So come and tell me what's so great about being low maintenance

[OrmRenewed]

"You are the only thing
In any room
You're ever in"

Courtesy of Elbow - Starlings

I am a coper, a low-maintenance, just-get-on-with-it sort of woman, I am not beautiful, sometimes I struggle to manage 'homely' TBH. A Martha not a Mary. I have never been given a diamond ring or any expensive jewellery. My skills lie in juggling and managing and making things work - use not ornament. Which mostly is as I wish it to be.

But sometimes,I think it would be nice to be the sort of person the above is said to or even thought about. I wonder how life would have been if I had been born beautiful and not just clever and capable.

Anyone know what I mean?

OK - I have a friend who, frankly, has a face like a blind butcher's pimply thumb. However - she has always been treated like a princess by her father and told repeatedly by her mother she is beautiful. She's a muddy blonde and her body's OK. Her confidence levels are astronomical - she always ACTS like every bloody guy is leering after her. She even comes out with priceless statements such as 'Oh - I wish I weren't so beautiful, because all the attention gets boring...' (!)

And it totally works - guys DO fall over themselves to chat her up. If anyone is going to pull in a club, it WILL be her. It must be an aura of sexuality she projects like a force field.

I think attractiveness in the sense of 'foxiness' (and therefore distanced from being sensible/capable) is very much a psychological thing. If one has self-belief that you are 'foxy' then that belief will inform everything you do - body language, sartorial choices, conversation...

It can be so hard as a sensible woman, when you have to be so many different things to so many people, to actually find an authentic 'belief' or understanding of your 'self' which can be consistently and meaningfully projected as a truthful self-image.

you don't have to be a lissom blond to be high maintenance.

I think high maintenance can mean different things also...

I am low maintenance, I think my err friend is high maintenance. She was younger and very much a daddy's girl and has always had boyfriends who placed her on a pedestal, whereas I always endeded up overstaying in relationships with "red flag" losers. She needs to be told how beautiful she is a lot and will go on endlessly about her body issues and in return will get endless reassurance.

The only disadvantage I could ever see to her approach was that in all her long term relationships they always stopped having sex with her after a year or so eventually leading to the breakdown of the relationship. I think they had her on too high a pedestal to want to shag her - if you will!

For me, being high maintenance is about insecurity and being very low maintenance is about not valuing yourself enough. You need to be somewhere in the middle...

Don't those ones have lots of problems when the going gets a bit tough, though?

I know of more than one who found it very difficult to share H's admiration/ awe/ money with a DD, for example!

Oo I dunno mrsboogie - I would say that insecurity is kind of connected to low self-value too. Maybe low-maintenance people affected by insecurity just don't bother because they're 'not worth it', whereas high-maintenance people affected by insecurity are that way because 'they'd be even more gross otherwise.'

yeah undertone - its two sides of the same coin isn't it...

I've had boyfriends that have tried to put me on a pedestal and I hated it. Treat me like a human being not like an object fgs.

I think you can be low maintenance and still value yourself. I know several women who are low maintenance (inc myself) and we are all confident, most of us have our own businesses, a couple are single and more than happy about it.

I suppose it is all about how you define high and low maintenance.

I know plenty of high maintance men. Never gone out with one, as I find I'm far from the man-pleasers they seem to prefer. My own Grandfather and father are exceptionally high maintance - GF once spent £400 on a fishing rod. At a time when the cooker ws broken and my grandmother was trying to cook Sunday dinner for the family (20+ people, big irish families!) on one cooker ring.

Have only skim-read thread, sorry. You don't have to be beautiful to be high-maintenance, for goodness sake.

My favourite quote on the subject:
"A Skoda is low-maintenance, right? Think of me as a Lamborghini."

Well I like to think of myself as both useful and ornamental

But am a coper, don't moen (much) and pretty much am happy for dh to have his own inerests (read cycling) and be out on his bike with his cycling club as much as he wants to eb, provided I am entitled to the same.

My dad is so low-maintenance it's almost a parody of it. He refuses - REFUSES - to wear shirts that are not white, blue, or brown. No stripes (as that's a 'pattern' and 'only posers wear patterns'). He will wear clothes until they fall apart around him. A hairdresser once asked him if he would like to try something different 'with his style', which ganered the reply: 'what - different from "shorter", mate?'

That's kind of my bench mark for guys. By all means wash, shave, brush your hair and wear sun cream, but any more self-grooming and attention to appearance than that and I recoil. Men should be out there cutting down trees and rescuing maidens... er...

Maybe because being attentive to self-grooming somehow creates an appearance of not being capable in any situation? I tend to look at very groomed guys and doubt their abilities to do... well... anything much.

Is that why some girls strive to attain the 'very groomed' high-maintenance look? Because it projects a message of 'I don't do boring hands-on stuff - I have people for that.' It's like a status thing - like impractical long trains on victorian dresses used to be (i.e. you had someone to mend it when it tore)

Sorry I'm going on so much about this. It's a subject which fascinates me - my mum and I are having a war at the moment. She says I should do my hair and full makeup every day, because to do otherwise is slatternly and I'll never get another boyfriend. I say that natural features should speak for their own merits, and that purposefully appearing 'low maintenance' is a statement about how, as a person, I prefer to focus on more important stuff than frikkin lipstick.

So I should strive for mid-range maintenance.

Yeah Orm - an MOT now and then. Nothing flash like adding a big spoiler or go-faster stripes - but then don't forget to change your oil now and then and wipe off the bird poo.

I do my make up even when I'm indoors.

'High maintenance' for me reads: 'self-centred with an unjustified sense of entitlement'.

In other words, someone to avoid at all costs.

I think what you're talking about though is self esteem. High self esteem comes from being kind to yourself, protecting yourself from negative influences and loving yourself; it does not come from being spoiled.

It doesn't matter if you're a six foot blonde or a short, dumpy brunette; if you're your own best friend, being grounded like that will make you the centre of gravity in any room.

"High self esteem comes from being kind to yourself, protecting yourself from negative influences and loving yourself; it does not come from being spoiled.

It doesn't matter if you're a six foot blonde or a short, dumpy brunette; if you're your own best friend, being grounded like that will make you the centre of gravity in any room."

Aren't those lyrics from a Whitney Houston song?

Some very naughty men on here..but you have a point about having to be shit hot in bed if you're going to be super high maintenance!

I'm...medium maintenance. V happy with my lot and don't expect hearts and flowers and pandering. BUT I do have a lot of diamonds! My dh believes anniversaries and Christmas is all about the wife and spends his bonuses on me. I am grateful, not just for the rocks but for him making me feel like a laydee (vom) (but true).

Coolfonz - and look at what happened to Whitney Houston....

My missus is high maintenance, on her birthday I even put brown sauce in her chip butty. Greedy cow.

for me the SATC ladies are the epitome of high maintenance - awful shallow harridans

I bet Whitney is high maintenance. All that crack/therapy bills. You wouldn't know where you were. One minute some gross orgy with Mary J Blige and her dealer, next minute it all goes Tony Soprano at the shrink.

It's the problem of having the best female voice ever and never having recorded a single decent track.

Who are SATC?

Sex and the City - can't bear them either, vacuous, moany, self obsessed old moos.

God protect me from "high maintenance" women.

In my (painful) experience, "high maintenance" generally equates to "deeply immature and acts like a stroppy teenager". Give me a proper grown-up woman, who has a modicum of self-control, empathy and common sense any day.

I am low maintainance in that I am not demanding of material things, not ,moany or highly strung or emotional, and don;t demand that my bf spends all his money on me. I am not ugly by any means. He really appreciates the fact that I am low maintainance and he is too, in that he is not demanding of me.

I have no time for high maintainance women and imagine most men don't find it a quality they seek out in a long-term partner.

Snorbs I agree.