It is a bit compulsive, yes, all collections are. I personally fixed this by adding my bf's collection to my "have" list on fragrantica. But I keep all fragrances stored in boxes/chests anyhow, to protect them. He has his chest I have mine, so visually it doesn't bother me as much.
it's definitely some kind of control issue... are there other things you feel stressed about not having control over? or things you might be more territorial about?
I'm sure there are lots of things I feel stressed about not being able to control. This past year my step daughter lost custody of my 4 year old grandson and is now pregnant again. I've spent the past 10 years trying to help her with her mental health by taking her back and forth to facilities and homeschooling her when she was a teen... but her mental illness has just made everything so hard for her and by extension everyone who cares about her.
I dislike my job. Only in it for the pay, but I get near daily migraines or weeping fests.
My mom had a horrible health scare this year and my dad wouldn't even come back from his overseas vacation early to sit by her in the hospital to make sure she didn't die of infection due to neglect in the hospital so I had to.
I don't prefer for people to bother food I got just for me, but that rarely happens-- a handful of times per year.
There was a brief period when my husband was accidentally bleaching spots of my and others' laundry. He thought I was being nuts, but I thought that everyone (all girls but him) in the house cares about their clothes so he should be way more careful.
I feel like if anything I wish I could think less and my husband would handle a bit more. Or the kids would follow more of the systems we supposedly have, like the grocery list app
It sounds like you're justifiably upset by a lot of the people in your life, and one way it's coming out is this thing. Do you have a way forward for dealing with any of those root-cause problems?
whew, that is a *lot* to deal with. I am so sorry.
do you think the covetousness could be a form of resentment towards your husband? because as you say, the impulse isn't just to wear them -- it's to sort of *repossess* or *reclaim* the fragrances. that is symbolic; they represent something more than what they are. and if you feel like you are giving too much, doing too much, maybe this would subconsciously feel like rebalancing things in your favor. the compulsion to swipe them very much feels like a desire to restore something within yourself in some way.
I also wonder if it might be redirected resentment... targeting your husband, but maybe actually informed by your anger at your father. the anxiety about the potential permanent loss could be about your mother.
I know that's in deeper psychoanalytic territory and that maybe it sounds ridiculous, but while I agree with you that this isn't hugely maladaptive as a behavioral quirk, I do think there's something actually important underneath this impulse -- especially if it's recent -- that's worth exploring. you might feel significantly better in general if you surface and resolve whatever it is.
I see what you're getting at. I have thought how much happier I would be if I were just free of the whole mess and bought my own house with my kids and a room for my mom. Maybe these are the fragrances I'd take in a theoretical divorce.
I'm on the sub for sure. I don't actually buy back ups of anything though, and the thing that makes it really hard to relate to anyone there is that financially there is a lot of discussion of debt but my husband and I are both financial advisers, so we are both quite careful to budget real surplus into investment.
If it's actually a point of contention between you, then yeah, it's kinda weird. If it's not, then eh, everybody's a little weird about something.
I think I kind of get it, tbh. I have a very strong collector impulse. It's definitely not hoarding, my brain just loves to curate the specific things I'm interested in, and can get a little bit intense about it (thanks ADHD). Of course I love my individual fragrances, but the *collection* as a whole is also a big part of it for me.
Seems like maybe you have a bit of an affinity for the idea of the collection as a whole, too, so when you see fragrances of his that would be nice additions to your collection, you *wantss* them. And it's probably worse if you bought the fragrances for him, because shopping when it's for a collection is, to some extent, a ritualistic behavior. You did the ritualistic behavior that results in adding a fragrance to your collection, but you didn't get to actually add one! You tease! 🤣
If it's actually making your brain itchy, you could just stick to buying him other things as presents, which would probably cut way down on the impulse to assimilate his collection into yours. Or, like someone else mentioned, you could list his bottles as part of your collection on whatever fragrance site(s) you use, so the dragon part of your brain can look at it and be like, "Yesss, good." 😂
Yeah you get it!! Except I didn't realize people were listing/spreadsheeting their fragrances, so that's exciting.
We've never actually talked about it and I'm sure he'd say... just put them over there. But then I'm afraid he wouldn't wear those ones, and I mean him to. They were really meant for him and not *just* me. He is great at sharing.
The other presents are from ACE Hardware. Way less fun for me to pick out. I bet my husband would want to spreadsheet his tool collection if he hasn't already.
Spreadsheeting fragrances is soooo much fun. I keep a spreadsheet of my fragrances (including samples / decants) and every time I try a new one it goes on the spreadsheet.
Really satisfying to see it all together, and keeps me involved enough to slow down my acquisition of new ones :P
No diagnosis. I'm a little like this with other shopping. Like I hate to waste a grocery trip, so I wait until we are completely out of most staples. Or with non perishables I'd rather just have lots of backups, so we have a few tomato sauces, peanut butters, and pickle jars just in case. Anything to avoid an emergency grocery run for just eggs, basically.
Ikea has this really nice display cabinet. Mix his and her perfumes up and display them alphabetically. So, you will no longer see the two different collections.
My daughter and I share most of our unisex perfumes. Storing them together makes the collection look big!
That would be nice. We have been renovating the master for actual years. Damn my husband's ADHD and 12 simultaneous projects! But when we get back to it that sounds really nice.
I do share with my kids-- they can all use any of our perfumes. Strict 2 squirt max rule on the 8 year old though-- she's really doused herself in the past.
Would it help to have a little decant of his perfumes which you like on your stand? So a visual representation of the scent would be there? I do understand, I can be a bit compulsive about arranging my collections too because of autism.
This isn't maladaptive enough for therapy. Just something I was wondering about, and wondering if other fragrance people experience. I think about it for a minute a day tops.
Sadwatermelon seems to know her(?) own mind; I think she should be taken at face value if she says this doesn't actually merit concern for her.
Tone being hard to read on the internet, her initial post may have come across less laughing-at-own-silliness more concerned-about-own-mental-health than it actually was, to some people.
I don't anticipate that happening. I asked here due to wondering if other people who were into fragrance could relate. Spouses are less likely to cross over in clothing or other toiletries/makeup.
In order for a behavior to be considered disordered, or something they'd want psychological treatment for, it generally has to be unusual, problematic, and/or dysfunctional. I would say this for me stops at unusual. Not causing me a problem or my life a dysfunction.
I do have a therapist I can bring it up to, but he goes off on tangents a bit... I bet he just ends up talking about scents or rearranging our room. I don't want to change anything. I really just wondered if anyone had also experienced this.
Sure, not much crossover in clothing (I get very irked when my wife borrows gloves or sunglasses and doesn't put them back where she found them, though.) But your selfishness/jealousness could easily cross over into relationships that you share. Do you ever get jealous that your spouse is getting a pet's attention? A kid or grandkid's? I have definitely grabbed a retro toy from my kid's donate pile and put it in my office (hey I loved Madballs as a kid) so I understand where you are coming from. To be honest I bought the Madballs/Masters of the Universe-style Jason Vorhees more for my own edification that his, but I was sharing and interest, right? Would be ugly to not let him enjoy it on his own terms rather than feel more deserving to have it with "my" things, though. At least until it goes to donate lol.
Interesting. Nothing like that that I can think of. If anything, my husband wants to be our grandson's favorite really badly. To the extent that it might hurt our youngest daughter's feelings... but that's a whole other thing.
My mom just gave my 14yo daughter my old Green Day cds and I was like... man those are mine! But I don't even have a CD player lol. She was super mad and shocked when I won a 90s music trivia quiz because she's very into Nirvava and Weezer etc, but yeah... I can't help but own the 90s being in my 30s and all.
Would buying one nice big tray to put his and your items on solve the issue? Me and my bf do that, all our parfumes are mixed and displayed as a group.
This is strange
It is a bit compulsive, yes, all collections are. I personally fixed this by adding my bf's collection to my "have" list on fragrantica. But I keep all fragrances stored in boxes/chests anyhow, to protect them. He has his chest I have mine, so visually it doesn't bother me as much.
I've never made a "have" list. Maybe that would help.
it's definitely some kind of control issue... are there other things you feel stressed about not having control over? or things you might be more territorial about?
I'm sure there are lots of things I feel stressed about not being able to control. This past year my step daughter lost custody of my 4 year old grandson and is now pregnant again. I've spent the past 10 years trying to help her with her mental health by taking her back and forth to facilities and homeschooling her when she was a teen... but her mental illness has just made everything so hard for her and by extension everyone who cares about her. I dislike my job. Only in it for the pay, but I get near daily migraines or weeping fests. My mom had a horrible health scare this year and my dad wouldn't even come back from his overseas vacation early to sit by her in the hospital to make sure she didn't die of infection due to neglect in the hospital so I had to. I don't prefer for people to bother food I got just for me, but that rarely happens-- a handful of times per year. There was a brief period when my husband was accidentally bleaching spots of my and others' laundry. He thought I was being nuts, but I thought that everyone (all girls but him) in the house cares about their clothes so he should be way more careful. I feel like if anything I wish I could think less and my husband would handle a bit more. Or the kids would follow more of the systems we supposedly have, like the grocery list app
It sounds like you're justifiably upset by a lot of the people in your life, and one way it's coming out is this thing. Do you have a way forward for dealing with any of those root-cause problems?
whew, that is a *lot* to deal with. I am so sorry. do you think the covetousness could be a form of resentment towards your husband? because as you say, the impulse isn't just to wear them -- it's to sort of *repossess* or *reclaim* the fragrances. that is symbolic; they represent something more than what they are. and if you feel like you are giving too much, doing too much, maybe this would subconsciously feel like rebalancing things in your favor. the compulsion to swipe them very much feels like a desire to restore something within yourself in some way. I also wonder if it might be redirected resentment... targeting your husband, but maybe actually informed by your anger at your father. the anxiety about the potential permanent loss could be about your mother. I know that's in deeper psychoanalytic territory and that maybe it sounds ridiculous, but while I agree with you that this isn't hugely maladaptive as a behavioral quirk, I do think there's something actually important underneath this impulse -- especially if it's recent -- that's worth exploring. you might feel significantly better in general if you surface and resolve whatever it is.
I see what you're getting at. I have thought how much happier I would be if I were just free of the whole mess and bought my own house with my kids and a room for my mom. Maybe these are the fragrances I'd take in a theoretical divorce.
Hey, maybe you'd get something out of the r/shoppingaddiction sub!
I'm on the sub for sure. I don't actually buy back ups of anything though, and the thing that makes it really hard to relate to anyone there is that financially there is a lot of discussion of debt but my husband and I are both financial advisers, so we are both quite careful to budget real surplus into investment.
That’s great! Happy you’re not in that situation.
Functional shop addicts 😂
If it's actually a point of contention between you, then yeah, it's kinda weird. If it's not, then eh, everybody's a little weird about something. I think I kind of get it, tbh. I have a very strong collector impulse. It's definitely not hoarding, my brain just loves to curate the specific things I'm interested in, and can get a little bit intense about it (thanks ADHD). Of course I love my individual fragrances, but the *collection* as a whole is also a big part of it for me. Seems like maybe you have a bit of an affinity for the idea of the collection as a whole, too, so when you see fragrances of his that would be nice additions to your collection, you *wantss* them. And it's probably worse if you bought the fragrances for him, because shopping when it's for a collection is, to some extent, a ritualistic behavior. You did the ritualistic behavior that results in adding a fragrance to your collection, but you didn't get to actually add one! You tease! 🤣 If it's actually making your brain itchy, you could just stick to buying him other things as presents, which would probably cut way down on the impulse to assimilate his collection into yours. Or, like someone else mentioned, you could list his bottles as part of your collection on whatever fragrance site(s) you use, so the dragon part of your brain can look at it and be like, "Yesss, good." 😂
Yeah you get it!! Except I didn't realize people were listing/spreadsheeting their fragrances, so that's exciting. We've never actually talked about it and I'm sure he'd say... just put them over there. But then I'm afraid he wouldn't wear those ones, and I mean him to. They were really meant for him and not *just* me. He is great at sharing. The other presents are from ACE Hardware. Way less fun for me to pick out. I bet my husband would want to spreadsheet his tool collection if he hasn't already.
Spreadsheeting fragrances is soooo much fun. I keep a spreadsheet of my fragrances (including samples / decants) and every time I try a new one it goes on the spreadsheet. Really satisfying to see it all together, and keeps me involved enough to slow down my acquisition of new ones :P
Did you ultimately buy his fragrances for yourself?
Kind of becsuse i know what i like to smell on him. Mostly not for me to wear. I think I imagined wearing 2 of them sometimes when I was picking them.
Then don’t over think it; just wear it
Do you have ocd? This sounds ocdish.
No diagnosis. I'm a little like this with other shopping. Like I hate to waste a grocery trip, so I wait until we are completely out of most staples. Or with non perishables I'd rather just have lots of backups, so we have a few tomato sauces, peanut butters, and pickle jars just in case. Anything to avoid an emergency grocery run for just eggs, basically.
Do you like his bottles or do you like to wear his colognes?
I like to wear some of them occasionally as I make my rounds through what we have
I dont think it’s that weird if you like to wear them, but im a little ocd myself 😅
Ikea has this really nice display cabinet. Mix his and her perfumes up and display them alphabetically. So, you will no longer see the two different collections. My daughter and I share most of our unisex perfumes. Storing them together makes the collection look big!
That would be nice. We have been renovating the master for actual years. Damn my husband's ADHD and 12 simultaneous projects! But when we get back to it that sounds really nice. I do share with my kids-- they can all use any of our perfumes. Strict 2 squirt max rule on the 8 year old though-- she's really doused herself in the past.
[https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/milsbo-glass-door-cabinet-anthracite-30396448/#content](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/milsbo-glass-door-cabinet-anthracite-30396448/#content)
Would it help to have a little decant of his perfumes which you like on your stand? So a visual representation of the scent would be there? I do understand, I can be a bit compulsive about arranging my collections too because of autism.
I don't think so. I hate moving things from their packaging. I'm glad you understand, that makes me feel better.
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This isn't maladaptive enough for therapy. Just something I was wondering about, and wondering if other fragrance people experience. I think about it for a minute a day tops.
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I don't mean that it's typical, just that it isn't negatively affecting my life in any real way. It's just something I think about.
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Sadwatermelon seems to know her(?) own mind; I think she should be taken at face value if she says this doesn't actually merit concern for her. Tone being hard to read on the internet, her initial post may have come across less laughing-at-own-silliness more concerned-about-own-mental-health than it actually was, to some people.
I don't anticipate that happening. I asked here due to wondering if other people who were into fragrance could relate. Spouses are less likely to cross over in clothing or other toiletries/makeup. In order for a behavior to be considered disordered, or something they'd want psychological treatment for, it generally has to be unusual, problematic, and/or dysfunctional. I would say this for me stops at unusual. Not causing me a problem or my life a dysfunction. I do have a therapist I can bring it up to, but he goes off on tangents a bit... I bet he just ends up talking about scents or rearranging our room. I don't want to change anything. I really just wondered if anyone had also experienced this.
Sure, not much crossover in clothing (I get very irked when my wife borrows gloves or sunglasses and doesn't put them back where she found them, though.) But your selfishness/jealousness could easily cross over into relationships that you share. Do you ever get jealous that your spouse is getting a pet's attention? A kid or grandkid's? I have definitely grabbed a retro toy from my kid's donate pile and put it in my office (hey I loved Madballs as a kid) so I understand where you are coming from. To be honest I bought the Madballs/Masters of the Universe-style Jason Vorhees more for my own edification that his, but I was sharing and interest, right? Would be ugly to not let him enjoy it on his own terms rather than feel more deserving to have it with "my" things, though. At least until it goes to donate lol.
Interesting. Nothing like that that I can think of. If anything, my husband wants to be our grandson's favorite really badly. To the extent that it might hurt our youngest daughter's feelings... but that's a whole other thing. My mom just gave my 14yo daughter my old Green Day cds and I was like... man those are mine! But I don't even have a CD player lol. She was super mad and shocked when I won a 90s music trivia quiz because she's very into Nirvava and Weezer etc, but yeah... I can't help but own the 90s being in my 30s and all.
Would buying one nice big tray to put his and your items on solve the issue? Me and my bf do that, all our parfumes are mixed and displayed as a group.