I married a woman whose mother was/is a hoarder like you see on TV. After a few years together my wife became a hoarder, too, to the point where in our bedroom there was room for my body in the bed, and everything else was a nightmare of sheer crap, clothes, shoes, coupons, take-out menus, jewe;ry and piles of stinky clothes. And yet I feel so guilty for leaving her, when I would walk in our front door so many times and just want to turn around and leave because of the mess, the mess really really disturbed me, though I tried to ignore it. I hired a cleaning person and they wouldn’t even touch the bedroom, the woman just opened the door and closed it again, saying, “That room by itself would take me three days.”

I tell people “You would have left, too,” but I still feel terrible, I absolutely broke her heart when I left her.