maintenance

[ajva]

I have been thinking about being 'low maintenance' or 'high maintenance'. I think they are excellent words to describe what it is they describe. I have recently been told that I am (to paraphrase) 'quite low maintenance'. I am pleased. Obviously I can be rude/outspoken/enraged/moany/aggressive etc. But apparently apart from all this, I am reasonably 'low maintenance'.

So I've been pondering - what exactly *is* low maintenance? Does it correlate with confidence? I think perhaps it does. Most people are probably not extremely high/low maintenance, but somewhere in between. Wibbles, for example, seem to be a major factor in increasing what I will call the Required Maintenance Ratio (RMR). I'm always ready to help out with a wibble, of course, and everybody has them (including me). It's just that I don't actually get them all that often. I'm pretty sure a lot of that comes down to confidence/self-esteem.

Also, average female RMR seems to be higher than average male RMR (there are many individual exceptions of course - variation within populations being greater than variation between populations and all that). Indulging this futile statistic for a second, this could be something to do with periods, of course, or hormonal ups and downs. But I also think that's too simplistic. I think there's a huge element of socialisation. Despite decades of gender equality activism, men are generally very much still expected to 'take care' of people, and women to be 'taken care of'. Also, women express emotion more readily. I think these things contribute to differing average RMR ratios between the sexes, and differing average wibble occurence (AWO).

I remember one occasion where I desperately desperately wanted to wibble but didn't want to make a scene. So I decided that I would delay the revelation of my wibble until the next day, when it wouldn't matter any more. It felt weird, but it achieved its purpose. I have a suspicion that many blokes I know tend to repress their wibbles, whereas many of the women don't.

This train of thought is still developing. Please feel free to comment... ;o)

Comments

[ellbie.livejournal.com]

I remember one occasion where I desperately desperately wanted to wibble but didn't want to make a scene. So I decided that I would delay the revelation of my wibble until the next day, when it wouldn't matter any more.

The trouble with this is that withholding what you want to say so that you can do it a bit later on when you've calmed down can actually be more stressful than saying it when it happens and getting it all out of your system.

For example, I have got into the habit of not having a go at people (especially Nick) until I've calmed down enough to do it in a reasonable manner. Unfortunately, during the time it takes for me to get to this point, it is obvious I'm upset about something and people around (especially Nick) may be desperately trying to figure out what's going on and worried that something catastrophic might happen.

So consequently my struggle to be reasonable ironically makes me higher maintenance than getting it all out through a fit of histrionics at the time would be. Probably.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, absolutely. The reason the time I'm talking about felt so weird was that I went to huge lengths to make sure nobody noticed how I was feeling. If anybody had noticed then the game would have been up and I would have immediately come clean about how I was feeling. It happened some time ago now and it was a passing feeling of temporary woe at what was very definitely Somebody Else's Event. Obviously it's not always relevant or indeed possible to do that and if there's a problem that needs to be dealt with then that's different - it should be dealt with asap. That's completely constructive. But I'm talking more about those times where wibbling as such is not constructive. I do do it, I know, just not often.

Incidentally, I think your way of Dealing With Stuff seems eminently sensible, FWIW. :o)