Tldr; long time online friend is stuck in life and I can’t help him, at the same time he’s basically holding me hostage in this friendship and I don’t know what to do anymore
I met this friend in an online RTS game when we were around 15 and for many years I was happy to have him as my online friend.
But lately we have crossed paths - I have a job, hobbies, friends, and he is just stuck in life.
He’s 33, never had a job, despite him being a coding genius and always having some personal projects at home. The thought of looking for a job is like giving him trauma and his father is still sending him money.
He lives alone, has no friends IRL and often claims that I am now his only friend. He gets needy and often demands attention when I don’t check messages on Discord for days like a sad pup.
I tried helping him for years to just finish a CV and start looking for work, I got him a few freelancing gigs and he made some small money, but he’s got literally no personal initiative while at the same time dreams of owning a business. Honestly I think he doesn’t want to be employed because he can’t bear the real life of working night and day which is a norm in his country despite laws against it.
By this time, every time he talks to me it makes me feel weaker. Like I can’t help him and like there’s a problem to be solved that I can’t touch anymore. Nothing worked, he’s still squandering his life away alone in his room, broke and spending time on useless bs and video games.
I want to do better in life. I can’t continue pretending like everything’s okay and we’re gonna experiment with open source AI libraries for fun while he’s broke and miserable.
At this point I am sometimes ignoring his messages. I just cannot anymore… it drains me. It makes me feel tired and weak chatting to him already.
At the same time he tells me how I’m his only friend and how he doesn’t know what he’d do without me cause he gets depression and anxiety and he likes talking to me. That is guilt tripping me and I feel responsible for him although I shouldn’t. He won’t go to therapy because he believes in his country no psychologist would take him seriously.
What can I do? I want to be happy and build a better life and his mentality is contageous and is dragging me down as well. Whenever I have fun or have a good thing to share he keeps comparing us and how I’m so great and how he’s so miserable and cannot do or have what I have. It’s making me feel miserable about the good stuff.
I can’t be his parent. I can’t think about his career and his projects or his bank account. I can’t have his mental wellbeing as weight on my shoulders or whether he will fail in life or not, or feel guilty when he is lonely because he has no friends, and I struggle making conversation with such a huge elephant in the room. Whenever I bring it up it’s like he’s on the verge of a panic attack.
Sometimes he plays victim like there’s no solutions for him but all he does is sees problems and no opportunities - he makes me feel like he would be suicidal if I stop talking to him.
What do I do?
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* This article was originally published here
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