Shop Together? No Way!

Now can you explain it to me please? Our men spend hours in the hairdressers having half an inch off, possess more designer pants than a pole dancer and will watch a Sex And The City double bill without a whimper. So he’s totally cool about most things. Why then, does the average heterosexual male hate shopping?

Dragging most men to the shops is like handling a supermarket trolley: you have to push hard to get it going and then it never moves where you point it. While women view shopping as the retail equivalent of Prozac, your partner’s pill will prove a little harder to swallow. To understand his mindset you must view the experience like a World War II military campaign. The shop assistants are Japanese kamikaze pilots; the cashiers the Germans and the make-up counter No Man’s Land.

Our men are masters at being couch potatoes but when it comes to purchasing they go into power-drive. Like their inability to wipe surfaces and confine toothpaste to the sink, your partner is physically unable to master the art of browsing. While you’re rollicking through racks of clothes, he will have ETAs for each department. If at any stage your paths should cross and you have to advise on an item, you must at all times respond as if they are about to evacuate the store. Rather than eyeing their bottoms 12 times before making a trouser purchase, they’ve mentally imagined it on and paid for it before you’ve even had a chance to check for man-made fibres. The main disadvantage to this fashion sweep is a wardrobe full of items that you will never, ever wear!

While clothes shopping is best enjoyed with only a credit card for company, there are some purchases that just have to take place à deux. While the closest your father would come to a supermarket was the car park, you can rest assured your partner doesn’t hail from a dramatically different gene pool. Although he will not be in the car, he will negotiate the aisles with the speed of a professional rally driver with carefully chosen pit stops in the ice-cream section and deli counter. With his mind on nibbles rather than nappies, you’ll find yourself confined to the loosely attached sidecar, which conveniently disengages in the cleaning product aisle while he veers off towards condiments.

The very worst shopping experience with your man you can hope for is not to be found fumbling in the frozen veg. It’s when the need for furniture features on the shopping agenda that co-dependent consumerism hits an all-time low. You only have to look around at the despair on display in Ikea to realise there’s no such thing as a love seat. And when your partner considers cushions are for people with piles, you know the soft furnishings experience is going to be on the hard side. Your leisurely search for a sofa will turn in to a frantic afternoon of road rage and ranting, and that’s before you’ve even left your street. On these occasions deliberation and discussion are viewed as a sign of weakness and you’ll find yourself purchasing the most inappropriate item in the store just to stop him throttling the sales staff. You will then sullenly sit on said item for the next five years until the sorry process has to be repeated all over again.

The love of my life hates shopping, unless it involves buying watches or cufflinks, of which he now has dozens. The other exception is electronic purchases. Anything which has buttons to press and technology with which to confuse me, he is in his element. It is male chauvinism at its worst, putting the little women in her place!

That’s why there is only one shopping experience that musters a murmur of pleasure from the average male, and it doesn’t involve leaving the house. If it can be flicked through or surfed, he’s in shopping Nirvana, and the more pointless and well packaged the better. There are few homes that haven’t shuddered at the patter of tiny catalogues through the letterbox. Few women can hear the word “innovations” without recalling the wave of useless gadgetry that flooded in its wake. And when he’s tired of the solar-powered nasal-hair trimmer and wrist golf ball tidy, there’s a whole heap of birthday presents available at the click of a mouse. Who needs inappropriate underwear or kitchen implements when you can have a weekend of cliff-edge Zorbing, care of dangerousgiftsfordearones.com. So next time that shopping trip beckons, let him log on while you log off and watch him take his angst out on a keyboard.

Better still, leave him surfing for goods and sneak out for some good old retail therapy with your credit card and if you want company, then for goodness sake take your best girl friend with you! They are by far the most congenial companions for us shopaholics.