High maintenance women - She-devils unite

by Laura Henderson

The high-maintenance she-devil bitch from hell is - much like the blue whale - more often sighted on a television screen than in reality. Laura bids us open our arms to these maligned creatures.

I was once very proud of being a 'low maintenance girl'. In fact, I've often been commended by my male friends on how awesome I would be to date. I never wanted flowers or chocolates. I don't wear jewellery. Hell, I was fine if I didn't see the boy-of-the-moment for weeks at a time if it was too inconvenient for him.

For years, I was struck by the confusing and demanding behaviour of my girlfriends. I've watched girls cry for hours upon hours and do some seriously evil things to men because of forgotten 3-month anniversaries.

High maintenance chicks seem to fall into 2 categories...

Cuddly, soft 'n' needy high-maintenance

The first is the soft and cuddly side of high-maintenance. Those girls who are (emotionally) in waaaay over their heads. A great example is my friend Serena. Over the course of a year, I watched her spirit slowly break as a relationship she'd had really high hopes for crumbled.

To be honest, most of us onlookers could see the relationship was going to go nuclear from the beginning, but that didn't matter. She was in crazy intense luuurve. And promptly became batshit insane. An obssessed child of passion, she wanted to spend every waking second with her beloved and - blinded by her own feelings - couldn't understand why he was so lukewarm about the relationship. She didn't get that he simply wasn't all that into it.

Unfortunately, relationship maths in this case meant that her response to his growing emotional apathy was to become needier. They saw each other every day, but that wasn't enough. She wanted romance, flowers, and a standing Friday night date. She got dumped for being too high maintenance.

Vengeful hell-sent she-devil high-maintenance

A far trickier beast, I'm convinced this rare species - much like the blue whale - is sighted far more often on a television screen than in reality.

These are the women who songs like 'My Humps' were written for. Their logic, whilst narcissistic to the point of borderline psychosis, is relatively simple. They figure that their time, money, and nunu-scented delights are worth something. A lot of something.

The media usually shows these women as conniving, manipulative, self centred and downright evil. But after my latest clusterf**k of awfulnesses (less jaded people call them 'relationships'), I'm coming around to these much-maligned girls' point of view.

An unmistakable pattern has been emerging in the kind of guys I'm currently dating now I've gone to university. Gone are the guys that were nice and sweet but way too needy. Now I've matriculated, the guys I meet are different. The key difference is subtle, yet mind-blowingly obvious: these guys are lazy. They see a low maintenance chick and think: 'Awesome! Free Sex!' It's the kind of attitude that makes me want to smash my head into a brick wall, over and over and over again. Mainly because I keep falling for it. I'd always been happy to chase boys, knowing that ultimately they would probably end up more emotionally involved than I was (as had been the case in high school). But now I realise that by chasing - and not really asking for anything in return - I'm getting seriously burned and making it easier for Muppetheads to get the aforementioned coitus gratis.

So my hat goes off to the bitches that squeeze every petal, candy heart and dinner date out of men. Because maybe they're just playing the odds that this guy is an asshole. Maybe they just like free chocolate.

But at least they have the guts to stop accepting crap and demanding something better.

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