MY FUNNY (?) VALENTINE
by Terrence Shulman
Well, we’re one month into the New Year. How are you doing? Do you feel “new”? Did you make any resolutions? Did you break them yet? And here comes Valentine’s Day–the first major holiday of the new year–right around the corner. For many, this holiday is truly a joyous occasionan opportunity to make that little (or big) extra effort to show someone you really care, you really love ’em; many others are still recovering from broken New Years resolutions and are just confronting the sticker shock from the past holiday season. According to the Retail and Marketing Association (RAMA), nearly 60% of Americans celebrated Valentines Day in some way, spending about $10 billion dollars-making it one of the biggest spending holidays of the year.
For many, Valentine’s Day triggers a sense of dread–whether you don’t have a “significant” other, you’re going through relationship “challenges,” or you just can’t seem to get on board with the whole “Hallmark” feel of it. When was the last time you took yourself on a date? Is it possible the best indicator of whether Valentine’s Day or any day for that matteris a joyful opportunity to love is: have I loved myself first? We’ve all paid lip service to the platitude “you have to love yourself before you love someone else.” But do we really believe it? Do we really live it? Or do we live like the famous line in “Jerry Maguire”waiting for someone to “complete me”? But “I love him/her more than I love myself.” Does that sound noble… or sad?
I’m not speaking as someone who has mastered self-love. I’m speaking as a fellow journeyer. I’ve been married almost five years now and, I can tell you, keeping love alive isn’t always easy. I’m also recognizing that I really want to learn to love others more deeply and to receive others’ love more deeply. If you’re like me and you’ve ever had trouble taking a compliment, accepting help, or letting love in, it’s likely there some residue of unworthiness lodged in our hearts, keeping us from fully loving ourselves and, therefore, from fully loving one another.
We use the term “significant other.” What about “significant self”? Sounds funny, doesn’t it? As if to love ourselves still sounds conceited, self-centered, and narcissistic. I like the saying “I am my only life partner.”
In essence, I am married to myself whether I like it or notthere’s no real divorcing myselfso I might as well continue to work on this primary relationship with me… while I continue to offer the best I have of my love to others. There’s also the saying “we are all one, we’re all connected.” To the degree I embrace this as true, it seems to follow as a goal or intention to treat others as I would like to be treated and vice-versa. We’re not taught much about self-love or self-care. Our bodies, minds and spirits are truly temples. Nobody’s perfect.
I don’t love myself perfectly and I haven’t yet loved anybody else perfectlyif I’m perfectly honest. But I’m really starting to get that the degree to which I can love anybody unconditionally is largely contingent on how able I am to love myself unconditionally. Even when it seems I treat others better than I treat myself, it has often felt as if I’ve tried to love someone hard enough to make myself feel good enough, worthy of their love. It’s a sad but common game. Actually, I’ve heard it said that the phrase “unconditional love” is redundant: love, by definition, is unconditional… anything else is not love. One of my other favorite aphorisms is by Peter Rengel from his book Living Life in Love: “Loving yourself is accepting yourself, especially when you are not accepting yourself.”
Take addictions, for example. Who would deny that at some level, addictions are a form of self-destruction, self-punishment, self-hatred? Certainly, we fall into these cycles and have great challenges, pulling
themselves out even when we are hurting and claim to want help. But, I believe, what keeps us from stopping smoking, overeating, over-drinking, overspendingyou name itis that the fuel for our madness hasn’t yet been siphoned out of our tanks; that fuel, deep down, is self-loathing. And the more I hate myself for falling into an addiction in the first place, the more my addiction gets a stranglehold on me.
Often, asking for help is the key because someone can lend a hand and remind me I am lovable and assist me in my journey toward greater self-acceptance and self-love. If I am accepting and loving myself at a high level, it is unlikely I would do anything to harm myself physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually. We might just take note of the ways in which we recognize we aren’t loving ourselves. The point isn’t to further beat up on ourselves but, to take honest account of where we’re out of integrity. Again, be ready to share with someone or ask for help. Ultimately, the best gift we can give ourselves and our loved ones is taking good care of ourselves. We know this is true.
While I’ll probably buy my wife a card, some flowers and take her out for lunch or dinner (probably lunch!), I want to express my love for her in ways besides gifts and spending, too. Gary Chapman’s wonderful book The Five Love Languages describes five primary ways we express and receive love: gifts, acts of service, kind words/appreciation, physical touch, and quality time.
Using Chapman’s model, think about some simple, inexpensive creative way(s) to show your love. Gifts are nice, but both men and women report what’s really important to feeling love are the other four “gifts.”
The interesting thing about these “five love languages” is that we often find ourselves expressing love in a way we think our partners want to receive it but, more often, we tend to express it in a way we’d like to receive it. Some who love to receive gifts might assume their partner is really into receiving gifts too, but he or she might really desire quality time or a massage.
So, stop for a moment or two and consider both how you want to express love and also how your partner best receives love. Hopefully, your partner will do the same.
For those who don’t have a significant other (as well as for some who do) Valentines Day-and all that goes along with it–can provoke feelings of dread. As I often say: holidays can be the best and worst of times. So, whether you’re looking forward to Valentines Day or not, there are many ways to show our love (romantic oог not) for others without feeling stressed, obligated or inauthentic.
Another thing many of us never consider is that Valentines Day is yet another opportunity for us to be our own Valentine, too! In what way(s) might we treat or nurture ourselves in a healthy way? Many of us always put ourselves last! Ideally, we shouldn’t need a holiday to remind us to be loving to others or ourselves but it is what it is. So, what is one “gift” you can give yourself using the “five love languages” model? Remember: I’m my only life partner-from the moment I’m born to the day I die.
One “gift” we can give ourselves (or another) is the gift of recovery. Consider getting counseling, attending a self-help group, and/or reading books on addiction/recovery.
If you’re a shoplifter or shoplifting addict, what better gift could you give yourself than the help you really need. No amount of stolen stuff will fill your void or make life right. If money is an issue for your, think of how much it will cost when you’re arrested (again?) and have to pay for a lawyer, costs, fines and therapy then!
If you’re stealing from your work/employer, it may seem easy to justify but you can’t feel good about yourself and the double-life you may be leading. And, as with shoplifting, there’s no such thing as something for nothing: your theft will be discovered and you’ll be in a world of financial and emotional pain.
If you’re an overshopper/overspender or a hoarder, no amount of stuff will make you happy of at peace. If you’re going to spend money, why not really invest in yourself? There has to be another way. Take that first step… the rest you don’t need to do on your own.
Loving and being loved are no hallmark simple endeavors. This Valentine’s Day, I plan on doing something special for my wife to let her know I love her. Of course, I hope she knows that alreadythe holiday is just another opportunity to be creative in expressing it. But even before I put my focus on her, I am already checking in with how I’m loving me. I am giving myself the gift of exercise, eating well, taking down time, asking for help when needed, easing up on my perfectionism, and just patting myself on the back for being a good person at heart. I’m also planning on giving myself some kind of little treat for Valentine’s Day to “pay myself first,” to fill my tank full of love so that it spills over to others. I encourage each of us to be our own Valentine first and then send out whatever love we can to the world… it certainly needs it.
INSIDE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHOPPING ADDICTION
by Christina Biagioli (The Money Manual, January 24, 2019)
“I had transferred schools and I was having a hard time with that I was feeling depressed,” Lauren Bowling, now the editor of the popular blog Financial Best Life, recalls of her shopping addiction. “My therapist asked how I was coping with it and it turned out the coping mechanism was shopping.”
What started as a way to unwind after working a job at the mall had spiraled. “By the time I was 21, I was $10,000 in credit card debt,” she shared, sometimes spending $200 a week on clothes. She hit rock bottom, she says, when, at one point down to $30 she bought a purse instead of groceries. It was then that she sought out the help of a therapist.
Bowling certainly isn’t alone in experiencing a spending addiction. In 2004 a study on compulsive buying disorder found that it affected about 5.8 percent of the U.S. population.
While its commonplace for people to joke that they “could buy everything in the store” or that “shopping is their cardio,” it begs the question, at what point is shopping indicative of something more serious?
While shopping addiction is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), many within the psychology community anticipate that it’s only a matter of time before it is. And, despite its absence, there are many obvious correlations between compulsive shopping and other clinically-diagnosed disorders. As with substance abuse, scans of compulsive shoppers’ brains show their pleasure centers light up when they make a purchase or when they think about the rush that accompanies a trip to the store.
One need only at look at pop culture to recognize the problem of shopping addiction, too. From the 2009 movie “Confessions Of A Shopaholic” to the Oxygen show “My Shopping Addiction” the problem is increasingly getting recognition.
By the time I was 21, I was $10,000 in credit card debt. – Lauren Bowling, Editor Of Financial Best Life What is shopping addiction?
Terrence Shulman, an addiction therapist who founded The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding, based in Franklin, Michigan, has years of experience working with compulsive shoppers, a career that grew from personal experience – an addiction to shoplifting in his late teens and early twenties. Shulman defines “addiction” as a repetitive pattern of behavior that becomes obsessive. Other qualities of a shopping addict? They are often in denial about their behavior, and there are negative consequences to the behavior, often leading the individual to keep their shopping a secret.
The development of a shopping addiction has various roots, but it is largely emotionally triggered. Conditions and tendencies such as hoarding, anxiety, and depression can all manifest themselves as a shopping disorder and a means to release tension, albeit temporarily. Usually, this is characterized by consistent overspending, denial, and then a feeling of guilt. Shulman recalls shoplifting at one period in his life whenever he was feeling down. “Why wait for life to give me a bargain?” he said, reflecting upon his reasoning at the time. “Why not get away with this and get it now, make life fair for a moment?”
How do you become addicted to shopping?
“Two factors make someone more likely to develop a shopping problem,” April Benson, a New York City- based psychologist known for her work treating patients with compulsive buying disorder told The Money Manual. “[The first is] having a large self-discrepancy, which is a self-report measure of the distance between who you are and how you’d like to be seen. Compulsive buyers have larger self-discrepancies than normal buyers. [And the second is] having a strongly materialistic value orientation. This is someone for whom the acquisition of material goods is a central life goal.”
People with a shopping addiction will, over time, find themselves increasingly shopping to trigger a high and maybe even not using what they buy. Items might sit in a closet with the tags on, even. Per Shulman, “After a while, most addicts report that they don’t get a high from shopping anymore, they just do it to stay level so they can function,” a description that largely mirrors those of other addicts.
Shopping for the wrong reasons
Bowling gives the example of buying a pair of pants because you think they’ll allow you to be taken seriously at work. “I don’t think everyone has a shopping problem, but I think we shop sometimes for the wrong reasons,” she says. Take a step back from how the disorder manifests itself, and Benson says it largely relates to feelings about the self and the body, adding that dieting and shopping have traditionally been two ways that women in particular handle the ups and downs of life.
While there is internal pressure from within the addict, there are also external forces at play. Shulman points to our increasingly media-focused society in perpetuating the disorder. “I think young women are particularly susceptible,” Shulman says. “Young women watch haul videos now. With social media, a lot of people are susceptible to comparison and… are ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ and the glamour, success, fame, and popularity… some people are particularly [prone] to that. Addictions are seductive. We live in a highly addictive society. The message these days is to ‘be the best’ which is great but adds pressure.”
The road to recovery.
The road to recovery for a shopping addict, according to experts, looks similar to the path suggested for people facing other types of addiction – behavior modification with an emphasis on creating boundaries.
Shulman suggests that someone trying to recover should ask themselves why they’re buying an item before they make a purchase, much like someone who overeats would analyze how they feel before consuming an additional meal. He also recommends setting a budget (during a time of level- headedness) and to replace moments of compulsive spending with taking a walk, talking to a friend, or similar activities to calm and center oneself.
Based on what’s worked for her in the past, Bowling, now in recovery, recommends leaving what you have in your online shopping cart for a day before making a purchase to be sure that you actually want the item. Unsubscribing from sale emails to prevent spur-of-the-moment shopping and visiting a physical store as opposed to spending money online are other ways to curb your spending, she says. Ultimately, she suggests practicing self-awareness through constructive activities such as journaling or meditation as a substitute for the constant need to shop.
Benson has created an app called The Urge Strikes Guided Self Help that is designed to be used as an in- the-moment tool when an individual finds themselves making a purchase. The app allows users to dig deeper into their urge, their mood, and the potential negative consequences that would follow. “It’s important for people to go beyond the obvious and do a deep dive into the emotional underpinnings of what brought them to this point,” she says.
It’s important for people to go beyond the obvious and do a deep dive into the emotional underpinnings of what brought them to this point. -April Benson, Psychologist
The goal of treatment is to create a different relationship with the self so that a person can develop healthier behaviors. Even as the addict takes steps to resolve the problem, he or she will likely always be “recovering” from a shopping addiction. “You can’t stop being a shopping addict,” says Bowling, “It’s OK to buy the things you need if you really do need them. I used to feel guilt, but I’ve learned self-acceptance.”
AFTERPAY IS MAKING LAYAWAY SEXY FOR MILLENNIALS: But What’s The Real Cost?
by
Samantha Leach (Glamour Magazine, January 23, 2019)
For months I lusted after the Marais USA jardin heel in cherry. The vintage-inspired suede sandals have the perfect pop of color that would zhuzh up an outfit. There was just one catch: the not-so-casual price of $310. But after about six months of wrestling with whether I should treat myself, I received an unexpected email, with the subject line in attention-getting all caps: “BUY NOW, PAY LATER.” The text was short and sweet: “Introducing Afterpay. Pay in four easy installments at no extra cost, simply select Afterpay at checkout.” Suddenly my dream shoes only cost an ever-so-tempting $77.50, in four interest-free payments.
I’d vaguely heard of Afterpay. Urban Outfitters had suggested it as an option at checkout when I was buying SZA’s Ctrl on vinyl, and I’d seen Kylie Cosmetics tweeting about it. Soon I was noticing it on other sites I browse, like Re/Done, Everlane, Cynthia Rowley, Free People-the list goes on.
You might also recognize the buy-now-pay-later idea by another name: layaway. Layaway programs actually became common in the 1930s, then faded away with the rise of credit cards, even though big chain stores like Sears or T.J. Maxx still offer installment payment plans. But with many of these services, a store reserved the goods for you; once the bill was paid, you could finally take your purchase home.
Afterpay has given this old-school system a shiny, sexy, millennial rebrand with instant-gratification results. You pay for your purchases over four equal installments due every two weeks, and you get your items immediately. (The fine print: To be eligible for Afterpay, you have to be at least 18 years old and own a debit or credit card. According to the company, first-time customers are typically given a $500 spending limit, and you can’t spend more than $1,500 through the service.) While the payments are interest-free, if you miss one installment, you’re charged $8 and your account will be frozen. Don’t pony up by the following week, they tack on another $8, until your fees hit 25 percent of your purchase.
There’s a bevy of installment plans out there now, including QuadPay, Affirm, Uplift, and Klarna, but Afterpay is quickly becoming the most popular. The company says that it has more than 1,000 American retail partners and approximately 500,000 U.S. customers-mostly women-who have used the service. Those numbers are likely to climb: In Australia, where the company launched just four years ago, more than 25 percent of all online fashion and beauty purchases are now processed with Afterpay, according to Nick Molnar, Afterpay’s CEO and cofounder. Molnar told Glamour that the company decided to expand into the U.S. because they saw similar potential in here and that, as a millennial himself, he knew people were searching for new payment options-without credit cards. “We need mechanisms [like Afterpay] to budget using our own money and to take control of our financial situation,” he says.
Millennials have already been trying to take control of their finances. Only one out of three of them has a credit card, and they use debit cards for purchases more than other forms of payment. Experts say this could be a reaction to the 2008 recession-this age group is wary about getting in financial trouble-and overwhelming student loans. “There’s an overall shift in millennials’ attitudes toward credit cards because of student debt [which 41 percent of them carry],” says Rebecca Liebman, cofounder and CEO of LearnLux, a digital platform which helps young adults make better financial decisions. “A lot of people don’t want to get into even more debt, and that’s exactly what they associate credit cards with.”
Several young women told Glamour they are suspicious of using credit cards, and many said they’d never had one. “I only use my debit card,” says Naila, a 21-year-old student in Lincoln, Nebraska. “I just don’t trust myself to have a credit card.” Instead of charging her purchases and then paying them off over time on credit with interest, Naila has used Afterpay to buy a light red Fjällräven backpack ($80 over four payments of $20)
and new snakeskin mules from Anthropologie ($108, paid in four installments of $27).
Most of the women I spoke to didn’t go out seeking a payment plan. They were just aimlessly online shopping when they stumbled upon this new option they’d never heard of before. And for many, in that instant the clothes and products that seemed out of reach suddenly felt affordable. Christina, a 29-year-old mom of two and aspiring beauty blogger living in New York, first learned about the service from Kylie Jenner. “I remember when she announced on social that Kylie Cosmetics would have Afterpay. I was so excited because I was like, ‘Wow, Kylie’s products are so expensive!” And I’m like, I want a palette but I don’t feel like dropping $60 on something I never use,” she says. But Afterpay gave her a way, and since then she’s used it to score a Jaclyn Hill kit from Morphe and other luxe lipsticks.
That’s why payment models are appealing to stores too. “For a lot of our customers, spending $300 on a pair of shoes is a splurge,” says Haley Boyd, the founder of Marais USA shoes. Afterpay, she says, “really eases their purchasing power.” Many retailers report a significant uptick in orders with Afterpay, though Boyd says she has yet to see a significant boost.
Alejandra, 23, a student in Salem, Oregon, admits she’s “super bad” with credit cards. “I would just rack up purchases, then max out [my card], and at the end of the day, I got myself into a hole.” But when Revolve introduced Afterpay, Alejandra still signed up, bought a leopard-print jacket, and has been using the service ever since. In two months she’s spent about $700 on things like “an Urban Outfitters record player for my boyfriend, along with some records, and a few NASA T-shirts, then Gisou hair oil for myself,” she says.
While all of the women I interviewed are happy with their new loot, they realize that without Afterpay they probably wouldn’t have been able to afford their purchases. Simone, an avid Australian Afterpay user since 2016-who provides it as an option for her own clothing company, Simone Tylee, and attributes a third of her sales to the service-acknowledges that having the option to pay in installments has made her hit “buy now” on some things she wouldn’t normally. “I’ve used Afterpay for $2,610 worth of purchases. But if I hadn’t looked that up, I probably would’ve guessed I’d spent only $1,000,” she says. “In most of those cases, I would’ve been more conscious about my choices if it weren’t for Afterpay. As a self-employed adult paying for a car loan, rent, fuel, groceries, and other bills each week, I don’t believe I would’ve been able to afford these things upfront.”
Hefzi, 20, a lunch supervisor at an Elton, Illinois, elementary school, says using Afterpay to shop “makes me feel a bit less guilty [about spending], because I’m not paying in full [right away),” she says. This is something Terrence Shulman, the founder of The Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding, has seen with shoppers (even those who don’t have addictive spending habits). “Gimmicks like Afterpay make you think, OK, I’m not just whipping out a credit card and paying for this all at once. The psychology is similar to things like flash sales or offers to make a purchase without interest for a year,” he says. “But that still doesn’t mean you can actually afford it. You feel like you’re getting a deal and that’s very seductive-but it doesn’t mean you’re not spending above your means.”
While financial experts I talked to said that Afterpay could be better than a credit card because there’s no interest, they were all very wary of the service. For one, those late fees still add up. Afterpay made $28.4 million, or one quarter of their overall earnings, off those fees last year. And in Australia, users of buy-now-pay-later companies owe more than a whopping $900 million Australian dollars. The Australian Securities & Investments Commission also found that “one in six buy-now-pay-later users (16 percent) believed they had experienced at least one type of negative impact due to a buy-now-pay-later arrangement. This included becoming overdrawn, delaying bill payments, and borrowing additional money from family, friends, or another loan provider.” (Afterpay is too new in the U.S. to have similar data here.)
But most of all, financial experts worry that Afterpay and its cousins only teach us to live outside our means. “When it comes to discretionary spending on things like makeup, clothes, jewelry, and other nonessentials, I don’t recommend using anyform of payment plan. Even a credit card,” says Stefanie O’Connell, a millennial personal finance author. “Afterpay is disturbing because it gets you into the habit of spending money you don’t have. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional luxury splurge, but if you can’t afford it-meaning you can’t afford to fund the entire purchase when you make it-it’s not worth the tradeoff of putting yourself in a position where you might have to incur additional debt or leave yourself vulnerable if an unexpected expense or emergency arises.” We need to get real about our spending: If there’s not enough in your account for the cult classic Mansur Gavriel bucket bag, empty your cart, log off the Afterpay app, and step away from the computer-no matter how alluring those four small payments look. Your savings, and your future self, will thank you.
I haven’t taken the plunge and purchased the Marais heels. Not just because it’s winter here in New York, but because I know that my bank statement says I can’t afford them. But I did recently get a call from my 20- year-old little sister who was giddy to tell me that she finally bought the out-of-her-price-range $150 KKW Beauty Glam Bible Bundle-thanks to Afterpay. And another user is born.