There have been many times when discussing the hoarding with friends, co-workers, random people on the street, telemarketers, et cetera that people look at me and ask, "How could you let it get that bad?" or, "Why don't you just leave?" There are a few answers for this.
1. I am a wussy. It's true. Only in the last couple of years have I become a lesser wussy than before, but I am still a bit of a wussy. I'm not the kind of wussy that gets a scratch on his finger and cries and whines like he's going to die. I have way too much pride for that. I could envision myself sitting with my pinky dangling loosely from a flap of skin, clumsily trying to manipulate a roll of duct tape to hold it all together rather than tell someone I was too stupid to move my hand out of the way of the circular saw I was pushing.
I am also not the kind of wussy that will back away from a competitive match. I will gladly go down kicking and screaming (I try to keep my scream low pitched and manly) to a superior opponent while trying desperately to score some sort of minor win.
I am the kind of wussy that has a hard time saying no to a loved one. Especially to a skilled manipulator of guilt. It isn't an accident that my wife and I are together. She needed someone she could push around and I needed pushed around. Looking back at the few relationships I have had (Hoarder and I got together in high school), all of my relationships where I was in charge were ended by me; all my relationships where someone else was in charge they ended it. My relationships felt empty unless I was in a struggle, which is amusing to me since I have always called other people chaos addicts while not recognizing the chaos addict in myself. It was a perfect fit when Hoarder and I didn't have any stuff or kids. Two dysfunctional people getting together in a perfectly balanced dysfunctional relationship. It actually worked pretty well.
I don't want to sound like my wife was methodically plotting to find the weakest simp in the high school to shape into her spineless mold of jello while twisting her handlebar mustache and diabolically snickering under her breath. This is a classic co-dependent relationship. I NEEDED her pushing me, and she NEEDS someone she can push. If we were better communicators, we would have realized how well we cover for the other's weaknesses and could have thrived. As it is, any time we engage in a disagreement that is meaningful it ends badly.
2. I'm an enabler. One of the down sides to being a wussy is that I am also an enabler. I've had many cold, hardening realizations about the vastitude of my spinelessness, but this one was an eye opener. I have been clearing the way for every escalation of her hoarding habits until about three or four years ago. I've been through the 'we need to get rid of stuff' argument about 1000 times. For years I was fighting on her terms. In the end she would win the argument in one of two ways: either get me enraged by twisting my words and changing the subject so many times I couldn't think straight, or laying enough guilt down on me that I believed that I was being a bad person. I would then either step out of the way to avoid further rage and ire, or help her build more storage to provide a place to put the stuff (so more stuff could then populate the floor). I eventually realized (with some leading from a therapist) that this is an addiction behavior. My sister exhibited the same behavior when she was in recovery from cocaine when I was in my early teens. After making that connection, I have changed much of my behavior when arguing with my wife. Our fights still don't end well, but I usually leave them level headed and in no mood to enable.
3. It sneaks up on you. You don't realize what is going on until you're buried in it. Each new level of mess becomes a new level of normal in short time. I was well into my 12th year with Hoarder when I looked around and realized that I hadn't seen the mess for its true self for a long time. I couldn't walk anywhere in my house without stepping on or around something and I wasn't thinking twice about it. I knew it was a problem, but I had numbed myself to it to be able to deal with it. I've been known to drone into the same three websites for two hours when I know that I'm only going to get about 15 minutes worth of content in that time (a new post is coming, I KNOW IT!). I know that there isn't anything there, but waiting for content is easier than paying attention to real life sometimes. I now have to periodically stop and objectively look at the house as though I had never seen it to re-appreciate the position I'm in and make sure I don't get complacent.
4. By the time you realize what's up, you're all in. I first recognized that this was a much bigger problem than just taking the time to get rid of stuff when we all sat down to watch an episode of 'Clean Sweep'. Clean sweep was a show where people would call 'experts' in to come and help them get their messy rooms all organized up. These experts would drag all the peoples stuff out to the front yard, have the owners separate the stuff into 'keep' and 'junk' piles, then have them do it again until there was almost nothing left in 'keep'. They would then garage sale the junk, trash what didn't get sold and build them a nice new room to do all that they had hoped the room could do. Every person I knew that had watched the show had talked about how necessary it was to get rid of the stuff and how ridiculous it was that the people wanted to keep so much of the stuff.
When I watched the show with Hoarder and Momma Hoarder for the first time, both said, "You just can't get rid of stuff like that." That hit me like a Mack truck. I was dumbstruck. I couldn't imagine a sane person seeing that show and thinking it didn't end for the best, yet there was my seemingly sane wife on the crazy train - with her mother. I was one child and a house into the relationship at that time. I didn't feel like it would be good move to get a divorce with so much riding on our relationship. I probably should have run like hell in hindsight but I was still in full wussy mode (I've since ascended to 'partial wussy mode,' I may make a 1-10 scale on that later).
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As you can see, there is a lot that goes into being a proper hoarder spouse. You really have to work at being the right kind of enabler to put up with it.
From this post you may think that Hoarder is a stark-raving bitch who seeks only to ruin the lives of all around her. This is only true when dealing with her hoard. Outside of the house she spends more time working on PTA, Girls Scouts, Camp Fire, Soccer and about a bajillion other things that she really doesn't have the time for. She gives and gives and gives and gives and gives, until you threaten her hoard. That is how I stayed in this relationship for so long. I wasn't all that miserable until it started strongly affecting our kid's lives, and that is where I am now.
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