Does anyone else have a friend or someone they know who has somehow managed to go through life and managed to exist but not much else beyond that? Since the early 90s I've been friends with this guy who I long considered to be one of my best friends. We went to school together (including college) and while we were two totally different types, we still had a lot in common in our younger years. His father is a successful lawyer, and his father's father (his grandpa) was also a successful lawyer as well.
He is an only child and his parents are pretty well off. They always offered to pay for all of his school and he really had the way paved for him had he chosen to go down that path. Sometime around high school he started getting weird. Well, he'd always been a little weird, but come high school he started getting really weird. He went through this stage where he was afraid to leave the house. I'd ask him why and he'd tell me that he just felt like it was too dangerous. One time when we did managed to get him to leave the house we had to go out to the middle of nowhere to buy a car he'd been looking at. In the process he went into a full blown panic attack (in the middle of nowhere) complaining he could barely breathe. During his panic he begin to prognosticate and about what might happen if he had a heart attack in the middle of nowhere and couldn't get medical help. At the time he was 21 years old and perfectly healthy without any history of medical problems whatsoever.
Not long after he was diagnosed with depression. I believe it too, because he went from being a generally upbeat and fun to be around guy that I knew in high school to a much more depressive and dreary individual to be around. Life kept on moving and he dropped out of college, moved back in with his parents, and somehow managed to continue skating through life without actually doing anything.
He didn't get his first job until he was probably in his late 20s to early 30s. Upon getting his first job it lasted a week. Fast forward to current day (he's 39 now) and he's had probably 50 different jobs but none of them has lasted more than a week. He'll get a job, work there for a week, then quit. When I ask him why he keeps doing this and has never in his life had a job lasting more than a week, he'll respond by telling me, "Unless someone is going to pay me really good money for doing all this hard labor, I'm not going to work there.". He'll then proceed to tell me about how it's not fair that other people are getting paid $100 an hour for desk work when he's getting paid minimum wage for hard labor.
At 39 years old his parents are still paying for his food, his rent (he has a roommate who we've known since high school), etc. His mom still goes clothes shopping for him, buys him clothes she likes, then brings them home so he can decide which ones he likes and which ones he doesn't like. She returns the ones he doesn't like and he keeps the rest. He's never had a girlfriend in his entire life and mark my word, he will never, ever get married or have kids.
He's socially awkward and incredibly strange. He has no friends except me and his roommate from high school. I've tried to help him many times but he refuses to put in any real effort. At some point I gave up on trying to help him and just accepted that this is the way he's going to be for the rest of his life (which it is). He's here on this earth only to exist, nothing more. He has no car and takes an Uber everywhere he goes (which he rarely goes out). He sleeps 16 plus hours a day too.
It's very hard for me to be around him these days because it's depressing. I still maintaining a friendship with him because he's one of the only guys I still talk to from way back in the day, so I like to have that connection. Still, he's squandered his life and seems to have accepted this himself. It's really, really bizarre.
I feel bad for the guy, but as I always tell him, he is is own worst enemy. I've tried over the years to be motivational towards him. I tell him that he can change his life at any moment by deciding to get up, put himself together, and commit himself to something. It never, ever works. I've 100% accepted that this is how he will be the rest of his life. It's caused me in more recent years to move away from him more. I'm married with kids, a career, a house, and responsibilities. The people I generally choose to hangout with are people in the same situation. It's hard to find time to hang out with a guy who at the bare minimum doesn't even have a wife or a girlfriend to bring around.
I don't know how people end up like this, but it's certainly not uncommon it these days. Some of it I blame on him being an only child. Other parts I blame on his mom being one of the most neurotic, overbearing, and OCD people I've ever met. He was never even allowed to have a pet as a child and his home always resembled that of a clean, well kept museum on the inside. He was always too afraid of girls to ever make a move or even attempt to talk to one. He would always marvel at other people's successes, but instead of going out and making his own success he would look to me and say, "That's not fair that they get that but I don't.". In recent years he's even tried to float the idea to me that he'd thrive in a communist society because everything would be given to him. I have to not so gently remind him that in a communist society if they give you a job you don't just get to quit it. You work when they tell you to work and if you don't they'll throw you in a gulag. If you don't work there they'll simply kill you.
With all this being said, does anyone else have a friend or someone they know that is like this?
He is an only child and his parents are pretty well off. They always offered to pay for all of his school and he really had the way paved for him had he chosen to go down that path. Sometime around high school he started getting weird. Well, he'd always been a little weird, but come high school he started getting really weird. He went through this stage where he was afraid to leave the house. I'd ask him why and he'd tell me that he just felt like it was too dangerous. One time when we did managed to get him to leave the house we had to go out to the middle of nowhere to buy a car he'd been looking at. In the process he went into a full blown panic attack (in the middle of nowhere) complaining he could barely breathe. During his panic he begin to prognosticate and about what might happen if he had a heart attack in the middle of nowhere and couldn't get medical help. At the time he was 21 years old and perfectly healthy without any history of medical problems whatsoever.
Not long after he was diagnosed with depression. I believe it too, because he went from being a generally upbeat and fun to be around guy that I knew in high school to a much more depressive and dreary individual to be around. Life kept on moving and he dropped out of college, moved back in with his parents, and somehow managed to continue skating through life without actually doing anything.
He didn't get his first job until he was probably in his late 20s to early 30s. Upon getting his first job it lasted a week. Fast forward to current day (he's 39 now) and he's had probably 50 different jobs but none of them has lasted more than a week. He'll get a job, work there for a week, then quit. When I ask him why he keeps doing this and has never in his life had a job lasting more than a week, he'll respond by telling me, "Unless someone is going to pay me really good money for doing all this hard labor, I'm not going to work there.". He'll then proceed to tell me about how it's not fair that other people are getting paid $100 an hour for desk work when he's getting paid minimum wage for hard labor.
At 39 years old his parents are still paying for his food, his rent (he has a roommate who we've known since high school), etc. His mom still goes clothes shopping for him, buys him clothes she likes, then brings them home so he can decide which ones he likes and which ones he doesn't like. She returns the ones he doesn't like and he keeps the rest. He's never had a girlfriend in his entire life and mark my word, he will never, ever get married or have kids.
He's socially awkward and incredibly strange. He has no friends except me and his roommate from high school. I've tried to help him many times but he refuses to put in any real effort. At some point I gave up on trying to help him and just accepted that this is the way he's going to be for the rest of his life (which it is). He's here on this earth only to exist, nothing more. He has no car and takes an Uber everywhere he goes (which he rarely goes out). He sleeps 16 plus hours a day too.
It's very hard for me to be around him these days because it's depressing. I still maintaining a friendship with him because he's one of the only guys I still talk to from way back in the day, so I like to have that connection. Still, he's squandered his life and seems to have accepted this himself. It's really, really bizarre.
I feel bad for the guy, but as I always tell him, he is is own worst enemy. I've tried over the years to be motivational towards him. I tell him that he can change his life at any moment by deciding to get up, put himself together, and commit himself to something. It never, ever works. I've 100% accepted that this is how he will be the rest of his life. It's caused me in more recent years to move away from him more. I'm married with kids, a career, a house, and responsibilities. The people I generally choose to hangout with are people in the same situation. It's hard to find time to hang out with a guy who at the bare minimum doesn't even have a wife or a girlfriend to bring around.
I don't know how people end up like this, but it's certainly not uncommon it these days. Some of it I blame on him being an only child. Other parts I blame on his mom being one of the most neurotic, overbearing, and OCD people I've ever met. He was never even allowed to have a pet as a child and his home always resembled that of a clean, well kept museum on the inside. He was always too afraid of girls to ever make a move or even attempt to talk to one. He would always marvel at other people's successes, but instead of going out and making his own success he would look to me and say, "That's not fair that they get that but I don't.". In recent years he's even tried to float the idea to me that he'd thrive in a communist society because everything would be given to him. I have to not so gently remind him that in a communist society if they give you a job you don't just get to quit it. You work when they tell you to work and if you don't they'll throw you in a gulag. If you don't work there they'll simply kill you.
With all this being said, does anyone else have a friend or someone they know that is like this?
