A woman has run up £40,000 worth of debt and had to move back in with her mother-in-law - all because of a shopping addiction.
Emma Sims, 41, started shopping as a teenager with her mother and became used to getting what she wanted.
Her habit spiralled out of control when she was suffering with severe depression in 2011 and she was spending up to £2,000 shopping for clothes, bags and shoes online
Eventually Emma and her husband Andrew, 38, had to sell their house and move in with Andrew's parents.
But the equity they got back on the house did not even begin to cover the £40,000 debts Emma had racked up.
Now they are starting to clear the debt and Emma is working hard to keep her shopping addiction under control
The office worker said: 'People don't take shopping addictions seriously - they just think it's as easy as stopping spending.
'I would try and ask myself if I really needed what I was buying, but I always managed to justify it.
'It's so hard to quit because you can't just go cold turkey. I will always need to buy things.
'I have a passion for fashion so a lot of my money went on clothes and shoes. I would wear them once and then the novelty would have worn off.'
Emma was the youngest child of three by a long way and her mother would take her shopping to help her daughter deal with bullying at school.
She said: 'My mum spoiled me. I got everything I wanted.
'I can't blame her for the debt I got myself in, but she didn't help. She had bad money habits herself and I followed her example.'
When Emma was 24 her mother died of breast cancer. A year later her father remarried but it put a strain on relations within the home and Emma moved in with Andrew.
With a mortgage to pay, Emma's shopping habits did not change, and when the couple married in 2005 they paid for both the wedding and honeymoon mostly with credit cards.
Emma was forced to sell her home to re-pay some of the money, but is still deeply in debt
Emma said: 'The country was in a boom. Credit was easy to get and we were always getting letters through about new cards with zero per cent interest.
'We would get a lot of credit card statements but wouldn't think much about it. I have no idea it got up to over the years because we were would put it onto the mortgage.
'It built up more and more and Andrew was getting increasingly stressed about it. I continued to pretend it wasn't happening and he wanted me to realise I had a problem on my own.'
In 2011 the couple had a trial separation. Emma had recently been diagnosed with depression and during this time her condition got worse.
She was shopping in an attempt to make herself feel better and was racking up bills of £2,000 almost every month.
Emma said: 'I would order online so it didn't really feel like I was even shopping.
'I would buy things in every colour and then return a lot of them. I was telling Andrew that it's not as bad as it seemed on the credit card statements because it hadn't included the things I had returned.
'My husband told me that if we worked on my problems we could give the marriage another go.
'We decided to sell the house and move in with his parents.'
Although it was only intended to be a short-term solution, the couple have now been living in the house for two years.
Emma said: 'The house didn't sell for as much as we thought it would and one thing after another always comes up.
'The credit cards want huge interest so by the time we've paid that each month we're barely making a dent in the debt.
'I am working on my problem though and have seen a therapist. We are making progress, it's just very slow.'
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