agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Annie: My husband of decades has a habit that I don't care for, and I can't seem to make him understand the problem. I have run out of ideas, have asked counselors and anyone I can that might have an answer or suggestion. I am desperate to see whether you or your readers have any ideas.

The issue is this: If he sees anything around and he doesn't recognize it, he throws it away. If you are right there, then you can stop him. Otherwise, you're out of luck. I check the garbage for items regularly.

The last things he tossed out that I didn't catch were my two photo albums from my childhood. My mom, dad and great-grandma worked on those two albums. Needless to say, the albums contained pictures of many individuals who are gone. I can't seem to forgive him and get over it. It's mostly grieving for what I can never see ever again. I thought I'd made him understand that these sentimental items are mine and that he has no right to throw something away without checking with me. Please help... I have tried counseling, both me alone and us together. I have left notes on items from matter-of-fact to rather nasty. I have tried explaining, every day, not to throw my things away. Please tell me how to deal with this problem. I am at my wit's end! — Missing My Things

Dear Missing: While not considered its own psychological disorder, compulsive decluttering can be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I encourage you to find a 2015 article on The Atlantic website, entitled "The Opposite of Hoarding," and see whether the behavior described reminds you of your husband. Though you've tried therapy yourself and attended couples therapy with him, he may benefit from individual therapy on his own, potentially for the treatment of OCD. If I hear any insights from readers, I'll be sure to print them here.

https://www.creators.com/read/dear-annie/12/20/holiday-hijinks

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If you want to be a shrink, go to school. Don't become an advice columnist instead. We can tell that Annie's not qualified to diagnose people at all because you can't just offer up random diagnoses secondhand to people you've never met.

I read that article when it came it. It's an interesting article, I feel for the people in it. However, LW's husband's problem isn't compulsive decluttering - if that's part of it at all. No, his problem is something much more common. He's an asshole. He's a grown-ass man, and whether or not he has this problem he's had literally decades to learn some sort of coping mechanism that would keep him from tossing out his spouse's photo albums.

How should LW deal with this problem? Well, notes haven't worked, counseling hasn't worked, crying hasn't worked - I suggest a divorce attorney. Because even if Husband really has a serious mental illness and simply can't stop, and there's no treatment, no medication, no coping mechanism that can help - there's no reason that other people should have to suffer because of his illness.

If she won't divorce him, then he needs to pay up, out of his spending money, for her to have a storage space for her precious items.

Edited 2020-12-22 18:52 (UTC)

You know, more and more, I find myself less...interested in? understanding of? Depends on your perspective, I guess. So let's just say: I think the why is not the most important issue. The important issue is the impact the behavior is having, and whether that behavior is likely to change.

Husband may have some kind of disorder. He might well benefit from therapy. But in the moment, he is hurting the LW, and does not seem to show any inclination to change.

That leaves a micro issue (how can LW protect things that are important to her?) and a macro issue (can you share your life, including your personal space, with someone who knows that their actions are hurting you and is doing nothing to address that?). The micro issue might be solved by some kind of lockable storage containers that husband does not have a key to (although the idea that a person would have to lock stuff up to protect them from another adult is pretty messed up in and of itself). But the macro issue? That is a deal-breaker, or at least it should be.

And once again, Annie is the absolute worst possible columnist LW could have written to, because what LW really needs to hear is that divorce very much needs to be an option.

When I started reading this letter, I was prepared to sympathize with LW's husband. I, too, perpetually tidy up, and it is a source of minor conflict in my house. Clutter causes me (perhaps undue) stress and anxiety, and in a house with two small children, there is always some clutter. I willingly take on the majority of tidying, but I need the leeway to keep a tidy space for my own mental health. I just cannot relax in a mess. I sometimes throw away scraps of paper that to me look like trash but were important to someone else, or I put something in the wrong place. I cannot realistically check with others on every item. I would never finish.

So I was prepared to be sympathetic to the husband. Then I read "photo albums." Anybody with even a teaspoon of sense knows a photo album is not trash. Verdict: LW's husband is just an ass who doesn't care about LW's feelings or how his actions affect her.

In the interest of fairness, I will ask about the general state of LW's house. Is it always messy? Does none of the mess belong to LW's husband? Does he feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff and powerless to do anything about it except just start throwing things away? I would go absolutely mad in such a scenario and could see myself reaching a breaking point where I start randomly tossing stuff. So I'll throw that out as one possibility with a solution: work together to make a clean living space in which he can find some peace, and maybe he won't throw away things he doesn't recognize.

I am a person who really hates clutter and I live with four other people who could care less.

I ask before throwing away junk mail, let alone anything else.

To what part of my comment are you responding?

The part that causes us to suspect you regard your mental health as giving you the right to toss important documentation of the people you live with, in my case. Can't speak for

gingicat

Your use of the word “documentation” suggests you may have overlooked where I said I’m cleaning up after young kids.

Kids grow. Parents, in my experience, don't.

Look, you are reading way too much into my comment. I can get a bit high-strung about it, but mostly I do what any parent does: try to avoid being overrun by scribbled-on pieces of paper, Amazon packaging, and dollar-store trinkets—although the latter is less of an issue during the pandemic, with no kids' parties or party favors.

I wrote about my life to create a juxtaposition: Even as someone who experiences clutter-related anxiety and perpetually tidies up, I found LW's husband beyond the pale. I have thrown away, e.g., a used box still containing a wanted receipt. More often I put something away in the wrong place and then can't remember where I put it. (My kids have a million toys.) I'm not excusing these mistakes, but I'm highlighting the difference between the kind of mistake I make as a someone who feels a drive to tidy compared to the callow disregard shown by LW's husband. (Also in contrast to LW, my wife says she appreciates all the work I do keeping the house tidy, despite occasional minor conflict.)

You are being very judgmental based on limited information. I tried to offer my perspective based on a personal problem I struggle with, and you attacked me for it. Please lay off.

If ever there was a call for Whole Man Disposal Services, here it is.

Absolutely.

Right? “I found this uncaring monster cluttering up my house. I need him thrown away.”

That is the moment of divorce. Nope, nope, nope. Kick him to the curb. He has been pushing boundaries for decades, it sounds like, and he found the boundary that is the breaking point. Leave him, LW, he is erasing your past and your life.

Have these people got children? Because if they have, she needs to take them and run. (She needs to run herself, but she's less likely to get screwed up for life than someone who's, say, five.) Because her husband is telling her that she only has anything for as long as he lets her have it, and that nothing is permanent. Which is shit for an adult, but for a child?

Not disagreeing with you even a little, but gonna point out that lots of people think that's a-okay for a parent to do to a child, to the point of explicitly telling their kids that they don't own anything since Mom and Dad bought it all.

Lots of people abuse children in different ways. This just happens to be one of the more socially accepted ways.

A friend's ex routinely throws out his children's beloved objects as punishment. The latest was one of last year's Hanukkah's presents that my friend gave their son. When she told him what an awful thing that was to do, he said he doesn't pay attention to where his kids' things come from.

Meanwhile, his son doesn't even remember what this was punishment for or what "lesson" it was supposed to teach. Mostly it taught him to keep things he cares about at my friend's house.

How could you share your personal space with such a person? My grandmother did that to my mom. Mom got out as soon as she was 18.

My mum did it to me. Ditto.

My first thought was "Does the husband have Alzheimers/dementia?"

My second thought was "Is the husband doing this on purpose as a form of emotional abuse????"

Or subconsciously as a form of abuse, but it's abusive unless he has no understanding/control of his actions IMO.

Even if he could convincingly prove that he had no knowledge of the nature and purpose of his acts or that what he was doing was wrong (which is the standard of M'Naghton insanity as a defence to a crime in English law) that would only go to his culpability, not to the objective effect on LW -- I mean, whichever way you slice it, she's still being abused by him. But she says they've been to counsellors and so forth and surely the possibility of its being an illness must have arisen at some point in those sessions.

Edited 2020-12-23 09:48 (UTC)

That's true, I suppose it is extremely unlikely. I guess I'm just struggling to imagine what kind of possible circumstances or explanations SHE is imagining go on in his head that a) she can put up with on a constant basis and b) that aren't just, you know, OBVIOUSLY so egregiously wrong and cruel that she thinks it's normal and/or profitable to try to negotiate with him about it?!

I can understand her writing it off if previously he'd thrown out things like a newspaper from last week, a magazine from six months ago, etc - the kind of items that you expect to be over and done with relatively quickly and that a large portion of the population wouldn't think about keeping around. But if it's gotten to the point that she's been leaving notes on her items and he's still throwing them away, that's obviously a much bigger problem!

It's been decades, and he's still throwing away other people's possessions as a matter of habit despite conversations, notes, and tears? He isn't going to change. After all, if he's only throwing away things he doesn't recognize, then he's clearly not tossing out his own things. OP needs to decide between trashcan vigilance and just getting a divorce. In my opinion, the divorce is the less smelly option.

There are some things that make a relationship difficult to salvage. Routinely discarding your partner's belongings is one of them.

This is why I can't abide Marie Kondo. (And before people tell me the KonMari method isn't about this, listen for a minute.)

The reason I cannot stand Marie Kondo is that she openly admits to doing this non-consensual chucking out to her siblings when a teenager, and then lying that they'd mislaid the item in question. And while she now claims she's got over that, and it's wrong, there are so many Darth Kondos (like OP's husband) who have observed the virtues of chucking out family possessions, and will not be moved to do otherwise. And she empowered all of them.

Edited 2020-12-22 23:58 (UTC)

Same.

Nah. She's saying that she's gotten over it and it's wrong. Jerkasses who take teenager activity as license to be jerkasses would've taken any excuse to be a jerkass.

"If he sees anything around and he doesn't recognize it, he ~~throws it away~~" steals it.

Taking other people's stuff is stealing, regardless of whether you take it to keep for yourself or to throw away. He is stealing her property.

I'd go further and say he's denying her right to own property; that is, he's infantilising her. (The icing on the cake is that she has apparently labelled her stuff "Do not remove" and he's tossed it anyway - the level on which he's not accepting her agency is really alarming.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only