We (43F, 45M) have allowed my wife's brother (37M) to stay with us after he fell on hard times. We want him to live with us permanently because we like him, but he refuses because he thinks its out of sympathy and he doesn't want to feel like a freeloader.

My brother in law has always been a bit of a ruckus. Just a very jolly guy, used to be a hard partied when I first knew him but not SO much now. I mean, he still likes to drink and he smokes weed, but nothing compared to how he used to be. He stays in the basement apartment (which is a full apartment, separate from ours, with a kitchen and bathroom etc) in our house ever since he lost his apartment. He has never really been able to keep a good job (no college education, and also ADHD), and we live in NYC so affording rent is impossibly hard lately. This was supposed to be a temporary thing for him, out of desperation because he lost his apartment.

I should say that he has gone through multiple phases of depression from just living hard much of his life. I remember seeing him when he was in his 20s and he was just a damn mess. Living in shit apartments and working shit jobs... and I remember he was super depressed (like... you know, that kind of depressed) for a bit around a decade ago because of how awful his life was. And it was awful. I wont sugar coat it. He was getting mugged in his area constantly. His apartment was horribly small and he worked horribly long hours. His ex-wife was awful to him and cheated on him.

But in the past two months that he has been here, he's been an absolute joy. To both me and my wife and also our kids. We all love him so much. He clearly loves the basement, its even bigger than his old apartment, and just in general its in a much better location. He has said, multiple times, how much he loves it at our place. He also is just a great guy to have around, he is a blast with our kids and he always cooks food for us and is just a general great, funny, charismatic guy.

He got a new job, working 60 hours a week at a shit job, and now he wants to move out to his friends place all the way in coney island where he would be spending half of his paycheck on rent. At first, we were like... okay, well, this was our agreement, he was eventually gonna leave. But then we kinda had a family meeting and realized, hey, we want him here. I dont even care if he pays nothing in rent, he's great to have around. Just to be clear though, we did tell him he would have to pay SOMETHING a month, a number we havent decided yet.

When we told him this, he kind of thought it was a joke, but then he agreed. He was very happy about it, and we were too, and we were kind of thinking like... he's a member of our house now, ya know? But then he changed his mind suddenly, and was saying how he doesn't want to be a freeloader and that he thinks we are just allowing him to stay because we feel bad for him. He really will not listen to us at all when we say that we actually want him to stay. Even our kids (teens) have tried getting him to stay and he just wont accept it. Every time we bring it up to him he sort of does this pity thing where hes like "come on, I know you think im a loser, im not gonna mooch off of you guys" or something along those lines. Its been around two weeks, and he just kinda feels bad about it. It is absolutely a pride thing for him.

How do we get him to stay? Is it just a lost cause? He technically plans on moving out in the next few weeks. But we really want him to stay. And we know that he would love to stay. I feel like there is really no chance this is some kind of 'deep down he hates it here' kind of situation. This is 100% a pride thing for him.

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tl;dr: My brother in law lost his apartment and has been living with us. He's had a very hard life. We want him to stay with us permanently in our basement apartment, but he wont take it out of pride. We enjoy his presence a lot, and he is a great guy to have around, but he refuses to take the offer because he feels like he is a mooch.

Submitted September 10, 2022 at 01:40AM by frogvscrab https://ift.tt/2aiwDL7