Your observation is absolutely relevant and accurate, because I was thinking about this too.
After I started earning more, I noticed that my girlfriend and I had expanded our needs. We began to live at a higher quality of life, and when there are periods of financial difficulties, it is absolutely impossible to lower this bar of a good standard of living.
It is a big mystery to me: how can you easily start saving again, because the needs that somehow turned out to be new have become absolutely normal today and life without them is no longer imaginable.