Alongside my day job, I’ve had to take on some freelance work over the last couple of weeks — brought on, in large part, by my autistic husband’s love of things combined with his ADHD impulsivity and exacerbated by how easy it is just to click, click, click and buy, buy, buy these days — almost without realising you’re doing it.
Every bit of software these days comes with advertising built in, it seems. And for my husband, who spends a lot of his time online — it’s easy to get sucked in.
But online shopping isn't his only weakness...
A neurodivergent’s shopping list
In our house, there is a long history of:
- repeated items being bought (because Ethan forgot he already had them, or knew he had them but couldn’t find them. Invariably, he would find the original around a month after he’d bought, used — and probably lost — the replacement)
- buying things we don’t need — or even particularly want — because the item(s) (he loves a 3-for-2) in question was ‘on offer’
· making big purchases that are out of our price range and completely impractical — such as the very expensive sports car he bought a few years ago that was a four-seater (there are five people and two dogs in our family)
- multi-buying every type of cleaning product in existence, plus we currently have around 20 shower gels, 15 face washes, 30 tubes of toothpaste and 50 toilet rolls (plus eight shopping bags of tinned and dried products at the back of our shed in case there’s an apocalypse)
- intense special interests that he spends hundreds (or thousands) of pounds on (camping, for a while, then paragliding, then badminton, then a £2,800 e-bike and all the gear to go with it that he used for a maximum of about a year and which is now growing cobwebs in our shed and, most lately, a cinema room — read on…).
My autistic husband’s reasoning
His latest purchases have been a new car, which comes with every conceivable modern gadget and which cost at least twice as much as the amount I said I was comfortable spending (and that we could comfortably afford).
Not only that, he has built a cinema room in our garden, which he justified by including ‘an office for me’ on the front (an office, I might add, that I never asked for, didn’t particularly want and would certainly have done without — given the choice of that and the massive great addition to our mortgage required to pay for it).
So, our monthly outgoings have gone up by about £1,000 — with no extra money coming in and us only just being in the black each month prior to these ‘investments’.
Hence me taking on extra work to try to shift some of our overdraft.
Not only that, but our neighbours are pissed off because of said (from the outside, it has to be said) ugly breeze block construction at the end of the garden.
You know where you are with ‘things’
It’s something I’ve learnt (kind of) to live with and, the fact is, Ethan thinks he’s compromising by not also buying himself the latest phone, all the equipment for the cinema room (because now he’s built the bloody thing, he’s run out of money) and not spending money on football season tickets or going out.
The truth is, I would bloody love him to spend money going out — that would at least be an investment into, hopefully, fully fledged friendships one day. But, it seems, Ethan’s ROI only works in terms of things.
The problem is, he absolutely loves things. Things are predictable, reliable, need no social interaction and are under his control. When Ethan gets a new thing, he spends ages inspecting it, trialling it, learning about it, obsessing over it… until that itch is scratched, and he needs another new thing to take its place.
I, fortunately (for our bank account) and unfortunately (for our relationship) am the complete opposite. So his capacity for buying more and more stuff (using our joint account — the only type of account we have) has been — and still is — the cause of many an argument.
The perfect storm
In the cold light of day, we all know that marketing is geared to flog us more stuff — and that none of it will change our lives in the way we’re promised. Even Ethan knows that if he stops to think.
But combine the hard sell of advertising with ADHD’s compulsiveness and need for a dopamine hit, and the singlemindedness of autism, alongside the sheer amount of time my autistic husband is online and subjected to this stuff, and it’s hard not to rack up the purchases without even noticing… until the monthly statement comes in.
Meanwhile, your wife has to put everything on hold while she works weekends, on top of her day job and keeping home life going, to earn back some of the money you’ve spent.
Meanwhile, Ethan’s planning his next purchase...
(For anyone expecting the final part of the series of my kids’ diagnoses — I’ve not forgotten — just needed to interrupt for a rant. Ava’s diagnosis — and her take on it — is coming next week.)
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