My husband is a NEET and I’m very fortunate that my career pays enough that we don’t need him to contribute financially. He’s tried out a variety of careers and I’ve supported them, but inevitably he runs into some difficulty and quits within a few months.
I really don’t care that he doesn’t work and actually prefer it that way because my anxiety is very bad and I don’t have a lot of capacity for self-care.
Both of our families think it’s a problem that he doesn’t work, and obviously society looks down on it. My husband just told me that he has trouble sleeping because he can’t stop beating himself up when he’s alone with his thoughts.
Our arrangement has been that he cooks 6 meals a week (we eat 1 meal for both lunch and dinner) and we’ve tried implementing a cleaning schedule so it doesn’t get out of control, but he’s been too depressed to do pretty much any cleaning and wants to do delivery at least every other day. I’ll admit that I really don’t pull my weight with household chores, so I really don’t push these issues a lot because I can’t demand he do something that I’m not willing to do.
He spends all day playing video games, which is what I do in the weekends so I don’t think it’s like horrible, but it’s hard to get him to prioritize responsibilities over his game.
I want to be supportive, I don’t expect him to be a servant, I want him to contribute a fair amount to the state of the apartment and meals and I feel like it’s not possible for him right now because his self-esteem is so low. I also just want him to not feel ashamed of our situation even though I know it’s difficult because people are very judgmental about it.
I’ve asked him to talk to a therapist, but outside of that, what do you guys do to feel good about yourselves in a world that makes it so difficult?
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.
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.
Ahhh this is good. I've been stuck in a depressive cycle for like...years and I'm just going to hang out in these comments and cry
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Thank you, this is really helpful and I’m going to share this comment with him!
I definitely experience what you’re talking about with video games too. I love Ubisoft map games because clearing objectives on the map makes me feel like I’m accomplishing things and it’s very easy.