Hoarding DH - At the end of my tether (Long)

[Eatriskier]

Before I launch into the bad stuff, I should say that DH is a generally a lovely and very honest man. He doesn't abuse me in any way, he would barely say boo to a goose and he is a wonderful father to our two young DC. But he has a hoarding issue.

Now, I have always known he has had a tendency towards this. Its always been an problem between us. When we bought our first home together he promised he wouldn't fill it with crap especially as its a small home and I was due our first DC. He agreed to an area he could fill and that it was all he had and he wouldn't encroach anywhere else - he promised to scale down and not buy more.

Unsurprisingly he has massively stuffed this, a large part of our living room, the garage, the loft and half our bedroom with crap. Crap is harsh, some of it is useful but for the main its not useful nor necessary. In massive rows he's promised to get rid but he just boxes stuff up, moves it to a storage locker (which is now pretty much full) and then slowly fills it all back up or buys a new piece of furniture/storage to absorb the stuff.

I can't move all the items of storage and junk to clean properly, my house is becoming filthy. I am ashamed of my own home, I won't invite anyone in. I cannot live like this anymore. I've told DH loads that I am at the point where the kids and I are going to have to leave. He still won't do anything.

He promised me that in a couple of weeks, as he has some time off work, he would sort it. We had a discussion where he promised not to buy more storage (he has hoard of empty storage boxes!!!!) and he would actually get rid, not just move. Then today a load of storage arrived. He said it was to move some of the stuff out.

I'm afraid I lost it and told him to take his stuff and GTFO, his young family aren't going to live like this anymore. His response? He's not leaving his house. Not that he didn't want his family apart, not that he didn't want our marriage to end, but that he wouldn't leave his house and things (which he still didn't say when I called him out on it).

So here I am, whilst he is driving off to storage squeezing more crap into it despite promising yet again he wasn't going to do that and knowing he won't fully empty the furniture so I can't get rid of it and he will refill it with crap again, knowing that the crap means more to him than his wife and kids.

What on earth do I do now? I don't really want to leave and take the kids, but I can't have them living like this, learning this or growing up mortified by their parents and home.

These stories are just frightening. Im finding the stories from adults who had hoarders for parents quite upsetting. I hope this won't be how your DCs are speaking one day, OP.

This, too

Despite all your love and support, how can you possibly do what many experts cannot?

Don't know what to say apart from, I hope he's worth it.

You sound like a trier, OP - definetely level headed. At least you have a plan and deadline. Do stick to it, won't you? You can't and should not 'carry him to salvation'. Don't give him all your 'good years'. The years you he & DCs are young, and should be mainly happy. I hope sincerely he will change. But if he can't and won't change for your sakes then the writing is on the wall for him, and he will lose you - then no doubt an issue-free man will come along one day and make you happy.

There's a hoarders programme on tonight 8pm Channel 4, just saw the advert. Think I'll watch, for some more insight.

My dad is a hoarder. When my parents were married it was 'controlled' but over the past 20 years its become ridiculous. He wont acknowledge the issue. He claims that he's got too much to do to sort it out. I haven't been to his house for 13 years, when my sister was doing a masters degree here she couldn't live with him. My kids have never been to my family home. It's a tricky one.

I appreciate the LTB advice but I'm categorically not going to do that without one proper try. This isn't about salvation for him, its about giving my kids a real home and the opportunity to live with their father in a decent home. I've already said I don't expect it to really change, but I'm not splitting my kids from their father without giving it a good shot. Its his choice ultimately.

It's his choice but you are the one doing the trying here.

Eatriskier, you have to step right back from this. You need to insist on getting outside help.
It's like alcoholism in that you didn't cause, it, you can't control it and you can't cure it.
You need to stop hoping that you and your involvement will be enough to see this enormous process through.

The idea that you can manage this yourself by you taking co-control of the stuff (which is all that has seemingly happened here) is a fallacy. The whole problem is the need to manage stuff. It's not the solution. You have just been co-opted into the sickness and meanwhile he has not shown any inclination to get real and get the real help he needs.

The first step has to be your DH having the lightbulb moment and agreeing to open his life to the scrutiny of the GP and mental health professionals. Without that, you have just got yourself the job of chief nag and co-controller of all the stuff. What that means is you are now an enabler because you have not succeeded in getting him to go outside and engage with treatment where he will feel accountable to another party.

You need to examine why you put what you feel you owe to 'the relationship' before what you owe to yourself (and most of all to the children in terms of quality of life) and you need to ponder whether you are a person who has a need to rescue. Be very careful, because rescuers sometimes ignore the needs of those around them whose wheels are not squeaking, and even persuade themselves that they are fulfilling larger needs of those unsqueaky wheels while they get their own rescuing fix controlling the target problem. Co-dependency will not move you and DH forward.

MistressCeeCee 'Hoarders need to know they cannot just 'externalise' and impose their addiction on others. He isn't living in his sole, personal space' -- in a way, you have now shouldered the burden of his addiction.

Eatriskier -- do not show your DH the manual that I linked. That was intended for you, to show you the immense amount of time and work it takes in a therapeutic setting to make progress through this, and this is with people who have admitted they have a problem and who have taken charge of their own recovery. Your DH must come to the point where he makes this choice to admit and to seek outside help. He can't recover without commitment to openness and the willingness to let reality in the form of a mental health professional into his life.

For the record, I understand what his behaviour is and I expect it to go wrong. I'm not trying to rescue him. He is the only one who can do that.

But I haven't given him a fair shot to even attempt to deal with his problems because I ignored how bad they were and enabled him. Though I fell in with it and allowed it, I am not taking the blame for his behaviour at all. That's on him. So this is it, his one shot. Whilst it probably won't work long term, at least I know I've given it.

I'm not some little meek woman who looks for broken relationships and tries to rescue people. I am a bolshy cow the majority of the time. So I will see how serious he's being in 3 weeks and review from there. I will kick him out if he fails this. Even if that's in 25 years time or 4 weeks.

I'd love to have seen the reaction if if he'd left me through one of my depressive episodes without encouraging me to get help and/or supporting me at least once.

Good for you, Eat. If your posts had shown signs that he was insufferably dismissive of you, otherwise abusive, or refused to accept that there's an issue, I'd have joined the LTB chorus. But it sounds as though he deserves one good chance and you're the woman to offer it.

Yes, helping him is not a bad thing. But be prepared that at some point it might become clear that 'the stuff' is more important to him than anything else.

I don't think from what you have said that the storage is a particular part of his hoard.

I wondered whether it served the same function as the lockup- namely as a means to hide the hoard and evade the wrath of others over the hoard.

Same with the boxes- they are the means of moving stuff around, which helps keep you quiet. Yes, I know it doesn't keep you quiet, but he still thinks it does, doesn't he?

Sadly I think Maths is right, and I say that as someone who has myself sat on one of these threads accused (rightly) of enabling, but in another capacity.

Also I think that bossiness or bolshiness is no instance to enabling. I remember saying the same myself.

What you have to ask yourself is whether or not it is all hot air, followed by exhaustion and allowing yourself to be ultimately managed. If anything anger followed by giving in, in practice, is probably a key trait, IMO.

Eat is giving him one last chance, and she is doing something different this time. It's his problem (and his choice) if he doesn't take it. If he doesn't, it will also be his loss.

People can and do change. People can and do remain the same. There is no foregone conclusion here.

Well - just watched the Hoarders programme on C4

There was a guy on there (forgotten his name) who'd been a hoarder for years. His 2 grown up DDs had cleared his house out last year and as fast as they cleared it, he refilled it. Awful. He categorically stated 'Im am not going to see a GP. I am not the problem. My collection of stuff is'. I just don't know how he could seperate it, like that. In the end he did have a massive clearout, 1 of his DDs was so happy and overwhelmed that she cried..his grandchildren were able to come and visit him. Funny enough the female hoarders were just as bad in terms of stuff, but talked more about how it affected their family lives eg DCs staying over, etc. Just seemed to be different. I noticed they didnt have partners, and also hadnt had good childhoods, really.

Anyway they both came through it and got rid of all the stuff - on camera anyway, who knows once the cameras stop rolling and they get back to reality. I couldn't do what you're doing OP - but I do admire you for doing it.

Im not an 'abandon ship' type of person either. When things go wrong Im a fixer, I don't leave someone just because they're not quite up to my standards, as it were. My ExH was a prick - long after I knew that I still stayed and tried to make it work. Except what happened along the way I realised I was far, far stronger mentally than he was and I would have to work too hard to keep the relationship going because Id become his enabler. I don't want to be an eternal 'fixer' I want my mind to rest at times, chill and just enjoy life and relationship. Which is what I have with OH now. Its like a weight off my brain

Your DH doesn't sound like a bad person so Im hoping that counts for something. Still wishing you luck - and I hope things go exactly how you want them to.

I have two family members who gave up the booze overnight and one very close friend who gave up a significant heroin habit over a weekend. I also have one family member who couldn't give up hoarding, ever, and one close family member who gave up booze only through lack of ability to buy it and remained addictive.

I'd agree with TheSilveryPussycat. Nothing is set in stone. As I've said before, I'm not optimistic about the OP's situation but change is sometimes possible.

Eat you sound very clear and level headed about this. And you are right - you can't just walk away until you know nothing can be salvaged. You obviously have a sense of what's necessary and you want to see if that can be achieved. If not, you've made it clear you know what has to be done. But I completely understand your wish to proceed with caution at this point. Good luck with it all.

eatriskier in various attempts to pacify us as we grew older and less tolerant my mum would present us with a box of stuff and proudly announce she was chucking it out, it was a drop in the ocean of course, I'm saying beware of half-arsed attempts at throwing things away. I think I realised if was all too late for her as she poured through one pile of decades old newspapers deciding which had to go. This was one pile amongst MANY. She just couldn't do it. One day I threw out some of my sister's old Jackies and I saw her go to the bin and take them out.

She used to lock her bedroom door, once she forgot and we went in - I still have nightmares about that room, towering great piles of stuff with a narrow corridor from the door to the bed. She could only sleep on half of her bed as the other half was piled with stuff. For some reason I looked under her pillow and found a huge bag FULL of biros - it was beyond weird.

I believe that when one hoards multiples of a single thing, way more than one could use in a lifetime, then the condition has really got a hold of you and without outside help there is little chance of a full recovery.

I hope your husband takes your ultimatum seriously, I really do. I can't deal with my mum at all any more, as the piles of stuff grew I incrementally lost my empathy and hated those around us that did nothing to save our childhood, no child should have to endure the biting shame of squalor and neglect.

Good luck OP.

Some women learn from others (mainly family members) to become fixers, to rescue to want to save within their own relationship. It happens over and over again. A person simply CANNOT act as either a rescuer or saviour in a relationship, neither approach works.

We think of our years together in a relationship as a cost or specifically a sunk cost. So when we think of breaking up, we say to ourselves ,“I can’t break up. No way am I going to waste the years of relationships we had together.”

By continuing the relationship, we think that we can redeem all of that ‘wasted’ years.

But we fail to heed the trite adage – the damage is done.

We shouldn’t proceed with our decision on breaking up based on how many years or how much of our emotions we invested in a relationship; they are irrelevant.

It’s the future that matters and not the past.

Eat

re an earlier comment of yours:-

"I'm not some little meek woman who looks for broken relationships and tries to rescue people. I am a bolshy cow the majority of the time. So I will see how serious he's being in 3 weeks and review from there. I will kick him out if he fails this. Even if that's in 25 years time or 4 weeks"

I do not doubt you are bolshy but many such women generally speaking are infact pretty much vulnerable emotionally underneath and some men do exploit that vulnerability and chinks in that armour to their own ends. Some manipulative men are very clever like that.

The sunken costs principle still applies to you because you still think you have not tried hard enough and still want to try some more. Expecting a different result this time around is not going to happen because he has not changed at all.

Do not let this go any longer than 3 weeks - and certainly not for 25 years!!!. (Your then adult children will refuse to visit your home and will perhaps want nothing to do with you either).

Attila Considering you only know what I've written then you really have no idea what I've done and tried. My DH has a mental health issue, and I'm not a heartless bitch who will abandon him without encouraging him to get help first. If that's what you would do fine, but it isn't and will never be what I do - with anyone. I think people with problems deserve a proper chance to get help.

I think people with problems deserve a proper chance to get help.

Of course they do. And because you love your husband you are giving him this chance.

All that is being pointed out (especially from the people who have suffered from hoarding as children), is that the effects on others can be difficult to measure whilst you're in it. It's very clear later on. So he needs to face up to what he is doing to his family - and as yet, your children know no different, so they don't know what living in a 'normal' house is like - and get the help he needs to overcome this awful problem.

But when that mental health issue is addiction and/or compulsive behaviour, there is nothing you can do.

My mum was an alcoholic and and agoraphobic for 25 years. The amount of emotional energy we all wasted trying to 'help' her has left indelible scars on our family.

Depression is different to addiction in that the sufferer has no vested interest in maintaining their condition (no one gets a fix from feeling depressed). So support can be a big help.

It's not the same case with addictive mental disorders.

Unfortunately, until the sufferer decides to get help, the only practical thing you can so is save yourself and your children from the negative influence of his condition.

Nanny I am now hyper aware of it, and my kids will never be aware of it unless DD somehow recalls it, which I'm hoping she won't. My DH knows me well enough to know that when I invoke the kids as the reason I don't back down - I am NC with some family members because they are too toxic for my kids so he has seen the evidence. He also knows in no uncertain terms that if he goes I will fight to ensure he doesn't get contact with them in his home, so unless MIL facilitates it he certainly won't get them overnight. Thankfully ILs completely agree and are on board with that too (I've been rallying them).

"My DH has a mental health issue, and I'm not a heartless bitch who will abandon him without encouraging him to get help first".

All that you have tried has not worked because you do not have his co-operation. You love him, I have no doubt of that at all, but love does not conquer all and the hoarding is taking over your life as well as already consuming his. Your needs are just as important. It is easy to focus on the hoarder as they are seen to be the one with the “problem”, and yes they might feel anxiety when discarding possessions, but you might also feel anxiety about being forced to live in a home which is filled to the brim.

This is a deeply rooted problem that predates your relationship, you are his wife, not his therapist and he is not and never actually has been your "project" to rescue and or save. Your children also react to how you behave and are in the home; you cannot fully protect them from this problem.

I am not kicking him out without giving him a chance to help himself. End of. You can keep repeating, and I will keep repeating. I am not kicking him out without giving him a chance to help himself. I am making changes to my home right now. He has to learn to deal with that or go. I am not kicking him out without giving him a chance to help himself.

What if he refuses to leave which is likely given the importance he is placing on his hoard?. You need to accept that you may never be able to stop the hoarding behaviour.

Review this in three weeks as you stated.

I think you are doing the right thing for you tbh eat. I know from what I posted earlier that may surprise.

The kids are too small to be badly affected just yet and I can see that you have only just realised the extent and shape of the problem - that he is a hoarder.

Anything that you have done up until now therefore will not have been, in your mind, a chance to change for him because you had not named the problem until now, you had not told him 'this is what you are doing, this is how it effects us and this is what is likely to happen, the choice you make to not solve this is a choice to lose your family - are you aware of that?'

I can see that you understand that in all likelihood the outcome will still be that he does not sort it out and you have to get him out along with the stuff. I can see you have made preparations to do this.

I would have got him and the stuff out by now but I would have had the benefit of knowing it was hoarding and also the fear of having been the child which would have made me more jumpy about it.

I think you need to satisfy yourself that he knows the choice he is making and you can't do that until you've made it clear you know IYSWIM.

His home hoard is going. Its mid process. I'm two rooms down already. He has to finish clear the living room in his week off. The bedroom, loft and garage will be at some later date. His hoard won't be allowed to creep back. If he can't cope without stuff then he goes. If he won't go willingly, FIL will remove him for me physically if needs be.

Offred Before I realised just how bad he is I essentially let him get on with it and nagged a bit. I never tried to address this with him properly so all dialogue was easily swept under the carpet. He is now at least beginning to discuss with me how he's feeling about these things and starting to admit its a problem and is beginning to edge towards going to the gp, which is massive achievement. I'm still not feeling confident that the outcome will be anything other than us splitting ultimately but at least I will be satisfied he's made his choice with eyes as open as they can be, and mine are now very much open.