High-maintenance woman, what an interesting phrase. I learned it form Linda Howard’s To Die For. After reading this story, I can’t help but thinking about this question: what makes a high-maintenance woman so attractive in man’s eyes?

Any man with a bit of common sense would prefer a low maintenance woman than a high maintenance one. However, when it comes to relationship, few men will have many senses left. A high maintenance woman might be hard to please, and she usually is very demanding. But like a sports car, such woman is always quite of funs and more importantly she is a big showing off---that alone is enough to make men flying into fire like a moth being attracted to the light.

My cousin Lin certainly is a low maintenance woman. She earns double incomes (two jobs at the same time), takes care of her 4-year-old daughter on her own, and does all the family chores. In short, she has devoted her body and soul to her family and basically she left no time and space for her own need. However such self-sacrifice does not earn  attentions, love or gratitude which she deserves from her husband. On the contrary, her husband found another woman to spend his money and make him troubles, and claimed that woman as his true love. How irony it could be? And believe me, it is not a unique story.

Perhaps we all should learn something from Blair in To Die For. When she caught her husband kissing her young sister Jenny, no hysteria, no tearful accuses, she just tiptoed away and took a dispensable camera nearby and then snapped a really good picture of this heartbreaking scene. Like she said ---cut her losses---with this picture, she blackmailed her ex-husband to give everything she wanted and finally built herself a satisfying life. Blair is not my favorite character, but she did teach me something very valuable—every woman should know how to protect herself –either in love or in battle. I am not a competitive person. That’s why I admire those who could stand up to fight for her fate. If I had my intuition warning me that something was going wrong, chances are that I would crush it down quite ruthlessly. Call me coward or naïve, if to be an ostrich would make me happy, why not just burying my head in the sands? Therefore I cave in and run away. But it will never be a proper way to handle things. No matter how deep you are in the sands, you always know what’s going on outside and you can’t shake off those nagging thoughts. Finally, one day you will have to face it. 

It doesn’t mean that every woman should be high-maintenance. But we all should know this basic fact: love yourself first, then you are qualified to love the others.