I think there are a couple of things that go into “maintenance”; the generalisations I refer to are the baseline and the ongoing investment.
I have a lot more tolerance for a high baseline than high ongoing investment – for people who need higher-than-typical levels of commitment or intimacy or whatever before they’re comfortable with certain things. I don’t have much patience for ongoing stability issues needing constant patching, for drama, for constant proofs of affection – the day-to-day stuff.
I consider myself way the hell high on baseline maintenance stuff – I have very high stability and commitment needs. When my baseline is met, I’m fairly low maintenance – I mean, I don’t even expect people to remember my birthday. When I’m insecure or unsettled, though, I’m one of those people with stability issues needing constant patching, and I get royally pissed off at myself over it which doesn’t much help. And someone who isn’t comfortable with the level of commitment I need for certain sorts of relationships might see me as high maintenance across the board because the baseline can be faked with enough persistent support and reassurance.
I know people who I’m not romantically involved with who are too high-maintenance for me to maintain a close friendship with them. Just too much day-to-day effort involved with managing their moods and behaviours and my reactions to them.
I’ve said in the past that the difference between what I naturally do as a consequence of a relationship and what that relationship needs to be stable is the part that’s the work. I think that holds for questions of ‘maintenance’, too. Someone who wanted a socially normal level of flowers-chocolates-and-movie-dates would be higher maintenance to me because that sort of thing isn’t stuff I do frequently. Someone who wants a lot of verbal complimenting might be low-maintenance on that front to me because I like to tell my men they’re gorgeous.
I’ll be the odd one out and say I’ve always considered “high maintenance” to only be reflective of actual monetary expense, and how much I’m expected to pay for everything in the relationship: that her end of the bargain is to be a princess with expensive tastes who gets gifts all the time, and I’m the working-class slave who provides them.
I’ve never associated the expensive gift-giving with the emotional reasons why she asks for gifts in the first place, so I don’t consider emotional reasons part of a person’s “maintenance.”
Tough question. HM is too subjective-- compare Fish’s persepective to my own-- for me to try to change my personality to be more or less so.
That said, I have avoided dating and even turned down jobs because I did not think I would be succesful almost entirely on the basis of what I would call my own HM-ness. These things do not make me happy.
I am a bit iffy on the concept of “moody” being HM. What, exactly does that mean? I can see how someone who one minute is affectionate, then the next, for no apparent reason, is indifferent or hostile, would be HM. But I sense that a lot of people think you’re “moody” if you don’t maintain a constant copacetic facade. Shit happens, emotions happen, and I’m not going to unhealthily internalize that for the sake of not appearing “moody”.
Well sure. But there’s “moody” and there’s “bat shit insane”. If you get in a bad mood and take it out on your partner, and generally act like an asshole to that person, and then 2 hours later act all happy and bubbley and confused when that person is a bit hurt, and wary of you, then you’re high maintenance.
Economic HM:
for example, an ex-bf of mine who only bought “brand” clothes. Well, my clothes are branded too… but I pick jeans based on whether my ass looks good in them, which discards Levi’s pretty much by definition.
These classmates I had in college who were fu-rioooous when their mothers informed them that, as long as they had labs, they would not be able to discard all their clothes from the previous year but only half of them. Of course all of them thought that toilet paper refills itself and that lettuce grows pre-cut.
Emotional HM:
This depends a lot on compatibility. To me, someone who is controlling is HM - to my brother, it appears to work just fine. I’ve known people who found their roller-coaster partners stimulating and others who ran away when Mr. Rollercoaster so much as said “hi”.
I’m very much LM economically; by my notion of emotionally, well… depends on how good any potential partner is at dealing with “aaargh I’m going to kill my motheeeeeer!”
To work backwards, I have been accused of internalizing for being moody. I’m not sure what that means. Add the unhealthily and it’s just way to subjective for me.
As for being moody (I’m not batshit insane, I don’t think) I’m just quiet, more introspective, more likely to be “down” and more likely to want to be alone if I am down relative to the vast majority of people. Say what you want about that being perfectly acceptable, but in most relationships, romantic or otherwise, those charteristics make other people wonder what’s wrong and if you can’t explain and can’t just cheer up then they’re bugged.
A poor explanation, but it’s the best I can do for now.
That’s kind of what I was getting at…the happiness nazis who insist on you being chipper and you’re moody and unloveable if you’re not. Fuck right off! It’s a mental illness to be plaster-smiley all the time. I personally wouldn’t be attracted to someone who’s Stepford-faced 24-7.
A while back Maxim (or some equally interchangable men’s mag) printed up lists of 25 signs your girlfriend was HM and 25 signs she was LM. I can only recall one from each:
Low-maintenance sign: she has a nursing degree.
High-maintenance sign: she refers to her mother as “bitchface”.
Funny, I was going to comment that my b/f’s daughter seems to me the epitome of HM, and SHE’S an RN! You tell me:
—needs constant reassurance, puts herself down in nearly every other sentence, which she ends in a questioning way so that you MUST soothe her when responding to her.
—buys only jeans that are over $100 even if she sees less expensive ones–they cannot be good enough if they are not priced over $100.
—wants more than anything to be married, but MOSTLY for the ring and the ability to refer to herself as someone’s “wife”, and to plan an extravagant wedding, yet also:
—refused the lovely and expensive engagement ring her fiance had chosen for her by himself, stating that the ring MUST be the one she selects or it will be returned
I’d be terrified to have her as my nurse if I were in the hospital.
My boyfriend is moody. It’s one of the things that takes effort for me to deal with.
Little things upset him. And when I say “upset him” I mean “upset him a lot”, occasionally verging on “turning him into a quietly seething mass of aggravation”. Traffic can do it; delivery orders coming late really do it; minor setbacks on projects do it. He’s also one of those people who, when annoyed, puts out an aura of frustration that anyone with the remotest sensitivity to other people’s moods picks up on.
At the same time, this isn’t persistent – he’ll shift out of the crankies into a neutral or even good mood really quickly, as soon as whatever was annoying him gets removed from his field of view. I, of course, am still sort of tense and fretful from dealing with his crankies and it takes me a little bit to catch up with his exceedingly labile self.
Lilairen, my husband is JUST EXACTLY LIKE THIS. I have tell you, it’s really emotionally draining having to deal with - and frankly, there are times when I’m about at my wits end - in a way, when he’s really on a tear, it’s almost emotionally abusive. He doesn’t get that he can’t rant and rave and then “turn it off”. I can’t turn it off like he can - and man, is it tiring.
I reckon it’s just a matter of degree. If one is absolutely impossible to live with one minute, then positively ecstatic the next, then that’s leaning towrds the aforementioned batshit insane, and therefore HM. If one fails to maintain a constant morning-show-TV-personality face for the entirety of their existence, then the person calling them HM should fuck off.
I’m rather surprised at the emphasis on emotional HM in this thread. I always assumed that as both are about equally bad and economic HM is more common (debate, discuss), the economic form is more troublesome.
He doesn’t get that he can’t rant and rave and then “turn it off”. I can’t turn it off like he can - and man, is it tiring.