eBay Addiction

240 Marbles

    The winter before Ex-man moved out, I found eBay.  It was an evangelical experience and I became completely obsessed.  My main focus was the designer Betsey Johnson whose clothes I loved despite their price tags.  On eBay, gently used clothes could be found at a fraction of the price and since I knew my size and what I liked, all I had to do was bid and wait. 
    I spent a good month making eBay my second home but I realized that I was spending more money than I had.  I was experiencing the financial equivalent of “a minute on the lips, forever on the hips.”  I was fast to pull the reins in and start rethinking my new obsession. 
    As the days past without me visiting my new friend, eBay, I tried to analyze what made it so enticing.  I’m not normally the gambling type.  I’ve had to be frugal (especially since going back to school) and there are always too many ways for money to be spent.  What made me fall for eBay?
    What I came up with are the five cornerstones of my eBay phenomena:

1. The obvious one is the shopping from the comfort of my own home.  I love fashion but I don’t go shopping very much so it was fun to have access to fashion at my fingertips.
2. The competition – I bid on something and I have the chance of winning.  I can be competitive so this seemed like a healthy (?) way for that attribute to manifest.  Better to compete with random strangers in cyberspace than with my own kids playing an innocent board game.
3. Getting something in the mail – who doesn’t like getting a package the old-fashioned way?  It’s like a present and a package rolled into one. 
4. Feedback – perhaps my First Grade teacher set up the dynamic of being a sucker for anything with gold stars attached.  On eBay, vendors give feedback based on the transactions. Because of my tendency to make payments quickly and to write succinct emails, I earned a gold star and 100% positive feedback.  Really?  This was valuable to me?
5. I knew that Ex-man was about to move out and that I would soon have to be the sole provider for my family.  My month on eBay was my last hurrah of frivolous spending for a while - a little retail therapy.

    An interesting side note is that a google search for eBay addiction brings up pages of hits.  Apparently I was not alone in my weakness.

Are there things you have done/are doing post breakup that have the addiction or obsession feel to them?  It’s so easy when things aren’t going well to anesthetize with short-term highs.  What would it take to find something that is a real contribution to your post breakup life?