested Jordan Peterson to him and massively got into it myself - trying to model how positive changes can happen. But he will barely speak to me.

Posters who suggest kicking him out - it isn't that simple. We've tried council accomodation and he just disappears and comes back home. We are all terrified as he has threatened suicide in the past. It's not worth the stress. That's why Mum gave up her career as she is so worried about him taking his own life.

Definitely not drugs. He has seen a psychiatrist but refuses to take any medication.

Some part of me feels like there is a misogynistic streak to this. I can feel like he is purposefully ruining his life as a way to punish my Mum for working, or for girls not going out with him. Despite doing nothing he does act like we are all below him. There have been periods when he has only spoken to us in Japanese knowing none of us understand... Sometimes the looks he gives me are of disgust (I'm a very normal looking women in my 30s...)

@Nina9870 I'm so pleased for you and your family that it worked out. We've been down this route and I worry that he is too far gone. He becomes angry at any suggestions as they are l 'below' him and show what little we think of him...

Do you know what it is that he won't take medication for?

Has he ever attempted suicide, or is the threat of it used as a control mechanism?

@Octomore he has threatened suicide a lot so Mum feels she can't leave him alone. There are things Mum and Dad have done I haven't agreed with, but I couldn't leave my child alone of I thought that they would take their own life. On one level I think the threats are a means of control.

@RoseslnTheHospital i believe he threatens suicide as a means to control (like when he was kicked out). The violence has happened when the internet was removed

Its a downward spiral. DS was working and living abroad then covid hit and he had to come home. He applied for so many jobs, across a wide range. Got nowhere. He got to the stage of being up all night gaming and sleeping half the day. I could see all the job applications he was making. It wasn’t like he wasn’t trying. He has now managed to find work, through a friend of mine who hooked him up with an interview with someone she knows. Without that, he’d be in the pits of depression still up all night and doing nothing.

Why was it so hard for him to get a job? I honestly don’t know. I would proof read his applications and they were good. He was applying for everything from retail to admin to various apprenticeships. But of course the longer he was unemployed the less “desirable” a candidate he became.

I think the difference is that, in most cases, women seek help for depression and men don’t. They retreat.

I blame the internet. This is a generation who've grown up with their primary interactions through a screen. They lack real world skills.

@Bunny890 well see how it goes. He’s been in the job a year, and things are more ‘normal’ definitely but he absolutely has an addictive personality.
also, similar to your brother, he lost all his real friends when he was gaming coz he basically couldn’t be bothered to make the effort with real people. He’d talk about going to Florida to stay with ‘friends’ who he’d never met and knew because he spoke to them through a game. We were beside ourselves with worry.
I truly hope there’s light at the end of the tunnel for him, I do understand how hard it is on families xx

Does you brother take care of himself as in cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. or does your mum do it all for him?

Any chance he is into the incel movement?

My Son's Dad has regressed to this. He had a job when we met and was pretty normal, but after a while began to complain endlessly about it and say that it was affecting his mental health and making him suicidal, but refused to even discuss looking for another job. After a real suicide attempt I suggested that he takes a few months of sickleave while searching for something more suitable. Five years later (we broke up three years ago) he still doesn't work and has no intention of ever doing so. He doesn't want to do any form of training, won't speak to any of his old friends, complains and sulks about having to parent our Son 30% of the time and refuses to take him out anywhere. He doesn't live at home because his parents won't have him back, but they're landlords and have let him have one of their properties for which his benefits pays the rent.

He was honestly so, so normal until about age 26 when he just completely shut down. I've tried absolutely everything to get through to him but it's impossible. We strongly suspect that he has ADHD which probably contributes, but he won't contact the Doctor to get assessed.

Why has your mum given up work to care for him? It sounds like she may be enabling him, even if that hasn't been the intention.

My (neurodivergent) sister was close to falling in this hole. She was 27, when my parents went "we're moving house and you're not coming with us." She had to pull her finger out then!

Your parents do sound like they are terrified of him and are then enabling him as a result. It really isn't going to improve unless they set boundaries and enforce them.

Yes, its happening a lot. I guess parent or parents think they'll grow out of it and don't intervene, finding it safer or easier for them to be at home on the computer, kid gets more and more anxious about outside world, stops going to school, and before you know it they're bigger than you, meltdown or get aggressive when you put any pressure on. They are missing developmental stages - too adult too soon (without guidance expectations or role modelling) and not ready to be adults when they are adults.

My mum has one of these aged 46 living in her back bedroom and frankly its all her fault. He gets away with murder, Treats her like crap,she feeds him.washes for him.irons for him,giveshim her car when he runs out of petrol,does his pack up for work and even scrapes shit off his shoes if he has stood in something.He has been out of work a month now and its works fault,not. He lives a doddle of a life coming and going when he pleases and financed constantly.And all you get if you say anything is leave him alone poor little bugger,you dont understand he is very unlucky,I mean seriously? He doesnt have a bill to pay all his money is his and this month from work is him needing a rest,not getting paid but thats ok. He even had the cheek to say to me once I think mum has held me back in life,,,how dare he? But I guess its easier to hide and be carried through life than have the balls to go out and live. I am disgusted with the pair of them totally ashamed of them both.

He spoke to you in Japanese so none of you could understand. Wtf.

Go on here and see if you can get a translation if ‘you’re a lazy bastard whose making our lives harder because you’re pathetic. Fuck off and get a job you prick’ into Japanese and shout it at him in Japanese lol.

Your mum needs counselling as she is enabling his behaviour.