The Golden Rule

You hear it all the time – “she’s high maintenance.” It’s the ultimate upper cut to the female ego, the fail-safe way to drag your girlfriend away from the bathroom mirror, the cover-all reason why he’s “just not that into you.”

But what does it actually mean?

Some guys describe the high maintenance woman as the one with the hair dryer, the hot rollers and the trust fund worth of MAC make up in the bottom of her purse. Some say she’s the girl with the “good night call”… yes, every night, no, no exceptions. There’s the clingy girl, the rapid-fire text message girl, the fight-every-time-you-go-out girl, the I-made-Valentine’s-Day-reservations-in-June-WHY-don’t-you-know-what-you’re-wearing-so-we-can-cooordinate girl. There are more shapes and colors of high maintenance than girls to maintain.

Once, while discussing my own maintainability with a male friend (Note: this discussion is almost as dangerous as asking friends to rate your attractiveness on a scale of one to ten), he bluntly exclaimed, “you’re not low maintenance, you’re a golden retriever.”

“You said you’re low maintenance,” he reasoned (with only a slight tone of manly condescension), “but you are definitely not low maintenance. A goldfish is low maintenance. A golden retriever is maintainable.”

After the offense at the K9 comparison wore off, I hesitantly agreed. “But,” I countered, “can you name any goldfish? Can you think of one girl that is truly low maintenance?”

The sound of my victory was dead silence on the line.

Though men say it’s rare to find a low maintenance woman, the fatal flaw isn’t in the female, but the philosophy.

Is there any girl out there who likes being ignored? Who are the women who don’t need even a little bronzer between getting out of bed and throwing back beers at the bar? And, if she exists somewhere out there, would guys truly trade the goldfish for the golden retriever?

Sure, you only have to feed a goldfish once a day and it doesn’t need a lot of attention, but does anyone really want to spend time with a pet you can’t play with?

So Godspeed, gentlemen, if you want a goldfish. But maintenance is in the eye of man and maybe, just maybe, the benefit of a little extra maintenance is the difference between curling up with your goldfish versus your golden retriever at the end of the day.