You hear it all the time.
“She’s so low maintenance.”
“He’s chill.”
“They’re easy.”
It’s meant as a compliment. A good thing. The social equivalent of being gluten-free: easy to accommodate, unlikely to cause problems.
I used to wear “low maintenance” like a badge.
I didn’t ask for much. Didn’t want to be a burden. Didn’t push back. I was the cool girl, the capable woman, the colleague who didn’t need extra time, the partner who didn’t make things complicated, the friend who never made a fuss.
Low maintenance was a strategy. A personality. A trap.
Because here’s the quiet truth: no one is low maintenance without cost.
Being easy to be around often means being hard on yourself.
It means anticipating everyone else’s needs before they’re spoken.
It means editing your preferences before they’re inconvenient.
It means saying “whatever works for you” so often that you forget what works for you.
It’s not peace. It’s performance.
And it’s one that eats away at you—slowly, politely, without fanfare.
Being agreeable is not the same as being at peace
We confuse the two all the time.
We think that if no one is upset with us, we must be doing life well. That if we don’t rock the boat, we’re mature. That if we can tolerate it, we probably should.
But tolerance is not alignment.
And politeness is not self-respect.
You can keep things light.
You can smooth things over.
You can tell yourself it doesn’t matter.
But the body knows.
The resentment builds.
And one day, someone asks where you want to eat, and you answer, “I don’t care”—and somehow, in the space between the words, you realize you’ve been saying that about your entire life.
The world doesn’t reward low-maintenance people. It uses them.
We become the go-to person. The filler. The one who always steps in, steps up, steps back, steps down.
We’re so good at not needing anything that people forget we’re even there.
And when we do ask for something—attention, rest, care, respect—it feels like too much. Not because it is. But because we’ve trained everyone around us to believe we’re fine with less.
So here’s a radical thought: what if you let yourself be high maintenance?
Not in the trope-y, Real Housewife sense.
In the fully human sense.
What if you said:
-
“Actually, I do have a preference.”
-
“That doesn’t work for me.”
-
“I need a bit more time.”
-
“I know I said yes, but it’s a no now.”
-
“I’m not okay with that.”
-
“This isn’t enough.”
What if you let your wants and needs take up space?
What if you were less easy and more honest?
What if you believed that your comfort mattered—not as an afterthought, but as a baseline?
Being low maintenance doesn’t make you noble. It makes you disappear.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m done disappearing.
I’m done being the person who doesn’t mind.
I’m done swallowing preferences to keep the peace.
I’m done with emotional contortion in the name of being liked.
Let me be high maintenance.
Let me be particular.
Let me take up space and ask for more and believe I’m allowed to.
Because I’d rather be too much than nothing at all.