Shopping with friends?.....I'll gladly pass.

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
Jane Austen

In the spirit of brutal honesty, ill be totally honest; as fun as hanging out with my friends is, I pretty much hardly go shopping with them. It's just too distracting and although I like shopping I'd rather accompany a friend on a shopping spree than have them accompanying me.

Now I don’t mind waiting for someone else to change and 'unchange' into different outfits and do a little twirl for me, but I wouldn't be caught dead doing that. I am a weird but simple shopper; the kind that buys the same dress in 7 different colours and the same pair of shoes in 3 different colours (lol). I don’t spend time in the dressing room trying to figure out why a size 10 from Zara won’t go beyond my hips yet the same size from Gap fits me like a glove (which is very weird by the way)

The good thing about me is I am the kind of friend I would recommend to Tom, Dick, Harry, and their friends (doing a curtsy); not because of the fact that I have an utterly good eye for detail, but because I am above everything else...... Brutally honest.

If a friend walked out of the shop with something I didn't think looked good on them, I would hold it against me for the rest of my life. So I remain to be what I would expect a friend to be.
In my own little world, a shopping friend should be an amenable, jolly, selfless and brutally honest person. After all, who wants to spend the whole day around an impatient, selfish, menopausal-wanna-be on the verge of self destruction and would rather tell you that something looks abso-gorgeously fabulous on you just to get you out of the shop?

The horrible truth is, finding such a friend is not easy because most friends, infact, most human beings are either too discouraging or too encouraging.

The problem with overly discouraging friends (The ones that say “No, don’t get that! I am sure you can find it cheaper if you look for eeeeeeeeeeeendless hours on the internet!”) is that you end up never going shopping with them again, so they become irrelevant.

Overly encouraging friends a.k.a ‘Shopping enablers’ think they are being nice and conducive to happy times by telling you to buy EVERYTHING you try on, but they are not. They mean well, they think it will make you feel better, but they are not true shopping friends. Enablers are always fun in the moment but the regret that sets in later when you've already washed that unnecessary lingerie and worn those ankle breaking stilettos on a night out is never worth the encouragement.

My shopping rule of thumb is, if you find yourself thinking about it in two days, go back and get it…… if not, then you are better off without it. 

We all have eggshell-friends who can’t be entirely honest with for  the fear of upsetting them; don’t be that kind of friend.

Honesty is such an important quality in friendship (with occasional exceptions)..... And when it’s all said and done, I'd rather meet up with my friends and focus on the important things in life like laughing about our workmates and bitching about how “great” marriage life can be over a nice cup of tea and some really fattening scones :-) 

“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”Charles Lamb