I like your suggestion  that SS could be adopting personae from the internet. Or perhaps in real life as well.  I've noticed that SS does mirror and mimic certain people, including myself in the past. I've even seen him practice. In middle school, I saw him repeat some phrase to himself as though he was trying to make it more him. I think he collects impressions of these and patches together a convincing facsimile of a self that he presents to the public to convince people he is a cool, nice guy. I think they call this "hive mind" in narcissists. DH's friends who have known SS since he was little said that SS was like Eddie Haskel. The thing about Eddie Haskel is that the self he presents is not genuine. If that's what SS is, I want to be able to stand by my intuition and call it out rather than buy into it. But guilt is always around the corner trying to talk me out of calling SS out. Mostly, the voice says, 'give him a chance. you're not being fair.' Argh.

A few years ago, SS was wearing hoodies and baggy jeans that hung off his butt. Now he's wearing patagonia fleeces and slacks, kind of like the students do in colleges he wants to go to. It's hard to enter into a trusting relationship with someone who you don't even really know.

I need to be more like this. I wish I had more clarity and acceptance about my own needs and feelings.

Thanks dogmom. Until very recently, I was the thing that made him uncomfortable enough to want to leave and stay in his room. lol. But I think he picked up on the fact that by doing that he was isolating himself from both me and more importantly his dad. I think his strategy now is that he's going to take over the living room, and consume the air as much as possible which leaves less alone time between me and dh. At some point this past weekend, SS just sat in the living room for a long while his dad showered and stuff. I kept thinking 'why are you out here?' He didn't even say a word to me. He just sat there for 20 minutes in silence on his phone. When dh finally came out, dh immediately started a conversation with me, and when it was clear that we were going to talk for a bit, that's when SS finally went into his room Argh. My interpretation is that SS sits out in the living room so that he's in a position to pounce on dad when the opportunity arises.

I never thought that I would get so worked up about someone just sitting.

SS doesn't watch tv, read, listen to music or anything else in the iiving room. He just sits. While he sits, he sometimes fiddles with his phone. When his friends  first went off to college in the fall, SS started to just sit by dh in the living room sometimes talking, sometimes just waiting it seemed. Dh might be reading a book or playing the guitar, and SS is just sitting there, sometimes for over an hour. Is that normal for an 18 yo? I couldn't imagine any of my nephews or BS do that. Once in a while, SS would think of something to say or suggest an activity, like taking a drive. But mostly, SS would just sit there so that he could be next to his dear dad.. After the initial stage, SS had some weekends when he became extremely introverted and stayed in his room, but now he's back out in the living room just sitting. If it's not clear, I cannot convey how grating and just uncomfortable I am now being at home with SS sitting there like a lump, not even contributing to the household. He is occasionally asked to take out the trash or walk the dog, but he has no regular chores. He hasn't been working either. Argh.

DH and BM has gotten SS a psychologist at least 3 times. The only definite diagnosis I know if is anxiety and adhd. He was prescribed medication for both, and after multiple and expensive office visits, SS decided he would rather not take medication after all, so never took a single pill. I've posted before wondering why he would get his dad to expend hundreds or thousands of dollars even though it seems there was never any intention to actually take the meds. SS even attended several follow up visits with the psychiatrist prescribing the adhd meds to talk about how the meds are working even though SS was not taking them. I can write a novel as to why I think he does this kind of thing.

His last psychologist didn't give an official diagnosis, but did warn the parents that they needed to seriously keep SS in line because he won't "always get away with it." I only hear what dh tells me, so not sure exactly what the story is. But when SS got a girlfriend, he was embarassed, stopped going, and no one has brought up him going again.

ETA: I don't think it will come up again soon. 1. SS has been more cooperative lately, and is trying to do well in school. So BM and DH aren't seeing thie urgency to get him back to a therapist. 2. SS still has anxiety, but feels that he can control it on his own, and the parents seem fine to let ihim handling it. 3. BM and DH see SS's undesirable behaviors as maybe obnoxious, but not clinically disordered.