Help me understand my wife

[82w]

Morning,

I'm looking for some help understanding my wife's behaviour and maybe writing it all down like this will help me understand it too.

She rarely buys one of anything she needs to buy in bulk, this could be the 5 tubes of toothpaste we have in the cupboard, or it could be the 12! bottles of Ribena.

We very often have to throw out food because we cannot eat it all before the use by date and we don't have room in the freezer.

If I even suggest maybe ordering less she gets annoyed and says something like I can't do anything right, why don't you do it in future etc. I do tell her that I'm very grateful and appreciate it. She knows but says she can't help it, "you know what I'm like".

She does suffer from anxiety for which she takes medication. When I ask what causes the anxiety she says she doesn't know.

She'll also admit she has an unhealthy relationship with food and will eat too much but she enjoys it. She's now overweight and feels fat.

It isn't only food though that she over orders, I work from home and almost every day we'll get at least one parcel arrive, it could quite often be 3 in a day. We are getting ready for our summer holiday and in the cupboard we have have no fewer than 13 travel plugs however another 4 arrived this week. Where we are going they use british plugs.

I guess she feels sad for some unknown reason, well unknown to me, I'm not sure if she knows, and maybe buying food and stuff from amazon that we don't need makes her happy?

I do really want to understand and support and help her if I can.

Any advice?

Sounds like a mental health issue go to GP with her and ask to see the psychiatric nurse attached to the gp clinic (if there is one)

I think your wife needs professional help OP. Buying 4 travel plugs when you already have 13 indicates something quite problematic.

Could she have experienced some sort of (food?) deprivation in the past, perhaps in her childhood?
Her actions imply that something in her psyche is telling her to prepare stores, horde, eat as much as possible while it's there perhaps before it is taken away from her?

It sounds like a compulsive mental health condition, quite possibly related to hoarding. She seems to have some sort of anxiety relating to being unable to cope with running out of something… Has she had financial troubles in the past? Did she grow up in poverty?

why don't you do it in future etc

She has a point - is there any reason you can take responsibility for the shopping?

In the longer term it sounds like she would certainly benefit from therapy.

Thank you for the replies.

I have asked her about her childhood and there was no deprivation, while her parents were not rich they had a very comfortable upbringing.

Which is in contrast to mine as we had no food in the cupboards.

She's hoarding. There are help groups.

@Eyesopenwideawake She doesn't actually want me to do the shopping.

She needs mental health help, mate this is beyond our pay band and yours. Encourage her to speak to someone professional about it.

What was her childhood like?

My ex husband was 'self indulgent' (as a descriptor rather than a criticism).

His parents were aggressive alcoholics. They never had food in the house, he had to spend his birthdayoney on essentials as a child and got a paper round at 13 so he could replace his younger siblings school uniform when it was damaged before his parents found out.

As a result, he is an adult who earns a high 5 figure salary but is contsantly in debt because he won't deprive himself of anything. He feels anxious - not buying stuff or shopping at discount supermarkets etc makes him feel poor because it triggers childhood memories of never having enough food or 'things'.

It's not even the things themselves that bring him pleasure. They were mostly never opened. It was the act of purchasing them and knowing that he had the money to pay for it (even when he didn't). It made him feel wealthy and secure even though it resulted in the opposite!

Could there be a similarly seemingly unconnected reason that explains it? Does having extra stuff/eating extra food make her feel secure somehow?

My exh was also very defensive if it was ever pointed out.

No financial issues and we are doing ok. No money issues.

She did get into credit card debt years ago but I paid it off before it became a problem and we agreed no more credit cards. The whole experience scared her.

She has a good monthly disposable income and while I think it would be good for her to put some aside, I guess it's her choice how she spends her money.

Thanks again all for the support and insights. I'll look up getting help.

Again I really appreciate it.

I agree though, she needs help. She needs to accept that she has a problem first though. And want to get past it.

When people do things for self protection, they can become very defensive at the thought of losing that crutch.

@GreyCarpet oddly my parents were alcoholics and poor. Her family were comfortable and had a decent family life.

We have loads of unused stuff in the house, it gives me a migraine just thinking about where to store it all.

Yes she does get defensive and as I know she will get defensive I don't like to bring it up.

Sounds tough 😔

Have you asked her why she bought more travel plugs? That's likely to he less emotive than food for many reasons.

I'd also say that even if her upbringing appeared comfortable, this is an issue that is likely to be related to childhood somehow. Or an earlier experience. It's something she has learnt and that makes her feel safe.

You did well to not be negatively affected long term by your upbringing x

If it was buying lots of new clothes or new hobby items she doesn't use, I'd say this is very common and can be much worse with ADHD. But the items you describe are unusual, and it does sounds more like obsessive compulsion disorder or something similar. My husband has an extremely irritating trait that he will panic if we only have a little milk/butter etc left and will go to an all night shop and buy for eg three blocks of butter, and then we often don't even use the existing remainder we had before the next big shop is due. I constantly point out that it is a waste of money to buy at more expensive local shops and it isn't the end of the world if we one day ran out of milk! He thinks my laid back attitude is laziness, and we have never been able to agree in it. But your example is much more extreme. Nobody runs out of plug adapters.

Its anxiety. Fear of running out of stuff

I often buy stuff like travel plugs even though we already have them. Either because I forget that we have them or just don't think about it, or sometimes because I don't know where I've put them. I also buy too much food though I'm desperately trying to reduce this now as I know that food waste is awful for the environment. Dh does get frustrated with me sometimes but he still leaves me to do most of the shopping so my sympathy is limited tbh.

I have adhd and I'm pretty sure it's linked to this in my case. Does your wife have any kind of neurodiversity?

My sister has ADHD and she is a bulk buyer and always has been - even as a teen/young adult she’d buy 12 of the perfume or hair and beauty products she liked (“in case it was ever discontinued”), if she found shoes she liked she’d buy one in every colour, she has wardrobes, storage boxes, garages and sheds full
of cheap clothes that she “had to get as is was the last one / only one in her size / in the sale etc etc” but that still have the tags on and have never been worn. If she ever sees anything on FB Marketplace or Freecycle she has to have it, sometimes really crappy stuff, and she has nowhere to store it. Since having her DS she has a whole huge wardrobe of clothes she has hoarded for him - she was getting age 4 things when he was 6 months old - lots never worn. When she moves house she has a van load just of the boxes of crap she’s collected over the last 20 years that follows her to each new home.

There is a link to dopamine release when someone like this finds and secures a new thing, and it’s addictive. People do things that make them feel better (in the short term at least). There will be a reason she behaves this way.

Perhaps you could collaborate with her and maybe say to continue with the non perishable bulk buys, but she needs to stop with the food that always goes off? Some kind of compromise?

For what it's worth, OP, a decent couples therapist would be very interested in the unconscious dynamics of your relationship.

Sounds hard for you both.

She does need some professional support.

Has she ever had any form addiction that she's moved past over the years? I only say this because I had a drinking problem for a few years after some hard spells in life. When I kicked the habit it then moved onto eating in excess then it changed into buying anything I could for a bargain to the point I was overspending trying to save money if that makes sense? Not saying this is what's happened but it's so easy to fall into a pattern.

After seeking help I realised that replacing one addition for another wasn't helping me.

Hope she sees someone and gets the support she needs 💐

I have ADHD (diagnosed last year as an adult) and I do some of these behaviours. I forget what I’ve got at home and buy more. I also compulsively spend money. It’s a dopamine seeking behaviour. I also have anxious periods. It almost looks like OCD but it is different. Anxiety meds helped but not as much as ADHD meds once I was diagnosed.

I would suggest speaking to her in a calm moment and asking how she feels about it. It’s worth her looking into OCD and ADHD and maybe discussing with her GP.

Shopping and eating can both be used to fill other gaps or give you a short-term high when you're anxious - shopping as in finding a bargain or managing to track down the perfect product that you think is a really good choice and will improve your life.

Does she have a fulfilling life - good job, enthusiastic SAHM, happy homemaker? Is it the life she hoped for?

If she's got deep-seated feelings of inadequacy then she might not want to admit it to you. She might not even want to admit it to a therapist, if she's afraid the feelings might be right.

What are her parents like, and what role did she have in the family - daddy's princess, the clever one, the pretty one, the well-behaved one, the artist, the clown?

Agree with this, OP have you considered not that her upbringing may have predisposed her, but that yours may have predisposed you to picking someone like her? She sounds like she has significant mental health issues which she's attempting to minimise and you are at risk of enabling these by tiptoeing around them. Do some reading up on hoarding and also on the topic of codependency and see if it casts any light. Wishing you the very best for the future.

It could be some sort of 'emotional spending' which she uses as a coping mechanism to deal with difficult emotions.

I have always tended to 'shop' when feeling low in mood. Not exactly like your wife. I don't hoard but tend to buy things, not because I need them, but because I just want them. I have a degree of self-control and do not overspend, but still, I waste a lot of money that could be put to better use.