Mark really hit it on the head. Our first major relationships are often fraught with mistakes, mostly because we have not fully learned to love ourselves yet. If you cannot love yourself, you cannot love anyone else.

That being said, if this were my daughter telling me this story, I know what my answer would be. Five years is a long time to support someone and care for them as if they were a child. Perhaps the past women he did so much for treated him badly, and this is his misguided way of “getting what’s his”? I can’t really tell. I have known some people who did that. I have known some who honestly were just lazy. And I have known some who are in that sort of funk and are DEEPLY depressed. That depression leads to no work ethic. Hell, sometimes it leads to not wanting to leave the house. So I guess it all depends. If he is happy go lucky, that doesn’t mean he isn’t depressed. My friends were all amazed when I told them years ago that I was clinically depressed. Maybe just ask him about it, and be warned the conversation is likely to be an argument if he really is either lazy or depressed, because both are things that person will know about themselves but not want to hear. Perhaps bring up depression first, then move out to outright laziness. See which one you get the biggest rebuttal over.

As I said, if this was my daughter, I would be driving over to pack your stuff and leave him behind. But we don’t know the whole story, so making that sort of knee jerk reaction to it could be quite bad. What do you think? You think he might be depressed? How is the economic environment in your area, ie are there many jobs open. Thinking he isn’t wanting a job and being unable to find a job are two different things. We all hear that the jobs market is booming but fail to realize that isn’t a universal thing in the entire world/country. Just spitballing here.