Rebecca has just broken up with her boyfriend. All of a sudden she finds that her Saturday afternoons are well and truly free and that she owes her time to no one.
She no longer has to spend her Saturdays watching action movies that she would sleep half way through, nor does she need to meet her boring ex’s friends for cocktails and feign interest for a couple of hours till she’s too tired to even care about how she’s coming across anymore.
So what does Rebecca do? She goes shopping.
If films would have you believe anything about breakups, it would be that when the schism between lovers finally happens, men will once more unleash themselves onto the party scene with renewed vigour while their former flames will sit at home and eat copious amounts of ice cream while listening to their old Celine Dion CDs.
However, while both the aforementioned things do happen, coming out of the sidelines is a new kind of woman who knows that a lot of ice cream will make her fat, and that Celine Dion is overrated: instead, she proves that she needs no man and hits her credit card hard.
There truly is nothing quite like breakup shopping. Apart from the fact that you don’t feel guilty about spending a little extra on yourself, it’s also a new way of rediscovering the inner you and galvanising the image of yourself that you want the world to see. New life, new you.
There truly is nothing quite like breakup shopping. Apart from the fact that you don’t feel guilty about spending a little extra on yourself, it’s also a new way of rediscovering the inner you
Unfortunately, if you’ve been in a relationship for a long time, your sense of self does tend to disappear a bit, as does that extra effort to dress to the nines and hit the town: breakup shopping, like breakup hair, says: “This is who I plan to be and I owe no one any explanations.”
Of course, this is not without its pitfalls.
A friend of mine had been in a relationship for a solid seven years when she found Mr Not So Prince Charming cheating.
After the usual break-up pleasantries that came with such a discovery, she marched into a clothes shop ready to buy every leather outfit she could find, only to discover that she had not only gained a fair amount of weight but that she wasn’t the same person she was the last time that she had been single and ready to mingle.
If you find yourself in the same predicament and don’t know where to start, the best thing to do is buy a magazine and visualise what it is you want, while being realistic.
It’s also advisable to take a friend with you shopping and make her promise you that she will tell you the unvarnished truth and nothing but the unvarnished truth about whichever outfit you try on, however painful it might be to hear.
Do not see this as a negative experience but as one of growth where you have carte blanche to start afresh and be the best version of you that you can be.
Ultimately, clothes are nothing more or less than a beautiful way to experiment and discover who you are again when you feel lost.
What’s more, they won’t break your heart.