The Low-Maintenance Lie

What “I Don’t Need Much” Is Costing You

“I feel like I’m complaining if I ask for that,” my client said recently.

Her significant other travels for work, and when he’s gone, she doesn’t hear from him much. Ideally, she would like a little more checking in. Nothing excessive, just some small signal that she’s on his mind.

A need that’s completely valid and worthy of being spoken out loud.

But in her mind, asking for that made her “needy.” And needy meant weak and unlovable.

So she’d been swallowing it. Telling herself she was “fine.” Meanwhile, distance and resentment were already creeping in, only six months into the relationship.

“I’m a super easygoing person,” she said. “I don’t really need much in a relationship.”

Bullshit.

No one is that easy. And no one is low-needs. When it comes to relationships, it’s normal to have needs for connection, comfort, and reassurance. There isn’t a single person out there who doesn’t. But there are many people out there who learned early in life that needing less is safer than asking for more.

Maybe you can relate.

Maybe you pride yourself on your independence. Maybe that independence has turned into hyper-independence because you don’t like relying on anyone. You see it as being a burden, and you’d rather just do it yourself.

Yet that’s really fear of vulnerability in disguise.

It’s the fear that if you ask and don’t get your need met, that will be so much worse than simply not needing it at all.

But suppressing your needs doesn’t really protect you. And it doesn’t make you easier to love.

It just makes you harder to know.

And what isn’t known can’t be met.

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Needs are not weaknesses. They are attachment signals: requests for closeness and care. When you deny them, you don’t become more self-sufficient; you become disconnected. And that disconnection is where resentment flourishes.

This is one of the core themes in The Cost of Quiet: learning how to honor your needs without drowning in guilt, and how to express them without turning them into blame. That is the foundation of secure love with others, and it’s also how you build a sense of secure attachment inside yourself.

You don’t have to choose between being strong and being honest.

You get to be both.

So consider this: what’s one small thing you’ve been swallowing instead of expressing— something that, if spoken clearly and kindly, might actually bring you closer instead of pushing you apart?

Until next week,
Colette XO

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