Shopaholic

  Authors: Magenta Appel-Pye and Norman Appel

My partner is a shopaholic and always insists on dragging me along to shopping malls while she spends hours trying on clothes and asking my opinion. If I really told her, she would be upset. Help! Frank Lowy, Wooli

Magenta says: did you know there is an actual medical term for people who have an uncontrollable and compulsive desire to shop? If your partner has oniomania you need to get her  proper psychological help. But what you have to realize, Frank, is that for most women, shopping is sport. Finding a nice dress on special is like scoring a goal. It's the old hunter/gather instincts again. He makes a kill at the butchers then goes straight home and fires up the barby. But females have evolved to go foraging for hours, not even caring if they don’t come home with much. It is the searching they find stimulating. Even window shopping is fun.

Don't shop with men

The only problem is that we really need to be doing it with other women. Men are such drags. They sit around with hang dog expressions, constantly looking at their watches, longing to get home to a beer and the cricket. In the lingerie department they're either a perve, more into the underwear than you are, or completely embarrassed. It just doesn't work.

Problem Solved

However it is important to keep her out there in the field because if she stays home she'll go shopping on-line and spend even more money because it's not as satisfying as the real-life experience and too easy to click the 'buy now' button.

My suggestion is to encourage her to go shopping with her female or gay friends. Tell her it will be exciting when she comes home and models the new clothes for you. Promise her you will do something together that you both enjoy. Problem solved.

Norm says: Dear Frank, I've dealt with many a poor bastard's problems in these pages but this one is truly horrific. The women folk should know right here that we men don't give a shit what you wear or what it looks like. We really don't. In fact, truth be told, we'd rather you wore nothing. So if you insist on going to those horrible shopping malls to rummage and plunder, do it in your own time, not when the footy finals are on.

I hate it

I've been there myself. I hate it. There's the traffic, parking, the crowds of in-breds and having to put on underpants. I just can't see the fun in it. Sure, the lingerie shops can be amusing up to a point. They'd be far better if they had live models at least. I don't even like buying clothes for myself. Being a bit full figured, I can never find anything that fits. Worse, if I find something I do want, like a nice new fishing rod, my wife says that I already have enough and that we can't afford it. At least I can find some solace in the food court.

Do it for all of us Frank!

So Frank, here's a chance for you to really make your mark on history. In the film Planet of the Apes, Roddy McDowell is explaining to Charlton Heston how for centuries humans enslaved the apes until one day one of the apes got up and yelled ‘NO!!!’ Go for it Frank, do it for all of us. 

Did you hear about the architect who had an unhealthy obsession with designing overly intricate shopping malls? He had a complex complex complex