In my NEET stints in life, I took advantage of my free time and schedule to spend time with friends. Definitely was better for me than being alone with my thoughts or doing stuff to distract myself from that.

A creative outlet could be good too. Or anything where he'd get to put in labor and see the impact of it reflected in the world might help fight off alienation. Everyone wants to be able to have some small effect on the world around them.

You're probably doing a lot of what you should be. Make sure you're encouraging when he takes initiative and you demonstrate appreciation when he does cook and clean. Not too thick, but it does help to have a little reinforcement. So much of getting out of the depression slump is both repetition and habit building, but also not self-sabotaging and doubling down when you mess up or miss a responsibility.

I guess it's kinda a fine line to walk between totally enabling an inactive lifestyle and helping to build self-esteem. One thing that depression really saps is the will and space to plan and think through things to do. One thing that helps me a lot for cooking is to take the time, often after eating dinner, to plan out the week's or next few days' meals so it's easier just to do it instead of having to figure it out first - just one less barrier to getting up and doing it. Having a schedule for other chores and talking over it might help with that too.

I spent a bunch of years living the NEET life.

I think therapy is not a bad idea at all, but it can be a big jump to go from vidya -> managing a house (cleaning, cooking, maintenance, all the way up to serious DIY shit, finances, budgeting etc.).

I think what a lot of people mistake for discipline is actually self-efficacy. This is the concept that, while some things are determined by outside forces, your efforts can lead to positive outcomes in your life,. That your effort is meaningful and has effect. I think a bridge to start up from video games, which are often just a dopamine rush of low-effort tasks, to bigger stuff is to pick up a hobby. This sounds stupid, I am aware.

The trick is pretty simple, it has to have some suffering, but you kinda have to like the suffering. slogging through a tough book, making it through a run on a hot day, painstakingly erasing and redrawing a nose on a face until it's right, trial and error with recipes. All of these things build this quality, in my opinion.

• Meditation helps (creating a zoomed-in presence within a task instead of drowning in errant thoughts)
• Journaling helps (actively reflecting on the shit that you liked from the task so you remember it next time)
• A partner's (your) love and the meaningful appreciation you give help as long as it's sincere

Idk, those are just some reflections from a dark time in my life. At this point, it's much easier to take on tasks that are inherently a slog and don't have the junk food quality of videogames.

I'm a stay-at-home dad. My wife has a decent job at the moment and someone needs to take care of our kids to keep them from dying of covid since they're also too young to be vaccinated. They're also not, like, that young, though, so they don't actually need constant supervision. They basically just need someone to keep them alive and possibly to homeschool them again if it's too dangerous to send them back to school in the fall. So I'm not a NEET, technically, but I'm not that far away from being one.

Anyway, point being, if it weren't for artistic pursuits and exercise, I don't even know if I would be alive at this point. I know that a lot of people are mentally and physically sick, that a lot of people suffer under capitalism in many different ways, but I just don't know how people can live in this world without some kind of purpose or goal, I guess. If it were just me, my regular daily life, and video games...I don't know how I could survive.

I used to be a g*mer but I just found myself drifting away from video games in college because (I think) my social and artistic lives were both becoming so much more interesting to me. During this endless fucking pandemic it's a lot harder to socialize or even to summon the will to cultivate new hobbies. I honestly don't know what to do about your situation. I would go easy on yourself and your husband. Just to survive all this fucking shit is a feat in itself. Based on what you've said, it also seems like a good idea to keep pushing him to see a therapist. I keep posting this link to Lacanians here because I found my therapist here and she's been pretty helpful thus far:

https://www.lacanonline.com/find-a-lacanian-psychoanalyst/

Almost all she does is listen while I blab about whatever is on my mind. And something seemingly so simple really does kind of chill me out and help keep me more focused, at least when I'm not posting here. I started seeing her in the first place because I made a deal about it with my dad—I would see a therapist if he unsubscribed from the NYT and the Washington Post. Maybe you could make some kind of deal with your husband to get him to see a therapist?

staying at home and not doing anything sucks but that doesn't mean your partner should just languish. At a baseline, if you are wage working, then he should be working at home to help lighten your load. This can mean basic chores, and cooking so that you two are not spending un-necessarily on ordering out. There is the deeper issue here that all the shitty things about work outside the home apply to the home as well, and so your partner needs self fulfilling hobbies, and he needs friends that will help him not spend all his day moving from room to room bummed out. Exercise definitely helps. Not because he should look like captain america, but because it literally physiologically helps you feel better and get into a routine.

On your point about "I'll admit that I really don't pull my weight with household chores" -- well here is the thing. If you were both working, and you both were slacking on household chores, then thats understandable. If one of you is doing waged work, and the other is not, then the non waged person should be doing most of the house work otherwise the waged person is doing double duty when they get home and that will exhaust you.

I’m extremely mentally ill and being a NEET is unfair. I was literally going to be a PsyD, I played in a traveling band… and then persistent (I’ve had 20+ ECTs with zero effect among every [yup, that one too]) depression among others. I cannot get out of bed. I cry because of climate change daily… I’m ill, not ignorant. If you subscribe to the flawed notion of measuring using the IQ scale (I don’t) but since a lot of people do, I’m pretty up there. I am extremely well read in numerous subjects. Lol, I’m so insufferable I actually study Nietzche… and then there’s the Cheeto stained lowest-common-denominator individuals who are loud and proud. I live in fucking poverty. What do I do to feel good about myself…? Sleep, reality is fucking fake when you are asleep.

(I see a therapist, too)

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Being a neet means doing your part in a general strike, so take pride in that if nothing else.

The boomer idea of supporting a family on a single income relied on a lot of work that capitalism doesn't acknowledge. Even if you argue that maintaining a home with no kids is easier than the for-profit hellscape, it's still work and it's still valuable. If it wasn't, the rich would do it themselves instead of using servants. If capitalist society hates you more than average, you're probably doing something right.

There's also the fact that most jobs are bullshit and are either neutral or actively harm society. Not participating in those is good.

Therapy is important, but.I and many of my friends and partners have suffered from this...maybe not depression, but kind of apathetic malaise. It's super common in ADHD people.

Firstly, try and socialise some of the work. Have him do heavy tasks at the same time you do lighter ones.

Friends are important, so an outside hobby is nice (sports, amateur arts etc), but anything that gets him away from a screen. Warhammer (well not right now but minatures in general) or other building hobbies, or even things like sewing or gardening which he has direction on rather than just maintaining.

If he is going to do the chores, let him decide how the interior is designed, that way he has an interest in maintaining his creation. Let him shop for cool things in the space that's now his sphere of control.

NEET is kind of a weird term cause it covers a lot of people. I got laid off for covid and have been able to ride EI for a year and a half, most of my technically NEET friends fly a sign and scam disability for money all of us are dirty links who spend that time playing music, doing mutual aid and doing drugs.

Being able to operate as a single income is actually pretty cool but where you are handling the money side I don't think it's too much to expect them to handle the household side of things for the most part. I really enjoy cooking especially for a partner, making a good meal is like most of the game I have.

Sometimes also just making yourself not do the things you're used to can help. If you're playing video games, force yourself to do something else instead, sometimes it goes nowhere and you're just bored or go on a walk and sometimes you come up with something. I cut off internet for a year a while ago by just not paying the bill and getting out for a while made me re-evaluate online. All this stuff is just toys and we can't spend all of our time playing with toys

I generally agree that if you're doing waged work and supporting the two of you financially, then he needs to pull his weight with household chores.

That said, if you have the time/energy to do so (which may be difficult if you are in a demanding job), you could try doing some of those chores together. That could help get him into the habit of doing some of that stuff.

I've been unemployed since december. the answer is I don't, I feel like shit. but I do spend my time learning languages, reading theory, reading history books, writing, and other things to fill my time. what helps is setting a strict schedule to stick by, 3pm? I have to go for a walk 4pm? time to revise Japanese for an hour, ect

See if he will start journaling. Writing in a journal and writing down the thoughts that get me down and worry me really let me release them. Cheaper than therapy! I just do it every morning when i wake up and it works! For inspiration see the movie “the sound of metal.”

Having a physical hobby that gets him out of the house and exercising is good for mental health too. Mountain biking, hiking, surfing, etc etc.

The people moralizing housework here don't get it. Yes, OP's husband should be doing housework. Both OP and her husband agree on that.

What's more important than the should is the how. School and work train people to sink into dysfunctional apathy if they're not coerced into working. The problem here is how to escape that.

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