Comment by zdragnar
There's gotta be more to it than that. I've got a pair of dress shoes I wear maybe thee times a year at most, and I've had them for somewhere between ten and fifteen years, perhaps longer.
The soles (rubber because winter) are in perfect condition, and the leather isn't too bad either, though I've not really conditioned it enough and it's starting to show.
Both can be true. I have specifically heard that shoe glue needs to be repeatedly compressed to be maintained or it will disintegrate. Anecdotally as well, I had a pair of quality, lightly used, but old, hiking boots that had the sole completely separate after a day of heavy use. The runber sole completely detached from the leather shell inner shoe. The crazy thing was that BOTH boots failed within 20 minutes of each other.