Thing is, we don't know that. We only know what happened AFTER Amber moved in. There is a video that Amber posted, soon after moving in, where she's jumpy and looking around and at some point she mentions Eric came by/walked by (she was eating something in the den).
It lead me to think Eric was already a stay-at-home husband by the time Amber entered the equation.
The underwear photo on FB was posted years before Becky met Amber.
Amber might have been the catalyst, but the traits were already there. No one in their late 20's with responsibility, work ethics and common sense would just give it all up because the over-grown baby moved in with them.
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I don't think Eric stopping work is anything like as big a deal as Becky doing so.
No, we don't know they were happy but we DO know they were functioning and adulting as a unit and they must have been sharing responsibilities otherwise their living situation wouldn't have lasted - when you live with mates, small things become huge issues out of all proportion and they'd obviously got through all that and found balance. Plenty of couples have one stay-at-home spouse and that's really only between Rickie and Eric. I think Eric's a mooch but if Rickie's happy to support him its up to them.
Amber crashing into the house was enough of a dramatic change and it would have taken them all awhile to settle into a new pattern without any other major changes. Even if she was only the catalyst (and I agree, but Becky had to do her bit before however much she didn't want to) it was incumbent on her to adjust to their household and smooth the process as much as possible. But she did the exact opposite and her sloth and lack of work ethic enabled, in fact encouraged, Becky to throw in the towel.
Everyone out working coming home to one lazy mooch is one thing, but one working and coming home to three mooches is entirely different. In the first scenario, the stay-home has to fulfil the unwritten rules of the bargain and is expected to contribute somehow to justify their status. It can be balanced, with them taking on home responsibilities or whatever, but the general milieu is still one of independent adults all contributing different things. Compare that to this situation - Rickie has nobody that can understand work frustrations because they are all now divorced from the daily grind (E&B would "get" it, but it has no immediacy to them in the way it would if they still experienced it) the others are all playing off each other to devolve responsibility....its hard to explain, but its not anything like balanced any more. The norm is now a self-obsessed bubble of laziness to which Rickie is the outsider.
Remember her last "I'm leaving YT" saga that didn't even last a day? That kind of sums up what I mean. Presumably she, Necky and Eric spent all day discussing the only things that matter to them all; their feelings, because they've got nothing else to do except navel gaze. Within that deep discussion of how they all owe it to themselves to pander to their own self-obsession and how could anyone possibly be against Amber taking a YT break because she deserves it and she absolutely MUST put herself first, she owes it to herself (with the wider implication that makes them all not "stay home moochers" but "taking time to work on themselves") and they are absolutely behind her. Then poor ol Rickie comes home with hard reality - no YT = no money and why the fuck should he support all of them? The fact they even considered it - and I'm pretty sure she said she spoke to Becky n Eric - is a reflection of where they are now and what is the norm for them now. Becky may not have liked her job much but until Big Al came along, she just had to lump it like most of us do. Al changed the norm in that house, to the extent they no longer even see it.
that Ricky finally blew his top and they're all stuck in a stand-off, not talking to each other. The only way Amber will detach Necky from the queens is by forcing a break, and she's going to exist in the bed in a state of squelch until this happens.
