The Joys and Headaches of Shoe Shopping

I, like most women, love to shop. Especially for shoes. What I love most about shoe shopping is that feeling of possibility. You know, that moment when you have in your hand a brand new pair. The shoes. The ones that will finally bring you happiness. The ones that will make you feel eternally sexy. The ones that will bring endless compliments. The ones that will hug your darling feet and make them feel like they are the most special, safe feet in the world.

Sometimes they really do fulfill the hope. They really do go above and beyond normal shoe duties and give that extra bounce in the step, that extra inch in the posture of one’s pride.

More often than not, though, I realize that those magical slippers don’t really exist. Instead, they gnaw at my heels and give me blisters. They get all scuffed up and stretched out. They slop around on my feet and lose their style. I see them out with other people, happily hugging their feet, making them look lovelier than they do mine. And I am left disappointed. Feeling like I made the wrong choice. Like I should have chosen the other pair. And so I go back to the shoe department and look out at the mass of possibilities. All auditioning to be mine. To be my perfect next pair. And sometimes, at the belly of my belly, I feel a wrenching. What if I choose wrong again? What if I choose the wrong leading pair? And I’m hurt and disappointed again. Maybe it’s just safer to stare at all of the pairs. Just stare and not choose.

And so it goes in online dating. I swear, it’s like keeping a bottle of whiskey next to your gas stove. Filled with beautiful possibilities—whiskey-flavored BBQ sauce, a pre-dinner belly-warmer, a splash of a little somethin’-somethin’ in the mushroom cream sauce—and yet inherently so dangerous. Too keep such a flammable substance so close to the flame.

For those of you who have never perused an online dating site like the popular one that promises you find someone in six months or you get your money back (I’ve got my eye on you, Match), it’s quite a sight. After logging on, all of the faces of those with whom you’ve communicated pop up on the screen. There they are—smiling faces inviting trust, catch phrases that so desperately try to avoid the cheese-factor that they are even more cheesy than if they’d just owned it already, and the time frame during which the person was last active. Oh, yes. You can spy. You’re almost encouraged to do it. To see if the pairs of shoes you’ve tried on, in fact, aren’t quite sure if you’re the right feet for them yet. To know whether or not they’ve returned to the store to see if perhaps there’s a prettier, sexier, more comfortable set. And, Dios mio, there are so many beautiful ones. Every time I log on, I wonder at the plethora of beautiful faces. All so sunshine-y and filled with hope and promise.

Dear readers, I have been trying out a new pair of shoes lately. They’ve been auditioning for six weeks now. By no means are they glamorous. But they are comfy. They are dependable. And simple. And they are, for the most part, far more loving and affectionate than any shoes I’ve owned lately. They felt instantly broken-in.

And yet, I’m afraid they are breaking-in in reverse. And they are setting my nerves a-flutter. I am not used to shoes getting less comfortable. That is anti-shoe behavior.

You see, this new pair and I had a date last night. And they just felt different. Not quite so easy to slip on. My heel snagged just a little and I found myself manipulating the toes to try to get them to stretch out and let me in. And, even though I squeezed my foot in and they relaxed around it, they were different. I didn’t want them to be. And yet, there it was, that knowledge that perhaps these oh-so-comfy shoes no longer wanted to be my pair. Perhaps they wanted to go back to the auditioning room. Because of the online set up of how I met these shoes, I know that they are still looking. Seemingly, they are active every day. Naturally, this nagging knowledge wedges itself into my actions and I’m left to wonder: is it the shoes that shift or is it my knowledge of their continued auditions that make me change around them?

And so, here is the curse of online dating. There are so many possibilities that I think it’s hard, especially for men, to settle on just one woman. And the double curse is that you can find out if they’re still looking. And it’s hard to stay confident when you know that their feelers are still out, sizing you up against all the others.

I guess my gut says to stick it out with this one. Every couple’s story is different, after all. Who knows—maybe it’s better this way. In all honesty, I have been on a couple of dates within these past six weeks and it kind of reminds me of the reverse fading of that favorite pair of black shoes. You know, how you never realize how faded your old black shoes are until you buy brand new ones? And, next to the new ones, the old ones look all scratched up and faded. Quite the opposite has happened with me recently. These brand new ones have only been making my original, six-week-old pair shinier. More authentic. More right.

I guess I can only hope that he’s experiencing the same thing. And I guess it’s in this process that I have to hope that for me and whomever I end up with, that we will find out through trying others on that we are the pair that might not make all of each other’s dreams come true, might not erase all of the pains of real life, but will certainly make each other feel supported as we journey along.