Dating : Being High-Maintenance vs. Having High-Standards

I was out on a date with Stephen at one of the finer, seafood restaurants in New Orleans. Even though I expressed appreciation, I couldn’t fully express the depth of my gratitude. I had been DYING for seafood for about a month before we went out, and it just so happened that we ran into each other that day and he offered to take me to dinner. I was ecstatic, not just to be going out to dinner (which I hadn’t done in eight months), but also to be hanging out with Steve.

As he opened the door of the restaurant, nothing but ice-cold air came flowing through. I was wearing a thin shirt and loose-fitting pants because, well summertime in New Orleans is pretty freaking hot and tight-fitting clothing can be really uncomfortable. We walked in and stood at the hostess podium to wait to be seated. The longer we waited for the hostess, the colder I felt. Mind you, I’m a very petite woman and there’s not much meat on these bones to keep me warm without the help of layers upon layers clothing (or I might just have anemia). By the time the hostess showed up, I was freezing. As she walked us over to a table, I asked if there was seating outside. It was a beautiful night. The moon was shining, the stars were out, it’s was very quiet and full of warmth. And, honestly, it also felt a bit cramped inside. Bottom line, I wasn’t feeling it. She said she wasn’t sure if they were doing outside seating, but that she would check with her manager to make sure. When she walked away, Stephen looked at me and said “Outside, really? I might have a jacket in the car or something.” To which I replied, “if they aren’t doing outside seating tonight, then I will take the jacket, no biggie.” By the grace of goodness, they opened the outside seating just for us. With a huge smile on her face, the hostess instructed us to follow her to the outside seating.

As we walked out the door, Steve apologized to the hostess saying that “we didn’t mean to be so high-maintenance.” I was a bit confused because I wasn’t sure how, in his mind, asking to be seated outside because the temperature inside is too cold, and I wanted to feel warm and comfortable was being high-maintenance. It’s not like I demanded they turn the heat on just because I was cold, disregarding the fact that there was a room full of other people who seemed to be enjoying to cold air.

The rest of the night he made a few more critical comments about my personality, referring to my taste in music as ‘boring,’ and accusing me of being ignorant to the fact that he was joking when I really just didn’t find him all that funny. Needless to say, it didn’t end well, for him at least. I enjoyed myself anyway.

It did get me thinking about how some people, most people actually, aren’t really clear on what it means to be high-maintenance and often label women who have high standards for themselves as being high-maintenance. The two aren’t synonymous, so I will do my best to clear up any ambiguity around the terms.

The definition of the word maintenance can be summed up into one word: upkeep.

The definition of the word standard means a level of quality or attainment.

Some who is high-maintenance is someone who requires a greater amount of resources, whether it be time, money, emotional effort, etc., to preserve their current state of being or living, while someone who has high-standards is someone who prefers to be treated with a great level of quality and/or achieve a great level of success.

For the purpose of this article, I’m referring to high standards in terms of how a woman prefers to be treated by her date, lover, husband, or men in general.

Here are a few examples of a high-maintenance woman vs. a woman with high-standards:

High-maintenance: The woman who only wears expensive designer fashion, but doesn’t have an expensive designer fashion budget, so she expects you to maintain her physical appearance. She doesn’t actually care whether a man is considerate of her thoughts and feelings. All she cares about is whether he can afford to splurge on her and maintain her lavish appearance.

High-Standards: The woman who prefers to be treated with respect. She may very well also enjoy wearing expensive clothes, or she may not. And she may accept expensive gifts from you, or she may not, however, what matters more to a woman with high-standards is that she is treated with respect and deference rather than gifted with expensive items. And she has no problem walking away from a man who does not respect her, and the YSL purse he bought.

High- Maintenance: The woman who only marries a man for his job title. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen, celebrities, politicians, this woman is all about the title. She probably comes from a prestigious family background and needs to preserve the family tradition, or she is a plain Jane that wants to be seen as prestigious but doesn’t actually possess any internal qualities that are admirable or have the ambition to try to achieve social prestige for herself. She marries the doctor or the lawyer just to be able to say her husband is a doctor or a lawyer, but she doesn’t actually like the guy for who he is or particularly care how he treats her. It just feeds her ego need to be important to be so closely associated with someone in a position of importance.

High-Standards: The woman who prefers to be treated as a priority. Sure, she may end up marrying the doctor, the lawyer, the businessman or the celebrity, but it’s not because of his title. It’s probably because, despite having such a prominent and position in society, he makes her a priority in his life and shows her that she is important to him. Hey, what woman isn’t attracted to a high-powered man? It’s women’s biological nature to seek out the strongest men to mate with, but there is a difference between being attracted to someone and how they treat you. And if a woman with high-standards is being treated like the woman he is cheating on his job with, rather than the high-value woman that she is, that attraction fades quickly.

High-Maintenance: The woman who plays hard to get. She makes a man jump through the rings of fire just to prove how interested he is in her or how much he loves her. She claims that she is “testing,” him but, deep down inside, she feels unworthy of love. She isn’t going to admit it to herself that she feels worthless. Instead, she puts on a façade of worthiness by making you spend more emotional resources than is necessary to prove your own worthiness. She doesn’t actually want the guy she is putting through all this trouble, she just wants the attention because attention makes her feel worth it.

High-Standards: The woman who prefers to be treated with integrity. Oh, she isn’t going to make you jump through hoops to prove your love, she’s just going to leave when she suspects that you don’t feel the same way about her as she does about you. She isn’t hard to get, but she is very easy to lose, and she can smell inauthenticity from two miles away. Why? Because she is authentic, sincere, and honest in her intentions and interactions with everyone she meets, especially with men. She genuinely enjoys the company of men and wants to have a deep and meaningful connection with a man in her life. That sort of connection requires a high level of open-heartedness and with being open-hearted comes the ability to feel everything. She is worth it and she knows it. And if you don’t think so, well.. you can leave.

High-Maintenance: The woman who only shops at places or hangs out with people that contribute favorably to her reputation. If Starbucks is the coolest, this woman would not be caught dead at a local hole-in-the-wall café. Talk to a homeless person…. Ew! Hang out with people that aren’t super-rich and don’t have iPhones?….. Neeevveerr! Why? Because…… what if somebody sees her?! (….dun dun duuuuunnn!) She doesn’t want to ruin her reputation by being seen somewhere that is “so not in.” She cares only about her image and what everyone else is going to think of her. She probably doesn’t even like anything pumpkin flavored, but that Pumpkin Spice Latte will make her look so cool.

High-Standards: The woman who prefers to be treated fairly. She also treats other people fairly. She understands people and that life is a series of sometimes messy events that don’t always have clear answers. Things happen, jobs get lost, and not everyone can afford an $800 mobile device. She knows that what makes people ‘people’ is not the material possessions they have, how much money they make or their social status, but who they are on the inside. Where you hang out at or who you hang out with doesn’t make you ‘cool.’ How you treat other people and how you make other people feel around you is what makes you ‘cool.’ You want to build a positive reputation, treat people positively.

I know I talked mainly about women, but these can apply to men as well. Doesn’t matter what genitalia you have, or even what skin color you have or nationality you are, anyone can be high-maintenance. And, if you recognize yourself in any of those high-maintenance examples, don’t fret! The good news is that you can change from being high-maintenance to having high-standards. I won’t bullsh*t you and tell you it’s easy because it’s not. Change is tough, that’s why most people don’t do it. But the biggest reward is being able to listen to someone else’s story and say, “I used to be just like you. Here, let me help.”

Did my explanation of the difference between being high-maintenance vs. having high-standards provide some clarity? What experiences have you had with high-maintenance people? What are some standards of treatment that you believe are high-quality? Let me know in the comment section.

As always, thanks for reading!