worried about friend

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who's more or less punch-drunk at this point, and deeply demoralized. In his mid-40s, no luck finding a decent job in the last year, not for lack of trying. Has been thrown out again after a meltdown at his landlords, must find a new place today (luckily his parents help out with rent). He insists he'll need a cosigner on a lease, and for all I know he's correct, but...I don't know who'll do that for him. His parents can't, they're far away. He's planning to ask an old girlfriend, but the idea here is he's going to go to dinner at her house -- her new husband extended the invitation -- and ask her while he's there. And I'm cringing in advance. This is one of the few friends he has left, and he's pretty sure she'll say yes, but...I'm guessing not. That's a very large risk he's asking her to take on, an exposure of nearly $10K, and while he badly wants her to believe that he'll just handle everything, his track record says something will happen, he'll get upset or get fired, and he'll flee and leave a mess.

If she says no, he won't see that she's the reasonable one; he'll become bitter and decide she hasn't come through for him, isn't a true friend. And he really can't afford to lose more friends.

It's a real problem, this pattern, and it's a large part of why we're not together romantically anymore -- he'll insist that someone show faith in him in some highly unrealistic way, just because he so badly needs to see himself as capable and not entirely inept, and when people refuse to go along, he cuts them off and blames them. When he cools off, if he can allow himself to look at what happened, he can sometimes see that the other person isn't being hateful or unreasonable. But from his pov, everyone else has a charmed life and is simply selfish & awful for not helping him out with whatever he needs, since he so plainly can't manage.

We went through a really weird thing last summer, where he wanted me to lie for him on a resume, say he'd been an employee in an imaginary business. I'm a single mom hanging onto an ill-paid job with flexibility and great benefits -- even if I were inclined to lie, which I'm not, I can't afford to be caught out in lies like that (and besides I can't in good conscience recommend him for managerial jobs). He got really bitter about that, eventually backed off and said he'd only been kidding, but later managed to find someone else who said he'd do it.

Anyway, he's in trouble. I don't know what will become of him. He's smart and goodlooking, wellspoken, can be quite charming, and can often get in the door, but just as often doesn't understand the situation he's in and assumes things that are totally from space, or that just make no sense in the context, or that he's the only one who knows what's going on and must wrest things around to be arranged the way he sees fit. The fact that he's terrified of putting a foot wrong all the time doesn't help. His parents can't support him forever, and I don't know how generous his sibs will be once his parents also need help. I'd have him here, but I can't -- I can't bring up a child in the midst of meltdowns and raw moroseness (nor do I want to live in it), and he really doesn't understand that much as he might wish to teach her things, you can't simply talk at a child and drill her in things she doesn't want to do for an hour and have her want to hang with you at the end of it. Or expect she's learned anything when you're assuming she has concepts that few kids her age have, and are mostly talking gibberish at her, as far as she's concerned.

Anyway. I'm worried and I don't see this going anywhere good.

This is why the Aspie suicide rate is so high. At least he still has a few friends.

If he's in the US, diagnosed, and can hang on until he turns 50, he'll qualify for disability. Would probably be a good idea if he started seeing a therapist now to establish his history. Even so, the complete inability to handle real life doesn't go away. When you lose your last friend and have no one to turn to when you're over your head, well, that's when you hit the wall (cue Faron Young).

He's trying to hang on to a life abroad, though it's very difficult and the prospects don't look good from here. However, there aren't really great options anywhere else. Going home means being with his parents, and he just winds up fighting with them, meltdowns, etc. They're not young and I don't think his sibs would let it go on for long. On the other hand, I don't know that they're open to having him live with them, either. I don't know. Maybe they'll all pitch in and help him with rent when he's not able to make it himself, and he can just live local to them.

He's not diagnosed, though others have been happy to make the diagnosis for him, amateur. Which sends him into a really black mood, so if I brought it up again it'd have to be very gentle and maybe focus on prospective benefits. Although I think the prospect of being labled disabled would just about undo him. His family's full of successful professionals and he's had a lifetime of men in his family demanding to know what the hell is wrong with him, why doesn't he wise up.

He does have friends, good friends, but he'll disappear for a long time and then turn up wanting loan of a couch. And then spend the time feeling squashed into a tiny box, trying not to wear out his welcome, and envying the stable lives of his friends, who have careers, spouses, children. Incomes. Homes. He hasn't really had a place of his own in years, it's all been couches and apartments and rooms in other people's houses. And he's deeply exhausted. I don't know what to do for him.