It's easy for the world to judge, since they're not the ones who love
these people...

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted on Tuesday,
March 25th, 2008 at 08:27 PM.


Relationship : son-in-law and brother-in-law
Source : research on the web, but specifically the OCD Foundation I
think

Message :

When I first met my wife, I thought the extreme clutter and
accumulations were just symptoms of people who just weren't raised to
"know better".  My future sister-in-law (C.) was the neighborhood
"cat-lady": she had over a dozen cats when I first met her in May of that
year, but because she systemically neglected to care for them beyond budget
cat-food, left-overs (beans!) and small bags of whatever cheap litter
was on sale at the corner store, by the Fall there were twenty.  And it
just kept spiralling from there.  The neighbors were complaining
because the smell was horrible, so my wife would go over a couple times a
week to clean and drop off better food and litter, but it would just go
back to the same mess, with even more cats, since they were never fixed.
In time I found it runs in families and social dysfunctions only make
it worse.

If C. was the cat-lady, her mom H. was the den-mother for wayward kids
and grown men.  Because she'd grown up with parental deprivation, H.
never had enough food or more importantly emotional support or love, so
when you pull back and look at the big picture after 14 years, you see
it all feeding on itself.  H. took in people for over 30 years and they
never did her any good, but she has always refused to learn from this.
  They always always stole from her and wanted more than their share,
so she was forced to hoard and hide necessities as well as everything
else.  H. even had to hide her dishes and silverware, so she started
stockpiling the plastic cutlery, styrofoam cups and dishes instead: for
YEARS, but she never stopped bringing in more problem children (3 or 4 at
a time) along with cats, dogs iguanas, rabbits, squirels, birds and all
the usual "stuff" (hundreds of bags, newspapers, broken hand-me-down
things from the basement of her building).  This meant she lost sight of
all the really important stuff, like her daughter C.
C. destroyed her house, her own kids and relationships with people over
this.

H. destroyed her house, her kids, her health & retirement.
We just finished having all her plumbing fixed after she'd let it
lapse.  For a year she was flushing with buckets and bathing in cold water,
because she didn't want anybody in her house.  Does that sound
familiar?

We have kids and every day is a mild struggle to make certain they
don't inherit this trait, because it is genetic: I'm constantly gently
chiding my wife when she starts exhibiiting the behavior (dozens of old
receipts, bags of unopened junk mail).
I think you've created a great outlet for our "community".
It's easy for the world to judge, since they're not the ones who love
these people.