Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            Devon, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

Devon: So I wrote in because I've been having this thing. I just bought my house.

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Devon:            Yeah. It was kind of incredible, and it wasn't something that I was expecting to do. I've lived here eight years, and I love this town, and it's the perfect place. And to be honest with you, the only reason I got it is because my landlord—they were in Ukraine, and they've had to really consolidate—

Jessica:            Wow.

Devon:            —so they can get by. So having this place—it feels like a blessing but a blessing that comes from this really hard place, if I'm honest with you.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Devon:            And it's a miracle, and it's really changed something in me because I've always been chaotic. I have ADHD. I am really super chaotic. But I want to make this place beautiful, and my partner—they've been talking the whole time I've known them about what they'd do with the garden, how they'd like to decorate the place. And—

Jessica:            I have two questions, to interrupt before you get too much further. You've lived in the unit for eight years? In the house?

Devon:            Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And then does your partner live with you?

Devon:            Yeah. Yeah, they do.

Jessica:            Okay. And have they lived with you the whole eight years?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Keep going. I just wanted to make sure I had those two things on lock. Okay.

Devon:            It feels like I'm trying to clear it, and I see—they've told me their vision for places. And sometimes I can do it, and then sometimes they tell me, like, "Oh, this is going to look beautiful." And I'm like, "But that's where you store eight million boxes," because they cannot throw things away, and they've never been able to. And so I get into this sort of state of—I start wanting to help them and to try and make their dream come true and make it a place that I'm safe, as well, because it can be so bad. I found mice and nests, and I'm just like—I hate that so much.

So I want it to be lovely, and I want to be safe here and I want to feel safe here. But when I start trying to do that for them, I start getting upset because they promise me they're going to help, and then they don't and can't because they're disabled. And they really struggle with things, and I'm their carer. And then I feel bad about being upset, and then everything spirals, and—yeah. Does that make sense?

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And you're comfortable with me sharing your birth data?

Devon: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. So you were born April 18, 1986, in Stamford, UK, at 3:10 a.m. So I notice that you are very conspicuously not using the word "hoarder."

Devon:            It gets really bad. It gets to hoarder state sometimes.

Jessica:            I mean, finding mice nests in boxes of stuff or in collections of stuff—that feels pretty—fits the term, unless you or your partner feels that that's an offensive term, or are you conscientiously trying—because you're describing living with a hoarder. Am I misunderstanding? Do you have a reason why you don't use that word?

Devon:            I'm trying not to label them beyond what they label themselves because their autonomy in all of this is really important to me, especially because they're physically disabled and I'm not. And I want to respect their right to everything they have without trying to stigmatize it, if that makes sense.

Jessica:            It does. It does, but I'm going to keep on asking questions for a minute here. So they have physical disability. Do they have mobility assistance, or are they bound to a chair or a bed?

Devon:            They don't have physical assistance beyond sometimes using a walking stick. It sounds silly. I don't really understand it, which is kind of part of my problem because I don't have a picture in my head of what they can do and what they can't do. So, quite often, I'm sitting there like, "Am I being reasonable when I ask for help, or am I being really awful?" And I can't tell, [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Do they leave the house? Do they have a diagnosis?

Devon:            They kind of stopped leaving the house for a few years around 2020.

Jessica:            So have they not left the house since 2020?

Devon:            They're getting better. They're doing way more now and starting to do more independently. But usually, when they go out, I'm there as a carer and there to make sure that they're okay. It's quite a big part of my life, is to try and make sure that they're okay in whatever's going on.

Jessica:            So, in the last 12 months, has your partner left the house more than ten times?

Devon:            This is the thing. They're improving so much in the last year, which is another reason why I can't really place how healthy they are, because some days, it's really good, and then some days, they're not getting out of bed.

Jessica:            And is there a physiological diagnosis that this person has or a mental health diagnosis?

Devon:            There's autism. There's a couple of other things that have been [indiscernible 00:05:32] and things that happened, like long-term problems, diabetes and some muscular things. And it's quite a complex picture. I wouldn't say I fully understand it, which is an awful thing to say, but—

Jessica:            No, it's not awful. But I think it puts you in an impossible position. And so you—and I should just pause to say you have Mercury in Pisces, and it shows.

Devon:            (laughs)

Jessica:            (laughs) Sorry, but real talk. And it's intercepted in the first house. Your Mercury in Pisces is really just like—it surprises you when—because your thoughts can be very linear, but then your communication can be very cyclical and circular.

Devon:            Yeah. It's a massive problem. Yes. I'm—

Jessica:            Yeah. I can see that, it being a little difficult. So do you have the kind of relationship with your partner where you could say—I'm going to call your partner Puppy Dog—where you could say, "Puppy Dog, what's your diagnosis? What is your technical mobility issue?" Could you just ask them that?

Devon:            I should be able to, but I've been to all of the meetings. I go in to the doctors with them, and I have difficulty understanding why they can't do certain things, which is often the case with disability anyway. So I'm like—

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Devon:            So I'm stuck in this situation. I don't want to push them. And a lot of it, I think, is sensory, even.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to pull you back. I'm going to pull you back because I asked you if you could ask them a direct question, and you started talking about them and the difficulties of living with disability and how it can be invisible and the pressure. So let's just hang out here for a minute, okay? Because—we're going to hang out here. We're going to hang out here because in order to be a kind and supportive partner, do you need to be able to understand what doctors say? No, you don't. In order to be a kind and supportive partner, should you indulge your partner's every whim? No, you shouldn't. You are, but you shouldn't.

                        So we're going to slow down here, and I want to come back to this really simple question I have for you, which is could you just ask your partner to simply explain what their mobility issue is at this time?

Devon:            I should be able to. I don't know why I don't understand fully. Sometimes it's super obvious, like sometimes—like they had a goiter last year, and it had a super—like, "These are the rules. This is what it's going to do. This is how we can cure it. This is what we can do." And [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Okay. I'm going to jump in again because you're again—you're talking about them. I'm asking you about you, and you're talking about them. So very impressed at your ability to talk about goiters in response to the question, "Can you ask your partner a direct question?" Clearly, this is not just about your partner. It's about your comfort in being direct with a question.

Devon:            Yeah, I think it is. And it's weird because when you were saying, "Can you ask the direct question?" and I was [indiscernible 00:08:43], my honest feeling was like, "No. Why can't I do that?"

Jessica:            So here's the thing because I even noticed that when you wrote your question to me—I was like, "This is a very confusing, roundabout question," which is unlike me to choose a confusing, roundabout question. But I was like, "But that feels like part of the question." I want to just say that based on my very limited experience with you, that this is not exclusively—so maybe it is partially, but it's not exclusively about your partner at all. It's about your comfort with saying directly, "I need to understand the parameters of what's going on with you, insomuch as they can be explained, so that I can be clear about where it makes sense to ask for help and where it doesn't."

                        But the problem with that is what I just said was so clear and so direct and so much about, "I need you so I can"—those things are things you're not comfortable with.

Devon:            Yeah, those words.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yep.

Devon:            I've worked a lot on that, and this is me after years of working on that.

Jessica:            Okay. All right. So have you ever asked your partner a direct question like, "Will you explain x to me?" and have them, in response, be angry, abusive, cruel, punishing—anything in those families?

Devon:            Sorry. Yeah. I've had problems with that. Yeah. I was thinking you probably wouldn't guess that. [indiscernible 00:10:11]. I'm sorry.

Jessica:            No. I'm sorry. Also, this is the annoying part of talking to me instead of somebody like a therapist.

Devon:            Right.

Jessica:            Yeah. Pros and cons. So that's a yes.

Devon:            Yeah. It's been a problem in my life.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Devon:            Yeah. It's been a big one.

Jessica:            Yeah. And with your current partner as well?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's a lot of parts to this, but I don't want to zoom past the part where if you never identify, "This is what I need," and say it to another human, it's hard to get what you need. I'm sorry.

Devon:            Yeah. No, it's tricky. It's tricky.

Jessica:            It is. I'm going to be totally direct here and say that when I look at your home energetically, it looks very hoarded. And I know that the term "hoarding"—it's a pathology, right? And I am not trying to pathologize your partner, and it's outside of my expertise. And I'm not in your house; what the fuck do I know? We are in different continents. But it looks like there is inhibition to mobility, like hallways are blocked. You have to kind of walk around things.

Devon:            Yeah. We had a friend who was quite disabled, and they reached a point of not really being able to come here.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what it looks like. It looks like—well, this is part of why I asked about your partner needing mobility assistance, because this is a dangerous place for somebody who has any kind of mobility issues to be in. You certainly couldn't bring a wheelchair in there. It is hazardous in that way. I also see—and again, you tell me if I'm wrong, but I do see some hazardous things with hygiene. So there's clean spots, but there's spots that would be impossible to clean without completely getting rid of them.

Devon:            Yeah. It's a problem. I'm working on it, but it's hard.

Jessica:            When people hoard or compulsively keep things in a way that gets to the point that you're living in—right? So, whether or not we want to call it hoarding, it's just the language I have, so, again, not to pathologize your partner. When people get to that point with attachment to stuff, it's never about the stuff. It's always about something deeper. And so what gets really messy is that asking—your partner saying to you, "I need you to live exactly like I'm living"—it's not a fair thing to ask of you. It requires that you take on their pathology, in a way, to take on their blocks, because living in an environment where stuff is on stuff is on stuff is on stuff and you can't really navigate it, what it does to a person on an energy level is it makes things chaotic, and energy doesn't move through a space.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you start to feel stuck in your life. And you might have all these ideas, when you're—I don't know—going to the market to pick up groceries, about what you're going to do when you get home. And then you get home, and then the energy is so stuck in the space that you don't end up doing the cooking you were planning on, or you don't get to the projects you were fantasizing about.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            On a psychological level, it requires that you disassociate from your environment. The only way to psychologically navigate a space that is edging you out of it because of the stuff is to only look at the free space and to ignore the junked-up space.

Devon:            Yeah. It makes sense.

Jessica:            And the effect of just these two things alone has just a waterfall impact on the rest of your life and on the rest of your psyche because those two things take an enormous amount of energy. So most people who live in an environment that's hoarded are exhausted all the time.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the question that you posed to me when you wrote it and you sent it to me was like, "How can I basically suck it up and live around it and not be upset?" That's kind of what the question was.

Devon:            Yeah. That was the question. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. And I am not going to support you in doing that, because that's what you're already doing. You are literally already doing that. Listen. You could have a partner where you really like shabby chic—you know what I'm talking about, shabby chic, link pink and white and—you know what I mean—beachside, blah, blah. And your partner might want to have everything be industrial and painted black, right? You could have an aesthetic difference that feels insurmountable and really hard to navigate, and that would be fucking annoying. But what this is is a whole other ball of wax because it is not aesthetic; it is standard of living.

Devon:            Yeah. This is all feeling like blaming them, and I'm sitting here like, "Is it actually me that's doing this? Am I the one who's"—it feels—yeah, I don't want to do that.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. This is great. Okay. This is really important. So you feel that I'm blaming them.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. This is important. Right. So blame is accusatory and has a kind of punishment energy to it, whereas acknowledging responsibility and ownership and discerning objective reality is not blaming.

Devon:            Okay.

Jessica:            And what I would contend is that you have a hard time with discerning objective reality for yourself, and it's partially because you think if you say to me, "Hey, Jessica, every time we hang out, you leave your cup of coffee at my house,"—if I come with a to-go cup, and you say, "Hey, Jessica, every time you come into my house, you leave a cup of coffee at my house and I have to throw it out. Why don't you just throw it out yourself or take it with you?" you would feel like you were blaming me instead of just being like, "Hey, Jessica, this is annoying. Don't do it, okay? Thanks, friend. Bye."

Devon:            Yeah. I've literally [indiscernible 00:16:07]. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. This is probably why the metaphor came to me. So all to say, if your partner says, "Everything that comes in the house stays in the house," and you on the DL also bring things into the house and never get rid of your shit—is that what's happening?

Devon:            I think so. I've been trying to make—because there's quite a lot of stuff, so I've been trying really hard to cut back as much as I can.

Jessica:            Okay. So, objectively, then, we can assess your partner has the tendency to bring things in and hold on to them. And that is not a blame. That is an acknowledgement of circumstance and behavior and consequence.

Devon:            Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            So the thing about this Mercury in Pisces is that it can give you a devotional way of thinking. So that devotional way of thinking is, "If I say anything even remotely critical, if I think anything that contradicts your identity or your version of reality, then I'm an asshole.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Here's the problem. If your partner has a tendency to—I'm just using this word as a shorthand—hoard—right? We're not diagnosing. We're just saying hold on to shit, live in corners, etc.—and you are enabling them, supporting it, feeding it, never identifying it, then what you're doing is you are enabling them to not be right with themselves. And on top of it, you're living in fucking corners on a miracle house situation. Owning a house, 2025—that's fucking bananas. And you have this magical opportunity, and I really get why you're struggling with it, because you both want to live in a beautiful, functional space.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And beautiful and functional might mean maximalist and having tons of stuff, but tons of stuff is really different than you can't access the stuff, you can't touch the stuff, you can't use the stuff, you have to live in small, fractional corners of the house because of the stuff. And that's your current situation. It's the latter, right?

Devon:            Sorry. I think this might be a Mercury in Pisces thing. I would argue it's getting better if you ignore some places.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's hang out here for a second. So I described what I perceive to be your home at this time. Am I inaccurate in describing it? Was that an inaccurate description of how your home is at this—just today? Today is what, Wednesday?

Devon:            Some parts of it, like the dining room, yeah, like my partner's office. And not being able to get through the whole way is hard. It's not always easy to walk around.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Devon:            Yeah. Okay. Okay. Sorry.

Jessica:            No. Don't be sorry. But this is really important because we're hanging out with what happens for you psychologically and emotionally when we name hard things that are not your fault. If I just sat here listing off things that were your fault, you'd be a fucking trooper; am I right? You'd be like, "Yeah. I did that. That's fucked up. I can't believe I'm this person." But you'd be here for it. I say your partner hoards, which is—I mean, you just said they haven't been able to get into their office for a long time. Yeah. Again, I'm not trying to diagnose your partner, but this is a very common word used in this—I mean, it is very rare that somebody who does hoard says, "I'm a hoarder."

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            That's not unique to your partner, for the record. It's a pretty normal thing. And again, it's like—I don't know—maybe there's something problematic about using that term. And if you don't like to use it, I want to respect that. And at the same time, I fear that if I respect completely your desire to abscond—like, not hold your partner accountable for anything—then we're not going to have a real conversation. Then we're going to perpetuate your problem. Do you understand why—the quandary?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So okay. How is the bedroom?

Devon:            That's not a polite question.

Jessica:            No, no, I mean in terms of, like, stuff.

Devon:            No, no, I know. I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay.

Devon:            It's not great. I noticed a slip in the piles the other day, and I was trying to rescue some things. And when I was trying to clean it, it got broken. And that was really so difficult, and even more difficult because it's something that gets dirty really easily. So I've been trying to clean it for a long time, and then I've broken it, broken something that I would kind of like to have been burned in a fire. But I wasn't trying to hurt it. I was trying to rescue it from a situation that I was seeing getting bad. [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Was it yours, or was it your partner's thing?

Devon:            My partner's. Yeah. Yeah. So that's hard, but yeah. And that's where it hits hard because, a lot of the time, I feel like I'm the cause because I'm trying to make sure that there is livable space. I'm trying to make sure that I can handle it, you know?

Jessica:            Well, if you put something down and you never touch it again, then yes, it won't break. I mean, eventually, maybe something will collapse on it, and then it breaks in that way. But of course, you're the one who's at fault if you're the only one who's tidying or reorganizing, right? And let me tell you why I asked about your bedroom—first of all, because you didn't mention your bedroom when you were listing off the rooms. And your bedroom is where you're supposed to get sleep and have peace. And do you share a room?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So there's no space that I'm seeing when I look energetically that is just yours, where you're like, "Oh, this is how I want it to be. This is clean, and it's open, and there's no piles." Is there? So you looked behind you. I'm sorry. I can't really see what's behind you.

Devon:            Sorry. Sorry. I was looking at the pile of books that—like, because I can't drive. That's stuff that I sorted out to get rid of that was mine, and it will go when I can get them to take me to the place.

Jessica:            They don't have somebody who can come pick up?

Devon:            You just blew my mind.

Jessica:            Oh.

Devon:            Yeah, [indiscernible 00:22:09].

Jessica:            Yeah. So, you know, they have, like, free boards, community boards, like Facebook Marketplace, where you can be like, "I have this excellent collection of books. It's free if you come pick it up," and then they can tell you when they're coming, and you can put it on your porch, and you have no contact.

Devon:            Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            You don't have to do all the labor.

Devon:            Okay. Yeah. No. Okay. Dissolving into protons.

Jessica:            Okay. That's awesome. I mean, it is really hard to get rid of stuff, even if you have a pickup truck. It's like a thing. It's emotional. It's energetic. It's a thing to get rid of stuff. And also, if you don't drive, then it's so much harder. But yeah, you don't have to do that work. You just have to have access to the internet and the will, and again, schlep it onto the porch. No contact.

Devon:            Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Devon:            Okay.

Jessica:            So looking up community free boards in your area is the way to go. I don't know exactly what they're called where you are, but there are tons of community free boards. There's tons of buy-nothing boards. That has the added bonus of—I don't know. It's like very cool mutual aid, community care kind of thing. And it takes care of you and your home. So we'll put that in the mix.

                        Coming back to the larger issue, you deserve to have room in your home, and you deserve to be able to say to your partner, "I need this to change." I think that what I am seeing of your partner—who does not want me to look at them, so I am respecting that. But the one thing that is glaring about your partner when I look at them energetically—I'll just say this—is they don't like to be questioned.

Devon:            Yeah. Okay. We'll go with that.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. I mean, you're not comfortable questioning people anyways. I guess, in that way, it's like a good marriage. But in that way, it's also not great because their discomfort and frustration with being questioned and your trepidation to question the people you care about can kind of get you really stuck in dynamics that don't actually work for either of you, right?

                        And in regards to the space, I'm going to give you advice for navigating your home. And it does not speak to the self-esteem work that I hope you are embarking upon. Do you have a therapist?

Devon:            Yeah. I started some therapist stuff, which is kind of helping, I think.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's slow. Therapy is slow. It's supposed to be slow. I mean, listen. If I was a therapist, it would have taken us like a year to get to some of the things we talked about already, right? It's slow, but it's worth it. I want to encourage you to stick with it, okay? And if you find that this particular therapist isn't a match, eventually, you have—you don't need permission. Just fucking change therapists. They are under your employ. You want them to work for you.

                        And I think it's really important that I say that there is no magic bullet for self-worth and self-esteem and for giving yourself the space in your own life to have preferences and to say, "I love my partner, and I don't like what they're doing. I love my partner, and I dislike this part of them." Sorry. I know.

Devon:            Sorry.

Jessica:            It's quite all right. I wish—I fear—it's like I'm saying this to you and I'm like, my partner wishes I wasn't so comfortable saying, "I love you, but I fucking hate that." He would be so happy if I had less confidence with that. But I want to encourage you to find your own middle ground. And that is slow, hard work, but it's worth it, okay?

                        Now, in regards to navigating your space—which is a big part of what you wrote me about. It's like, how the hell do you have a home you love with this person who—you don't love the way they navigate the home?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            You didn't say that directly, but that's it, right?

Devon:            I would never say that.

Jessica:            No, you would never say that. I respect you. I respect you. So you pick a room, thinking, okay, you're going to start in a single room. Would it be the hallway? Would it be the office? Would it be your bedroom? What room would you start in if you were going to start making a space beautiful?

Devon:            Oh, Christ. Probably the living room because that's where we're together—

Jessica:            Okay.

Devon:            —and that's where we're sort of—we're happiest.

Jessica:            Okay. I like that. And I just want to make sure I'm seeing it correctly. The living room has kind of a spacious couch and a television, and there's some bookshelves?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the stuff that is in piles is kind of along the walls and encroaching closer to the center of the room?

Devon:            In that room, it was until yesterday. I did a bit—that's where the lamp got broken.

Jessica:            Okay.

Devon:            My partner has been doing a bit of spreading over the sofa because they—just, like, they needed to lie down a bit. So I needed to have a seat, so I was sorting out that area so I could. So that sort of sorted out that area and got it cleaner than it was. And that—

Jessica:            Okay.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. There's lots of layers happening at once here, but let me just start with, is there any wall that you can access, or is every wall point covered with stuff?

Devon:            Every wall point is covered with stuff.

Jessica:            Okay. I just want you to sit with how uncomfortable it makes you to acknowledge that truth. This is not blaming your partner by acknowledging this. It's not even blaming your partner by saying that stuff is 98 percent theirs. Am I correct in that, 98 percent?

Devon:            [indiscernible 00:27:57] things. So, like, they buy the things and choose the things and sort of sort out the things, so yeah. But because—I don't know that I would know what to do if I had to buy—I've bought things this year. I bought a brush, and yeah, I've bought things. But I don't really understand them, and I don't quite understand how to do it. Yeah, so mostly theirs.

Jessica:            Mostly, majoritively, kind of mostly, mostly?

Devon:            Definitely like living room, and, like—this room is mostly mine. This room is mostly my stuff. Every other room is sort of mostly their stuff [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. We're just talking living room right now. We're just talking about the living room.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So, again, I want you to notice how incredibly uncomfortable you get, and you start talking about lots of details when we're just trying to acknowledge, "This is your partner's stuff."

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Do they consent to you moving or getting rid of their stuff?

Devon:            No.

Jessica:            They do not? Do you consent to living penned in by their stuff?

Devon:            I mean, that's tricky because, like, [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm going to slow you down. I'm going to slow you down. When we talk about what your partner does or does not consent to, you have no problem using yes and no language. So I'm asking you about what you consent to.

Devon:            I have asked for things to change.

Jessica:            You've asked for things to change. So, while you don't consistently pull back your consent, emotionally, am I correct in saying you do not consent; this is not how you want to live? Is that correct?

Devon:            I want my life to be really different on that front. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm going to give you really challenging homework, which is, in therapy, to practice saying that sentence directly and clearly. If you can't say it to a person you're paying hourly to listen to you and be on your side, then it's going to be really hard for you to believe it. It's going to be really hard for you to advocate for yourself.

Devon:            What sentence? Sorry.

Jessica:            "I do not consent to living like this. This does not work for me. I do not like living like this. I do not want to live like this." I'm using clear, succinct language that is uncomplicated. Listen. There's a humongous amount of complexity all around the topic. But what's not complicated, like zero percent complicated, is how you feel about living with all this stuff. You don't want it. You don't like it. It makes you feel bad and sad and stuck. Is there a lie? Have I got that right?

Devon:            I was sitting here like, "Have I lied to you this whole thing? Is anything I'm saying true?" because this doesn't sound real.

Jessica:            Interesting. Interesting. What doesn't sound real?

Devon:            That my house could be full of stuff that I find hard to live with, that I don't want there. That doesn't sound real to me. That sounds made up. That sounds made up.

Jessica:            Does it sound untrue?

Devon:            I don't think I could tell a different truth, but when I'm saying it, it doesn't sound like—I'm thinking, "Well, I must be lying." Sorry. I don't—that might be too much. I'm sorry.

Jessica:            No, it's not at all. It's not at all. No, no, no. I'm hanging out with you here. It's really hard for you to accept truths that are confronting is kind of what I'm hearing you say. And the questions I'm asking and the fact that I can actually see your space energetically—it's confronting, in a way, because you talk to a therapist, and you don't have to tell the therapist anything.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            When you listed off the rooms that there's a lot of stuff, you didn't mention the living room. You didn't mention the bedroom. But then, when I pressed, it turns out the living room and the bedroom, too. We haven't gotten to the kitchen. I'm giving you space in the plumbing rooms, but they are also a problem, right?

Devon:            [indiscernible 00:31:58].

Jessica:            Sorry. The plumbing rooms.

Devon:            The plumbing rooms. Yeah. Yeah. [indiscernible 00:32:03] it means I can go in there and I can touch the floor. That's super helped [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. But I'm still seeing piles of stuff and significant unusable space in the kitchen.

Devon:            I find it hard. I find it hard. And it sort of encroaches on the space I need to cook quite often. But I don't know how much of it is my fault. I'm a chaos gremlin.

Jessica:            Okay.

Devon:            [indiscernible 00:32:28]coming out of this thinking like I'm [indiscernible 00:32:31].

Jessica:            No. I don't think anyone would hear that. But it's really interesting because I say 98 percent of the stuff in piles in the living room is your partner's, and you're like, "I don't want to be blaming my partner." I say, "Oh, the kitchen doesn't have a lot of usable space," and you said, "I think that's my fault." So it's fascinating. Even the suggestion of ownership that your partner should have—you're not comfortable with it. But then you call yourself a chaos gremlin, which I respect. I can see that. But you blame yourself. "It's my fault."

                        Listen. For as long as you're focused on fault, you're not going to make any progress. It doesn't matter if it's their fault or your fault. It doesn't matter. Genuinely, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you are able to consent as a team to what you want, how you want to live. And when that cannot be achieved, then one person is living in circumstances outside of their comfort, safety, and will. At this time, that person is you. True or false?

Devon:            Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. Change is fucking hard. If you've been with somebody for more than eight years and you want to—I don't know—change what restaurant you go to for special occasions, that shit's hard. And that's like a nothing thing. Changing the power dynamic, changing your relationship to navigating space, changing how big or small your lives are—that's massive. And it doesn't matter if they collect stuff and you're a chaos gremlin, so they have piles, and then you have weird stuff on their piles, and then they pile on top of your weird stuff. Again, I see you. No one needs to be perfect, and no one needs to be a villain here.

                        None of that matters. I mean, it matters. It's functionally relevant details. But what really matters is the two of you want a beautiful life—

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            —and a beautiful home. And when I asked you earlier, "Would your partner be down to have you get rid of some stuff in living room?" you said no. There was clarity in no.

Devon:            Yeah. It would take a lot.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Devon:            It would take a lot.

Jessica:            So that puts you in a position where—what's the position you're in, then? You just have to keep on living with it, right?

Devon:            That's kind of what I'm—I guess now I'm wondering, like, am I going to be able to communicate clear dissent without it being aggressive, without it being hurtful?

Jessica:            No. No. Nobody can. Okay. So let me just say it this way. When people have hoarding behaviors, when someone close to them says, "This isn't safe. This isn't healthy," or, "This isn't working for me. I don't want to live this way," the vast majority, if not 100 percent of the time, the person who has the hoarding behavior takes deep offense because what you're saying is, "Your coping mechanism, your survival mechanism, has to change." And the person with the survival mechanism is like, "You're trying to kill me," basically.

Devon:            Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you're asking me is there a way to say to your partner, who is creating unsafe living conditions for themselves even more than for you—and you as their carer are enabling them to live in such a way where eventually they're not going to be able to navigate the house. I mean, they've already lost one room. But you know how this is going, right? If they need a cane at this time or a walker, then eventually, this space is going to become less safe. It already has become less safe, right?

                        And so there's no way to have this conversation without it being a fight at times. And that shouldn't stop you, because fighting is sometimes how we flush out the sticky parts. I know that's really hard for you, but let me just say this. In this conversation where—unfair advantage for Jessica; I'm psychic. I can see—okay. I can say something, and then you get really activated, and then I can hang out with the activation. That's never going to happen with someone you're in love with or someone you're dating or someone you're friends with. That's only going to happen in a therapeutic conversation.

                        What is more likely to happen is you say to your partner, "I want to make the living room beautiful and usable, and that means we need to either throw out, organize, or rehome these items. They need to go in another room. They have to go to people who could use these things." And then your partner will say, "No." Right?

Devon:            Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            That's what will happen. Your partner will say no. We know this. So then you have a decision. Either you say, "Okay. Well, they said no," or, ideally speaking, you say, "Okay. Then what is your counteroffer?"

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            "I'm compromising here." Right? "I'm not happy. I haven't been happy for years. I'm compromising. You keep on saying no, no, no. So make me a counteroffer. What's our middle ground? What's our middle ground?"

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the middle ground may be that they get to have chaotic, overwhelming, too much stuff in three rooms but not in six rooms. Right now, it's in all of the damn rooms. It may be that you ask your partner to go into therapy for this, to take care of—are they against therapy in general?

Devon:            No. They're doing some stuff on—they're doing some stuff with the NHS right now.

Jessica:            Okay. Great.

Devon:            So they're [indiscernible 00:38:02] at the moment. Yeah. I think that's interesting because I always thought of the counteroffer as later, if we can throw away things later or—

Jessica:            No, no, no. In this situation, later has been 100 years, and nothing's improved. It's only gotten worse with time. True or false?

Devon:            I can say an answer. I think that [indiscernible 00:38:24] over the pandemic, like whenever they said to me, "I can't get rid of this," or, "I'll sort it out later," I thought, "Okay. I'll put it in the craft shed." And then, at some point, the craft shed—I couldn't get into it. And like a month ago, we did clear it.

Jessica:            Great.

Devon:            [crosstalk] friends around, and they helped us get stuff out. And it was a big change. So like that—

Jessica:            That's massive.

Devon:            That took, like—that took moving. That was the biggest thing that has happened in my life in a long time.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. And can you start to refill that craft shed?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, not that you should. I'm not saying that you should. But I'm just curious, if you said, "All the things in the living room can go in the craft shed. That's my middle ground with you so that our living room can have more space, plants, not so we can collect more things, but so that there can be this visually beautiful place that we want to be in love and happy in"—now, that might not be the solution. I don't know if that's the solution. But what I am saying is that the solution can't be a fictional future. That's not a middle ground. A middle ground happens in shared reality here and now, right?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            So a middle ground to you living in conditions that you hate because they don't want to change is not you waiting for the future. That's not middle. That's something else. So then could you ask them, "What's your counteroffer? What's the middle ground?" Could you ask them that?

Devon:            I can try.

Jessica:            Okay.

Devon:            I can try. Those are very, very specific words to say. But I can try.

Jessica:            Yeah. And there are different words you can say, like, "We've been living the way that you want for more than eight years"—is that right?

Devon:            I do think they want this, but I think in the truth of their heart they don't want this.

Jessica:            So here's the thing about asking for what you want with somebody that you actually love and you're partnered with. And this is just my belief. We don't ask for what we want just because we believe we'll get it. You ask for what you want because that way, your partner knows who you really are, because that way, you're taking care of yourself and you're not folding yourself into another person.

                        So your partner can say no. Your partner can be a pain in your side. Your partner can be mean about it. Your partner can be insecure about it. And that's your partner's problem. And I'm not saying, therefore, be a jerk. But I am saying saying to your partner, "I've been living in a way that I don't like, and you know it, for a really long time. And I want you to meet me in the middle. So it can't be exactly what I want, but please, make a suggestion. Help me be more imaginative."

And you know what? The truth is I don't think the conversation will go great or anything will be resolved. But I do think it will be an important step for your own relationship to yourself and potentially for the relationship with your partner because it's something you haven't tried yet. As their carer, having to navigate so much stuff, it puts just this really intense weight on you.

Devon: Yeah. Yeah, that's—

Jessica:            Yeah. It's not healthy for them. It's just objectively not healthy for them, eh?

Devon: Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when you ask for this, when you explore this with them, keep that in mind. This isn't just you being like, "I don't like the way you've painted this room; therefore, you have to change." This is about health and safety, mental health as well as physical health, navigating this space. Now, this is such a big topic that I fear we've barely scratched the surface. And I wish that I could give you a magic ball that doesn't exist to fix the situation. It is a really intense situation. But I can say that until March of next year, you are going through a Uranus opposition to the Midheaven, which means there is energy to change your home.

Devon:            Wait. What? Oh. Shit.

Jessica:            That's literally what the transit does. Uranus opposite the Midheaven is Uranus conjunct the IC. And so, a lot of times, under this transit, people physically move. They completely change the way their home looks and functions and feels. That's what the transit wants you to do. And it's a once-in-a-lifetime transit.

Devon:            That's incredible because I've just been sitting here like, "Oh, this fucking sucks," for my own sake.

Jessica:            Yeah. It is a very—it's the perfect transit for what you're dealing with, but it requires that you be different. When Uranus transits come, they're meant to change us. And by changing us, we change our lives. Right?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            But you can't change your life by behaving in the same way you've always behaved. That's not a realistic setup, right?

Devon:            Yeah. I feel like you've been asking me to, like, "Okay. What you need to do to fix this problem is you need to have the conversation, but in Norwegian." I don't know that language.

Jessica:            Interesting.

Devon:            But okay. I'll go and I'll try and learn it, I guess.

Jessica:            Okay. So let's talk about the language. You're a writer, correct?

Devon:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to give you a writing exercise with severe restraints. The writing exercise is bullet-point note form. And there can be a bazillion bullet-point notes, okay? So there's no limit on how many bullet-point notes. Bullet-point note form, what you feel in the home, what you experience in the home. A second column: bullet-point note form, what you want, what you need.

                        None of this is to communicate to your partner, so don't worry about that. Nobody needs to see this but your therapist if you want to share it with your therapist, okay? This is a personal exercise. The bullet-point note form is to help you be more succinct so that instead of every idea and every feeling and everything that happened in the future and everything that happened in the past being so intertwined and the tapestry always being the thing you see, this is a way to be like, "Oh, there's this thread, and there's that thread. And there's this thread, and there's that thread. And yes, they overlap, and they become this tapestry. But let's sort them out."

                        So, if we're learning Norwegian, which neither of us can speak, what you're going to do is you're just going to bullet-point note form out what your experiences are, what your needs are. And then, at a separate time, you get yourself a little highlighter, and you highlight everything that you repeat. So, if you're just like, "I feel unsafe. I feel uncomfortable"—every time you say the same thing, basically in different words, just highlight it. Those things can be distilled to one or two adjectives, one or two words. And those are clearly the most important things to you.

Devon:            Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            Okay? So, when you distill things down to just a couple of words, it makes it easier to figure out, "This is actually what I need to communicate to my partner," not all the thoughts and feelings and preferences and needs in the past and the future, because other people have a really hard time hearing that when they're feeling activated or triggered, which your partner will feel if you bring up their coping mechanism.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Using less words that are direct and clear is going to help them to understand you.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And the way you do that is through a kind of slow process of figuring out what are the threads in the tapestry, and what are the most important threads in the tapestry? That's a process. And you can engage in it if you want to. You do have Saturn opposite your Moon in your birth chart. You are a person who can be very systematic and organized in your emotions. It's that you also have Uranus square Mercury and Uranus opposite your Moon, so you're also like, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Your brain goes off in 70 directions.

                        So this is a process of slowing down. You're not writing out all the notes to conclusively communicate something. You write out all the notes to then highlight what you repeat and what's clearly important, and then you can take that information to your therapist and have your therapist help you to identify, what is a clear one to three sentences that you can say to your partner? That's what you really want to distill it down to because I can see for your partner that when you're having a difficult conversation, the more direct you are, the easier it is for them to understand you. And therefore, you tend to get your needs met a lot better when you're more clear and concise.

Devon:            Yeah, which I'm not. I think you probably know that.

Jessica:            Yes. (laughs)

Devon:            (laughs)

Jessica:            You are not. That is not your nature, which is why it's hard for you. It's part of why the two of you are so stuck in this dynamic you're in. But it's something that you can work on. So you used the example of, "You're asking me to speak Norwegian." Well, you can learn Norwegian. I mean, it would be a pain in the ass. You can learn it. So what I've given you is kind of like—it's a way to practice this. And will it magically work overnight? No. If you do it right, will you get all your needs met and have no conflict? No. But that's not the point.

                        The point is—listen. In a relationship, especially a marriage-style relationship like you're in where you're partnered with someone, over the course of time, you may say to your partner, "I like mac and cheese. Why don't you ever make mac and cheese?" And they say, "I don't like mac and cheese." And you may say that for ten years, and then one day, they might fucking come up with mac and cheese and be like, "Hey, babe. Here's some mac and cheese."

                        Sometimes it takes time. But advocating for yourself is always the right thing to do, especially for you, because you have this tendency to look at context and look at blame and defending the other person and defending yourself instead of just being like, "Huh. The facts are I couldn't do one of those exercises where you put your back flat up against a wall to try to get better posture because there's no walls that I could do that on in my house. I want to be able to do that on a wall in my house." That's not blaming your partner. It's just being like, "I want to be able to do that in my fucking house. And I want there to be a wall with a beautiful painting from one of our friends."

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            What you want is not bananas. What you want is not antiseptic. It's not minimalist. What you want is just more functional.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And being able to communicate that to your partner is really important. And I've barely spoken about your partner. I know, at times, you felt like I was blaming them. But I've barely spoken about them because there's very little I can see because they don't really want me to look.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just say in regards to that, on the one hand, fucking respect. That is fine. But on the other hand, I can't help but wonder if this is an ongoing dynamic in your relationship where you're protecting—your partner doesn't want to be seen by anyone but you, and so you have to protect them, and then it kind of isolates you. And if that's the case—which you don't have to affirm or negate, but if that is the case, I want to say that sucks for you. And you have been consenting to this dynamic for such a long time that neither of you know how to get out of it. Neither of you know the way out.

                        And I think it's a great idea for you to practice having tea with friends, just doing that a little bit more, talking about your experience, and maybe if you're worried about saying something negative about your partner, just don't talk about your partner; just talk about you. Practice talking about you is what I'm getting at.

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, I'm just looking. I'm trying to see. It's such a big topic, but did we get to the major part of your question? Do you have any other kind of question lingering in there?

Devon:            I feel like I have homework, to be honest with you.

Jessica:            Yes.

Devon:            And I could ask you, like, ten billion questions.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's fair. That's fair.

Devon:            But I don't know if it would actually get further until I've [indiscernible 00:50:43] how I'm going to do the work.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. One last thing. Are you okay with me talking about your bedroom again, just the stuff in your bedroom?

Devon:            Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. You have a side of the bedroom, right?

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like you have one side of the bed; they have the other one. Is their stuff on your side of the bedroom?

Devon:            Yes, and furniture that they didn't want to get rid of.

Jessica:            So maybe that's stuff that can go into the work shed or something, or maybe that's stuff for a free pickup for someone else. What I'm getting at is you have the right to have your half of the bedroom look like what you want it to look like. And so being able to say, "Okay, there's three pieces of furniture here"—am I seeing that right? Is it three pieces?

Devon:            Yeah. Three pieces. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So, "There's these three pieces of furniture. This is my half of the room. I don't want this stuff in here. Do you want me to make sure that somebody has it who will really love it and give it away? Do you want it to go in the workshop space or whatever?" I just want to encourage  to explore that, because if those pieces weren't there, then you would be able to cutify that space, and it would be a great foundation for you feeling kind of inspired but also more peaceful in the home. Those pieces of furniture are big. They're not like little lamps.

Devon:            Yeah. There's some big stuff. There's some big stuff.

Jessica:            So there's no room for you. So, if we removed those three pieces, it would be a radically different situation. And if you say to your partner, "I want to move these three pieces," and they say no, you can say, "What's your counteroffer? What do you recommend instead of no? What's the middle ground? Because I'm saying no to having the pieces, and you're saying no to moving the pieces. So we have to figure out a third option where we both get our needs met."

Devon:            Yeah.

Jessica:            And maybe those three pieces go in their studio, their office that they can't access anyways. I don't know. I don't have the solution, but you'll never get the answer if you don't ask the question. I did want to just kind of make sure to name that, because your half of the bedroom—I mean, that is a very big thing, but it's also a very manageable thing compared to other rooms. So I'm just throwing that in the mix.

Devon:            Yeah. I'll think about that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Think about it.

Devon:            [indiscernible 00:52:50].

Jessica:            Yeah. I hope that helps.

Devon:            Yeah. This is going to be me processing this for a long time, I think, so—

Jessica:            Yeah. That's real. That's real. And do you think that your partner will listen to it with you?

Devon:            In the past, when I've talked to them about the sort of how-I'm-feeling stuff, it's really sent them into a spiral, like a depressive spiral, rather than—and the end result of that is they might do, like, ten minutes, and then they have like three hours of feeling bad.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. Then it's not worth it.

Devon:            So I'm not sure that that would actually [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Great. That's good. So this is just for you. I love that. It's great. And I want to just say that I love that you have clarity about what doesn't work for you, right? Having five minutes of your partner listening so that you have to support them through three hours of freaking out because they heard something critical—yeah, there's no use in that. There's no use in that. And I just want to applaud you having clarity and a boundary, and I just want to name that's a boundary. And I love that you have a boundary. May you have many more.

Devon:            Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for this.

Jessica:            Oh, it's totally my pleasure.