Shopping

as in

"Let’s go shopping."

Variations: "I’ve got a wonderful idea ... You know what we haven’t done for a long time ... (Yeah, like, since yesterday probably.) ... You’re not doing anything important this weekend, are you?" (Note, that this last one is a statement, not a question.)

Freud was way wide of the mark. What drives women? What keeps them alive? Fear? Hunger? An inner power? No. Harrods. Selfridges. Top Shop. Every store in the land.

A woman might be at death’s door, starving, beaten, broken and fading fast but mention the word “shopping” and you will see her pulse definitively quicken. Ah, "shopping". What finer sport is there, they think. Which wouldn’t be a problem in any relationship - bar the expense involved - if she didn’t now and then find that the experience was incomplete without your good self for company.

Despite her addiction, there are times when for her going to the stores without you is as unsatisfying as it is for a dog to go to the park without a ball. She - it - needs something to play with to make the whole experience meaningful.

She needs you like a child needs a rattle to shake. She wants you to see her in action, to admire the verve with which she can thread her way through the throng, the way she can deliberate between two items for hours, like a chess master about to go for the kill (and you're thinking, "It’s only a dress, for god’s sake!"), and, of course, to carry her bags.

There is no use pleading that you would rather walk barefoot across burning coals. She simply won’t be able to imagine that you don’t enjoy the day out almost as much as her.

One compensation: spotting other partners who are suffering the same ignominy. You won’t be able to talk to them but you can gain strength from a complicitous nod of the head.

And there will always be at least one who is suffering more than yourself, which is oddly comforting.