So you might be wondering how on earth a pair of Dr. Martens could be the demise of your loving relationship. Well, in a video posted by TikTok user @hillaryhelennn, she described how her immigrant mother passed down this belief about shoes long before TikTok was invented, saying, "The shoe theory is the theory that if you give your significant other a pair of shoes ... that essentially it's bad luck, and they will 'run away from you.'" She then continues to say that she thought this was only a Chinese custom her mom had imparted to her and not one that anyone in the U.S. knew of.
@hillaryhelennn added, "When I was younger, whenever I would go through a breakup, my mom would blame the fact that I gave my significant other shoes as the reason why we broke up." In another TikTok, user @angela.chaan gives the origin story of this Chinese superstition. She explained that "Basically, in Chinese, the word for 'shoes' sounds the same as the word for 'bad luck.'"
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