The main thing I get frustrated about when I’ve been taken clothes shopping is that women’s clothes and handbags are often both expensive and flimsy. Once you narrow it down to what will fit, looks good, isn’t going to fall apart and is reasonably affordable, there often isn’t a huge selection. (I practically insist on going handbag and shoe shopping for that reason).
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If it cheers you up, focus more on the second paragraph. Sometimes I feel like my SO can’t decide what shirt to buy if I’m not carrying it around a store for a half-hour or so. ::sigh::
Kinda sounds like your friend and her husband may have stayed together for the kids. It doesn’t happen often anymore, and they’ve both likely made great personal sacrifices, forsaking their individual happiness at the very least, so their kids could grow up with two parents. If they’re happier apart, then they’ve made the right decision for them. Who knows, maybe your friend will start dating again pretty soon. My aunt divorced her husband of 22 years a couple years ago, and is having quite a good time dating.
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But if this happens more than once, why not bring a book or something else to do?
Poor pattern recognition.
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Yeah, I had to think about that for a minute, and remembered that I’d seen it about 30 years ago, at a shopping mall pizza counter in Arlington, TX. Which is kind of surprising, because at that time there were no liquor stores; one had to leave the city just to buy wine, and beer had an ABV limit. (Hell, the mall couldn’t even open on a Sunday until 1985 or so.)
The reason I remember it at all is because the person buying the beer was pregnant. I would’ve been 15 or 16 at the time but I think I knew that a pregnant woman shouldn’t drink (much) beer. (Although maybe it was for the Man in the Chair!)
I don’t remember seeing beer at the mall since then – i.e., not in the food court. (Different story if there’s, say, a Dave & Busters in the mall)
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No, unfortunately, it’s a recent 180º turnaround by her husband, almost certainly due to medical mental side effects. There’s one more push now from his extended family to try to convince him to get the (probably in-patient) medical help he needs, since he’s refused to do it for his wife and children since things started up a couple of years ago.
It’s a very sad situation. He’s not himself, and he knows it, but he’s too strong-willed to accept help from anyone. And too physically strong to be made to do anything against his will, even in his best interests.
Sorry for the OT diversion. It just really hit me.
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[quote=“chgoliz, post:16, topic:74438”]
why would an adult need a non-interested adult with them?
[/quote]http://i.imgur.com/51oBhlo.gif
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You are banned from shopping with me then!
I like my flowy flimsy will catch on everything shirts and you will take them from me when I am dead!
@chgoliz - I have an alternate theory… many of the men in these photos seems retirement age. And many retired couples “do things together” - if you’ve ever wintered in Florida you’ve seen this. The men drive their ladies everywhere, and wait for them. I think in a few of these, this is what is going on. The younger dudes… well, I got nothing.
When I go shopping for myself I go by myself, not even with other ladies, never has been a group activity for me. But when MrPants and I go shopping its usually just browsing for housewares or giggling in Restoration Hardware, we never go clothing shopping together. That all said, I can “shop” for hours and hours and come home with nothing and think its a day well spent. 
I loooove shopping of all kinds. Grocery shopping in strange places is THE BEST! Did you know grocery stores in New Mexico have a billion kinds of tortillas? And cilantro boullion cubes? Amazing!
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Here is what this dumb, middle aged man-child knows about this situation. She takes me out shopping with her cause she loves me, and wants to be with me. A tad selfish? Sure! But so am I, and we all have our foilables.
I’ll take slightly misguided love and affection over the alternative any day of the week. Plus, cat gifs on your phone!
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I went light-fixture shopping with a friend the other weekend and she thought she liked a fixture she’d seen on the Restoration Hardware website, so after visiting a number of other showrooms we went looking for their store. Turns out they moved from a normal store to a high-end residential neighborhood, taking over a historically valuable 6-story building that used to be reserved for women and the arts, and despite having approximately 10x the space, they went from being a regular showroom to being a place where beautiful rich people hang out. Literally: the lighting fixtures were identical in every showcase, the sofas were the same, there were no cash registers, and the employees’ main job seemed to be bringing wine to “customers” to chat about what their interior designers should focus on; it was clearly not meant to be a place for plebians to compare products. That alone made my friend decide she didn’t want the fixture, no matter how perfect it was!
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I really prefer to separate everyday shopping from shopping for pleasure. Normally I’ll leave home at 8 am, and be back just after 9 having dropped the kids off at two different schools and done my twice weekly supermarket trip on the way back. I know where everything is, and if it’s not on the list it’s very unlikely to end up in the shopping cart. When my wife goes, she spends twice as much and half of the off piste items are chocolate and assorted items for gifts. On the other hand, if we’re together and have the time it’s nice to go to an outdoor market or an unusual store and enjoy the experience. That’s how I would end up in the man chair - a trip to a town centre with a market would involve a few hours and would probably involve shoe or clothes shopping at some point. I’ve already got everything I need, so my wife generally isn’t waiting for me. I prefer to keep the pressure off, so I won’t be hanging around most of the time and my comments about handbags would be more along the lines of “this bag is basically weak plastic and is going to break at this point, and then you can’t repair it. This one is fine though.” The pile of unusable bags was getting ridiculous before I started doing this!
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I was too young to notice whether or not there were liquor stores, but I do remember 7-11 being about the only thing open on Sunday in Arlington. Why don’t I remember a mall in Arlington? OK, just looked at a map of where we lived in relation to where the mall is, and it was nowhere near where we lived.
I remember my times outside shops in malls, back in the late 80’s, through the 90’s. Since then I’ve had partners that don’t require that.
I remember especially, in the 80’s when shopping malls began to ban smoking… until we learned to cope the men standing and sitting outside of shops were x10 the picture of abject misery, with a scoop of irrational anger.
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Oh heck I have a well now ex coworker as he retired but his last wife he is now just living in sin with her. Or at least they like living together and doing things together but not being an official couple.
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So true, and even where there are some it’s getting harder to use them in some places. I was in Dallas once, went to sit at a food court since little else was available and I hadn’t yet recovered from the previous night… a few minutes in a mall cop showed up and advised me the chairs and tables were for customers only and I’d have to buy something or leave… I was dressed in chinos and a polo, had a shopping bag from a store already, and it was 10am, some of the food court vendors weren’t even open yet.
I was polite because this persons life clearly sucked so much much worse than my own
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I aspire to live in sin. Do you have a brochure or pamphlet? 
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I dunno. I am properly married (for 20 plus years now dear FSM how did that happen?) so I can’t say.
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I believe it’s only been a couple of years since Arlington finally allowed package liquor stores. By my calculations, it was the largest city in the country with such strict liquor restrictions. But I haven’t been back to Arlington since 2004, not even to show the kids where I used to live. (While I make it back to the area 2 or 3 times a year, my parents moved elsewhere in the county about 14 years ago.)
Wow! That’s ironic, at the time it seemed that there wasn’t much “there” there, beyond its shopping malls. Arlington had a couple of good record stores, and one could always go to a movie (Rocky Horror or otherwise). Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough closer to home, but the older I got, the more often I’d just drive to Dallas or Fort Worth to have fun.
Six Flags Mall is where I saw the pregnant woman ordering a beer. The Parks (whatever it’s called now) opened right before I got out of high school, while Forum 303 was already in its decline. Not a mall, but Hypermart USA opened close to our home right before I left for college; another one had already opened in Garland (and I am certain it was the inspiration for Mega-Lo-Mart on King of the Hill).
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When we road trip some of my favourite parts are shopping in weird (to me) grocery stores. MrPants naps in the van with the dogs and I can spend a super happy 4 hours (or more) just poking about looking at all the different things and brands I’ve never heard of.
This is cracking me up. We used to have a similar “argument” until I pointed out that MrPants has more “sports bags” than I have purses, and he won’t let me get rid of ANY of them. After that he stopped bugging me about my purses. 
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I broke up with someone whom I will love forever, and who loves me back. Our love just wasn’t that kind of love. She is my best friend and we value our relationship more than ever. But we related extremely well.
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Let’s hop into the wayback machine for a minute - we lived right by Edison’s. As for fun, I was 7 when we moved there, and 9 when we moved back to Minnesota, so the arcade was where it was at (what with rampant Pac Man fever all over the place). I couldn’t for the life of me tell you where that arcade was, though, it was on some main drag. My only other fond memories were the roller rink, Ft. Worth zoo, the park where they filmed that one scene from Logan’s Run, and Trinity Park.
Obviously, we didn’t spend a lot of time in Dallas.
