This is good, it’s about what I’d say. High maintenance is about what you expect others to do for you.
Unforntunately, a lot of people think high maintenance means “women who wear make-up and like designer clothes”, even if she’s the one buying the clothes and has never in her life made anyone wait while she’s getting ready.
I think you folks are getting that part backwards. As TrueCelt said its often(sometimes) a symptom that clues you the observer into the chance there will be “other” high maintenance issues.
Yeah, SOME women just like to look nice, pay for it themselves, and bother no one in the process of doing so. Many others, not so much.
::Taken aback:: Well, of course. Note the ‘need vs preference’ discussion.
What makes a man high maintenance? A few examples I’ve seen:
Needs to clean out his car before he can go to the movies. The naked eye can not discern a difference between the before and after state of the car.
Must have his shoes polished or his shirts ironed just so and harrasses you to do it for him, then complains about how you did it. (My ex used to get his shirts back from the dry cleaners and re-iron them! :rolleyes:)
Crazy need to spend extra money on this certain hair salon, then instructs them to put the clippers on 1.4" and cut all hair the same length. Dude, the $3 barber can do that. * I* can do that! Why are we spending $100 on this?!?
Must have a very specific brand, color, and texture of toilet paper. Swears that anything else is sandpaper.
Spends hours polishing expensive tools which have never been used. Insists upon keeping the boxes they came in (I suspect in order to refer back and find out what they do. . .)
Um… no.
The vast majority of women who like to look nice and have nice thing pay for it themselves and bother no one else in the process. Just like the vast majority of *men *who like to look nice and have nice things.
I don’t think of high maintenance as having anything to do with physical appearance, especially if she’s the one paying for her own stuff. That’s ridiculous. How can you be high maintenance for yourself? I don’t leave the house without makeup (unless it’s to go on a run), however, it takes me a maximum of 5 minutes to apply my makeup. Hell, it takes me less time to get ready in the morning than it takes my boyfriend. I can also go a couple years without buying new clothes and own about three pairs of shoes. Yet, I get massages and facials regularly. My nails are always done and I go in for regular pedicures. I pay for everything myself, as I have a decent paying job. I roll in a six year old Mitsubishi. So am I high maintenance?
I determine level of maintenance on an emotional level. We’ve all seen those women who make every social occasion somehow about themselves. Every party ends with her outside crying due to some imagined slight. She’s an hour late everywhere she goes and offers no apologies. If her man doesn’t text her regularly she gets in a snit. Basically, if you spent a disproportionate amount of time worrying about not pissing her off or making her cry, she’s high maintenance.
Let me rephrase it then.
I ve “known” a fair number of women that I would classify as high maintanence. THOSE women often had a higher than average emphasis (compared to low maintenence women) on looking extra good and having extra nice stuff.
And for the man side version I give you the pretty boy with all the toys. Take your guy thats just a bit too cocky and self absorbed. If he’s got the money, he’s more often than not gonna be decked out and showing off his expensive toys.
TruCelt, if you’d left it at this:
I’d absolutely agree with you.
But your examples (and many of the examples given in this thread) amount to “enjoys and/or values things I think are stupid”, which is certainly a fine reason not to want to hang with someone, but it doesn’t make them ‘high maintenance’, as long as it doesn’t involve any significant inconvenience to people other than them.
Ms. Attack is low maintenance, in contradistinction to the high maintenance types discussed in this thread. It is only one of the many ways in which she is awesome.
Well, yeah, but as you’d pointed out yourself (and I completely agree with), there is no such thing as an “absolute high maintenance”, it’s all about “wants from me more than I am willing to give”. In some cases, that is more money, in others more emotional support, and in others it’s making you wait. It’s in the eye of the beholder.
One of my lab benchmates in college was a guy; one day, he turned to me and whispered “man, and to think I used to be mad about her! Give me one of y’all who doesn’t need confirmation for everything any day!” about a very pretty and nice female classmate who did, indeed, need confirmation from others for everything and whose bench was behind ours - she had spent the last hour asking us to confirm something for her time and again (six times in less than one hour… yes, that is cloudy… yes, it is a positive for Al(III)… honey, I don’t know if that Al got there cos the TA put it or cos it fell in from a can of Pringles, but by Og you DO have a positive for Al). She was too much emotional high maintenance for him, but not for her boyfriend (who was also in our class, they’ve been married for fifteen years).
Agreed, but “wants more than you’re willing to give” means inconveniencing you. Without the inconvenience, they’re not ‘high maintenance’ because you’re not doing or giving anything to maintain them. Without the inconvenience, they just have different values than you do.
A coworker’s wife is high-maintenance. She always gets her way or she has a fit. She can’t be home alone because she doesn’t like it, so someone needs to go keep her company. She calls dozens of times a day to get coworker to do things. She expects to snap her fingers and he comes running. She obsesses over her children and expects everything to revolve around them. She insists that her kids need her for even minor chores. “You can’t expect her to do that on her own!”
Basically, she is a small, stupid woman who overestimates her own importance and forces other people to deal with her insecurities.
THAT’S high-maintenance.
This makes me nuts, too. So, just because I put on makeup in the morning, have nice shoes and handbags, I’m high maintenance? I have to go to a photo shoot this afternoon (it’s for media relations) and it took me 25 minutes to get ready, shower, makeup, suit, shoes and all. It’s not like I look like I’m from the cast of Jersey Shore or You’re Cut Off. My husband takes double that time to get ready in the morning.
And because women are, well, women, they’re more likely to be high maintenance than men? High maintenance people are those who inconvenience others for the sake of their own convenience. The difference between them and assholes is a grey area - many are, in fact, assholes; however, there are some high maintenance people who are nice but clueless and don’t realize how high maintenance they truly are. Regardless, I don’t think that the way someone dresses or looks is always a barometer of high maintenance.
Also, how much of someone being high maintenance is simply someone being completely anal about something? I refuse to do my husband’s laundry because he has this weird (to me) system of doing laundry - some loads require a hot wash with a cold soak; others require a warm wash with no soak; still others require a hot wash with hot soak; and others a cold wash. To me, that’d be high maintenance, only if I were expected to do it. Since I’m not, it’s just plain anal (and endearing in a perverse sort of way, but that’s beside the point).
I have no problem with putting on makeup - I wear makeup every day - but holding up five other people for 20 minutes, I do have a problem with.
I don’t think it matters if she is the one paying for extravagance X. I would say high maintenance simply means “requires greater than normal effort to keep the person in a happily functioning state.” If the person is spending outrageous sums of money on clothing, shoes, makeup, hair cuts, etc. but paying for it all themselves, they are still high maintenance. They just happen to be the one doing the maintaining. “High maintenance” is seen as a negative term because inevitably others get dragged into the maintaining, whether it be footing the actual bill or – as others mentioned-- waiting while the person takes the time that others don’t require to ready themselves to go out into the world.
This. Every social occasion is all about her, her feelings, and whether or not she’s sobbing in the bathroom because someone, somewhere, hurt her. She needs constant validation from her boyfriend, her friends, and her coworkers that she looks nice, she’s doing OK, she did the right thing.
This goes both ways. Men are also high-maintenance. A high-maintenance man is one who spends a party sulking because his girlfriend isn’t paying enough attention to him because she’s attending to her other party guests. He requires constant attention from his girlfriend, his friends, and his coworkers to make him feel good about himself. You’re constantly on eggshells, worrying about saying or doing the wrong thing to piss him off.
This sounds like what I would call self-centeredness or narcissism, perhaps mixed with insecurity. I think it’s more useful to keep “high maintenance” as a separate (though often overlapping) term rather than just use it as a synonym for “self-centered.”
I hope you didn’t get that from what I said?!? I’m talking about the complete inability to leave the house without makeup. There is absolutely nothing wrong with caring about how you look, and taking good care of yourself. I wish I still had the time and money to do so, and probably will again when Celtling gets a bit older.
But I am also capable of living comfortably in my current mode, which involves machine washable suits and no-iron blouses, which match the comfortable shoes which I try to hide with slightly longer pant-lengths, and hair cuts in front of the mirror at 11:00pm with the clippers set on 1 3/4 inches.
I know women who would leave an infant crying in the crib while they applied lipliner.
Ah, I see what you mean. I didn’t mean to come off as too harsh. I think I need to stop reading that pit thread about pitting members of your same sex.
You know people who would leave their kid crying to put on makeup? That’s nutty. And I’m with you on the time thing. I used to take 45 minutes to get ready in the morning. As soon as we started having kids, that got shorter and shorter. Luckily my youngest is still of an age where I can just plop her in her bouncy with me in the bathroom while I get ready if I don’t have a handy set of hands to help (my husband), but she’s still only good for about 10-15 minutes, and she’s too big for me to wear her while I slap on the war paint now.
It sounds like we’re saying that high maintenance = control. The woman who makes you wait while she does her makeup is controlling when the group can leave. The woman who calls the coworker 20 times a day, or demands X number of texts in order to assure herself of a Devoted Boyfriend is exercising control over his activities. Haircut husband who goes to the high-priced salon for a buzz cut is making sure it’s extremely clear that when it comes family finances, he wears the pants in this family.
Low-maintenance people think of others before themselves. They require no input from others regarding their happiness, state of mind, or personal presentation. If kind spouses or friends insist that the person take whatever time she needs for whatever task, that is normal, considerate human behavior. You pass beyond the considerate and you’re into the realm of high-maintenance.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I make my own money and have never (even when I was a broke college student) asked anyone to finance my stuff.
I spend my money on ME because I earned it. Anyone who thinks that I’m high maintenance because of it can give Mel Gibson the blow job he feels he so richly deserves.
To me high maintenance is someone who expects to be coddled and attended to and has no reason (physical or mental impairment) not to do these things for themselves. Also, they tend to expect more than what is reasonable such as being a jerk at a restaurant because of something minor or demanding special treatment in a social situation simply because THEY ARE THERE.
IME, men and women are simply high maintenance in different ways but it’s pretty equal as far as I can see.