He's 20, came to live with me a few years ago after spending most of his life with his mother since we split up. He's exhibiting irresponsible and self-destructive attitudes and behaviour that's cost him a couple of jobs and landed him in hospital a couple of times. Basically he smokes too much weed, hates the idea of working for a living, doesn't take work seriously, and has a kind of "meh, so what" attitude to most things. He thinks life should be about doing what you want instead of maintaining a healthy balance between work and play.
I've tried, along with his mother, to get him on a path that's not going to lead him to homelessness or a generally crappy life. I want him to be fully and responsibly independent. But you know how there's that one guy in your peer group who never has any money and becomes a loser/stoner type while everyone else moves on upwards? If he doesn't change he's going to be that guy. And it hurts to say that, because I know he's a good person. I'm already seeing it start to happen.
All this may change as he gets older. But my issue right now is that I feel like I've stopped caring about him. He's lied one too many times, and his behaviour and attitudes to life exasperate me. It's like my brain has decided, "You know what, fck this sh1t". Tonight when he left to go visit a friend I watched him leave and honestly I felt like I couldn't give a sh1t if he doesn't come back. I looked at him tonight and I felt nothing, absolutely nothing.
I don't want this to happen but I don't know what to do about it. For any nons out there, discarding isn't a deliberate act, it's something that happens in the mind and there's no control over it, it just happens. Like maybe one day you'll put on your favourite music and after a couple of seconds you turn it off because for some reason you just can't listen to it anymore. When I've discarded people before it's permanent. I don't want this to happen with my son.