Everyone Wants a “Low-Maintenance Relationship” Until They’re Actually in One

There are few compliments more coveted in heterosexual dating than being told you’re “low-maintenance.” You’re chill! You have your own life! You don’t need constant reassurance or get pissed when someone takes three hours to text you back! Look at you, cool girl!

And I get the appeal because, as women, we’re basically taught that being high-maintenance is the kiss of death for a relationship. Need too much attention, too much affection, too much communication, too much anything, and eventually someone will decide you’re simply too much. I have certainly spent enough of my life trying to seem chill when I was decidedly Not Chill to understand the impulse.

Admittedly, the Cool Girl trope has seemingly perished. Gone Girl did away with her (good riddance), and now we know that it doesn’t matter if we like football and beer or Taylor Swift and vodka tonics—someone somewhere will still think we’re too much.

Which is fine. We’ve adapted. We’ve come to embrace who we are, but somehow the expectation that we shouldn’t expect too much from anyone survived the Cool Girl herself. We can have our interests and opinions and personalities now, thank you very much. We can be more. But in exchange? We’re supposed to expect less. Romance, effort, or, dare I say, whimsy? Never heard of her.

So quick question: What, exactly, do we win for requiring so little from the people we date, marry, and spend our lives with? Congratulations, you successfully convinced someone that loving you requires almost no effort. Incredible. Where do we pick up our medals?

Because there’s obviously a difference between having a secure relationship where you don’t need constant validation and having one where you’ve become so committed to being “easy” that neither of you requires much from the other at all. “It is always work to take someone else’s needs into consideration even if they are stable and secure,” says Allison Raskin, relationship coach and author of Compulsively Yours.

And maybe that work isn’t the unfortunate price we pay for intimacy. Maybe it’s part of how intimacy gets built in the first place. Everyone wants a partner who “doesn’t need much” until they realize that being needed is also where a huge amount of intimacy lives. You get the late-night phone call. You’re expected at the event. You know when something is wrong before they even say it. You inconvenience each other. You show up anyway.

So no, I don’t particularly want a relationship that’s “high-maintenance.” But increasingly, I’m not sure I want a low-maintenance one either.

When Did Having Needs Become Such a Bad Thing?

To be clear, nobody is advocating for becoming the partner who requires a detailed itinerary every time the other person leaves the house. (I don’t hate the idea, but like...I know.) There is an enormous amount of territory between “I need you to respond to every text within 90 seconds or I will assume you’re dead/cheating” and “Please expect absolutely nothing from me, and I shall return the favor.”

But somewhere along the way, particularly for women, having needs got lumped in with being needy, and being needy is basically the cardinal sin of heterosexual dating. Want reassurance? Insecure. Want more quality time? Clingy. Care about your anniversary? Demanding. Want the person you’re sleeping with to tell you how they feel about you? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Have you considered getting a hobby?

And sure, some people genuinely need less from a romantic partner. But there’s also a version of “low-maintenance” that has less to do with being secure and more to do with making yourself as easy to love as possible. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, a relationship expert at Hily Dating App, says the self-appointed low-maintenance partner is often someone who has learned to “keep themselves small, easy to love, and mirror what the other person wants and needs.”

The problem is that whatever you actually want doesn’t disappear just because you’ve decided not to ask for it. Maybe you keep saying you’re fine when you want more time together. Maybe you agree to plans you don’t particularly want because choosing the restaurant somehow feels like asking too much. Maybe you pride yourself on never starting a fight when what you really mean is that you never say when something bothers you.

Romanoff says repeatedly suppressing your needs can eventually turn into resentment—which makes sense, because there are only so many times you can insist you “literally don’t care” before you realize that, actually, you very much fucking care.

And that doesn’t mean every desire needs to become a demand or that your partner is responsible for meeting every need you have. It just means having needs in the first place isn’t evidence that you’re bad at relationships. Turns out, letting someone know what matters to you is a fairly important part of letting them know you.

A Good Relationship Isn’t Necessarily an Easy One

Part of the appeal of a low-maintenance relationship is the idea that the right relationship shouldn’t feel like work. And I get it. If you’ve ever been in a relationship where every conversation somehow turned into a three-hour emotional summit, “easy” sounds pretty fucking great.

But easy and good aren’t necessarily the same thing. “I would argue that no relationship, even if both partners are secure, is ‘easy’ because life isn’t easy,” Raskin says. When you choose to build a life with someone, you don’t just get another person to help carry your shit—you voluntarily sign up to carry some of theirs, too.

And eventually, there will be shit to carry. Big things, like someone losing a job or someone’s parent getting sick, sure. But also the daily drags: Someone’s car is in the shop. Someone’s traveling for work. The dog is vomiting. Somebody forgot to buy milk. You’ve both had terrible days and, unfortunately, there are still fucking dishes.

Finding your soulmate doesn’t negate the fact that someone still has to take out the trash. (Not it.)

The expectations change, too. As Raskin points out, you probably wouldn’t expect someone you’ve been on two dates with to attend a family member’s funeral. After two years together, you might be deeply hurt if they didn’t. The relationship has technically become more “high-maintenance”—you expect more of this person now—but that’s because they matter more.

And I think that’s the part we lose when we talk about needing very little from our partners like it’s the ultimate relationship achievement. Being needed can absolutely be inconvenient. Sometimes it’s exhausting. But it’s also getting the first phone call when something happens. It’s being trusted with the ugly stuff. It’s knowing someone well enough to realize when “I’m fine” very much does not mean they’re fine. It’s having a role in another person’s life that nobody else quite occupies.

Maybe a relationship becoming more demanding isn’t always evidence that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it just means there’s more there to maintain.

Maybe What We Actually Want Is Low Drama, Not Low Maintenance

Maybe, then, “low-maintenance” isn’t actually what most of us are looking for. Maybe we want low drama. There’s a difference. Which is big, coming from someone who loves reality TV so much she got a degree in television.

I want to be able to have dinner with my friends without my partner spiraling about where I am. I don’t want every disagreement to threaten the entire relationship. I don’t want to spend my life decoding passive-aggressive texts or proving, over and over again, that I still love the person I have repeatedly confirmed I love. None of that sounds particularly appealing.

But I do want to be noticed. I want someone to care if we haven’t spent enough time together lately. I want us to occasionally inconvenience each other. I want to be able to say, “Hey, I need more from you right now,” without feeling like I’ve failed some test of being an Independent Woman Who Needs Nothing From Anyone.

I want flowers on fucking Valentine’s Day, okay? Sue me.

And that’s kind of the point. Maintenance doesn’t have to mean constantly dissecting your relationship. It can be as simple as continuing to ask questions when you think you already know all the answers. Making actual time for each other. Saying when something feels off instead of waiting for it to become a Thing. Letting what you expect from each other change as your lives do.

Both Romanoff and Raskin recommend regular relationship check-ins for couples who have gotten out of the habit of talking about what they need. As Raskin puts it, “You get what you pay for in a lot of ways.” And frankly, if I’m going to build an entire fucking life with someone, I’d rather we both require a little upkeep.