Ask for It
I hear frequent complaints from people who need help getting what they want. They believe their boss doesn’t appreciate them, feel taken for granted by their spouse, or that friends don’t care about them. They express a victim mentality in their relationships by clinging to patterned responses that keep them frustrated. They always see the other person at fault.
Recently, an outdated habit snuck up on me in a vulnerable state. I was shocked by my behavior and corrected it at once. I didn’t get what I wanted that day. But, I made sure I was poised to get my future desires met.
Reality of Relationships
Relationships are negotiations of needs, whether your boss, spouse, children, or friends. The other party often has needs that are different than yours. That doesn’t make you a victim. But how you respond to negotiation could minimize your chances of getting what you want.
The reality of relationships is that people have different priorities, interests, ideas, and values. No ties give you the right to assume otherwise. Loving someone doesn’t mean you understand the world the same way. Parenting a child doesn’t grant agreement with all your values. Working for a company doesn’t always align with your personal interests.
If you aren’t willing to accept that people you love, care about, or respect will hold different ideas and interests than you, you will find yourself struggling more than necessary. Your relationship engagement will be filled with judgment as a barrier to negotiation.
An incompatibility of interests is natural and normal. It should not make you defensive or hostile toward the other person. Once you judge the other person for their position, interest, or need, your goal becomes to “win.”
Once your goal is to win, you have lost sight of the person. You are only trying to control them. Being inconsiderate breeds conflict.
Losing Connection is a Slippery Slope
A conflict of interest doesn’t have to be a conflict between people. Two parties can address a problem and maintain a connection with one another to come to a resolution. But, when your goal is to win, a battle ensues. The connection between the two parties is lost.
When you lose sight of the other person, you no longer negotiate. You take a relationship for granted or feel superior in some value. You feel more intelligent, dedicated, or higher ranked, which justifies your dominating approach. Some approaches to getting what you want guarantee you will lose connection to the other person and produce conflict even after the resolution.
1) Bullying
2) Begging
3) Manipulating
Bullying
Bullying is the harshest approach to getting what you want. You use threats, shame, or guilt to get the other person to concede to your interests. People who abuse their power use bullying to get their needs met. They force compliance while forfeiting connection.
Bullying people into compliance may get immediate results, but bullied people tend to leave relationships. Children look for trusting relationships outside the home. Employees engage in what is coined as “quiet quitting.” Spouses shut down and emotionally divest in the relationship.
Meanwhile, you may have artificial harmony, which is far from a win. The bullied party exerts passive aggression as retaliation. They give the bare minimum and withhold emotional, physical, or financial resources. You may feel the power to demand what you want, but never feel satisfied in the relationship.
You want connection and respect. Instead, you get compliance and disdain. People never respond to your needs and interest. They only respond to your demands. You don’t know how to get out of the exhausting cycle of exerting your power to meet your slightest needs.
Begging
Playing the victim is just as easy if you cannot wield power. Many people live in survival mode. They always see themselves in need of something. They plead and wait, hoping someone will pity them. They position people as heroes and become disappointed when the role is unmet.
You may have a long-term physical impairment or emotional wounds that set you up for a victim mentality. You have never learned to rise above your limitations. But having limitations doesn’t make you a victim. A lack of personal responsibility makes you a victim.
You whine to get your needs met. You augment your limitations and remind people that you have them. You make little attempt to show growth. However, demanding people to respond to your limits compromises your power.
Manipulating
Manipulating to get your needs met may include bullying or begging. But there are other ways to manipulate. Indirect communication to avoid vulnerability is also used to manipulate the other person into meeting your needs.
Projecting your desires onto the other person is another example of manipulation. Instead of addressing your needs, you pass your needs off to the other person. You might ask, “Aren’t you hungry?” instead of stating that you are hungry and requesting to eat.
You may also attempt to change a person’s behavior in hopes that you will get what you want from them. This is the mistake I made with my husband. Instead of telling him directly that I wanted to spend time with him, I scolded him for watching television all day.
I chalked my poor behavior up to being sick three days prior. Since I was finally feeling better, I wanted my husband’s immediate attention. It seemed obvious to me that he should want mine too.
I assumed he’d spend time with me if I stopped him from watching television. No, it doesn’t work that way! People you love can have competing interests. His interest at the moment was in relaxing in front of the TV. He had no reason to do anything else. He’d been supporting my rest for days. Just because I shifted from a desire to rest to a desire to play didn’t mean he shifted.
Trying to manipulate people to get what you want expresses emotional immaturity, and people usually respond in kind. That’s what my husband did. He scolded me right back. Instead of spending time together, we pouted the rest of the night. I was disappointed with my behavior, yet I felt fortunate that I could recognize and rectify it.
Vulnerability of Requests
Indirect communication is a significant reason people don’t get what they want. Fear of rejection lurks in our minds, and we try to avoid it at all costs. Unfortunately, what we do to prevent rejection can make us feel rejected, isolated, or alone.
Asking for what you want requires vulnerability, authenticity, and transparency. But making our interests and needs known is the highest chance of getting what we want. To the degree that we aren’t willing to ask, we live in survival mode. We are at the whims of those we want to love or care about us.
We can live in a vicious cycle of not getting our needs met. We don’t make our needs or interests known, so they aren’t met. Because our needs aren’t satisfied, we fear rejection even more. The fear of rejection keeps us from making our needs known. The cycle goes on and on.
We must break the cycle of fear. It’s more than ok to make our interests and needs known. It’s necessary for growth and fulfillment. Don’t stifle yourself in survival mode expecting people’s interests to align with yours. That rarely happens. What is more likely is that people are willing to negotiate their interests with yours.
How to Negotiate
You must do a little more than request your needs. You must negotiate them. You don’t mind negotiating once you accept that you are not the center of anyone’s universe, nor should you be. Everyone has their own needs and as much right to pursue them.
Negotiations can go sour quickly if you try to manipulate or dominate. Use these considerations to make sure you remain in negotiation mode.
1) Know what’s at stake
2) Optimize your ask
3) Look for the compromise
Know What’s at Stake
Clarify in your mind what is at stake before you begin a negotiation. Are you seeking something tangible and concrete or something emotional and interpersonal? It is best to minimize emotions in concrete negotiations and keep tangibles out of emotional negotiations.
Concrete interests can be measured or seen. The house you want, a raise, days off work, dishes washed, or a child to meet curfew are examples of concrete interests. There is clarity on whether the need is met.
You want a house that’s in a particular school district. You want a $3,000 raise. You want your child to have 8 hours of sleep. These needs are straightforward, making them easier to negotiate, especially if your rationale for the negotiation is also concrete.
Emotional interests are more ambiguous and can quickly become hostile in negotiations. Emotions feel personal and are often attached to pre-existing fears that manifest as needs. The needs are expressed while the fears are denied.
Discriminating Needs
The need to feel important, loved, valued, heard, cared for, or seen are emotional interests. They are all reasonable, but how those needs get met is ambiguous. The ambiguity often stems from the denial of the fears. People greatly disagree about how or when emotional needs are met.
Knowing if you are negotiating an emotional or concrete need should influence your approach. You can determine if you are negotiating for comfort, control, or safety.
You want to negotiate harder for safety than for comfort. If you negotiate the same for all your needs, you are either in it to win all the time or you lose too much.
Optimize Your Asks
Make your requests count. If you constantly get rejections, you shouldn’t make conclusions about other people. Instead, look at your negotiation style. You have a better chance of getting your needs met when you 1) ask someone who has the capacity, 2) ask at a convenient time 3) have something to offer in return.
Again, I remind you that people you love and respect have competing interests. They will usually choose their own needs over yours unless motivated to do otherwise. Before targeting someone to meet your needs, make sure they have the capacity to do so. For example, when layoffs occur at your job, asking for a raise may be unrealistic, no matter how much you deserve.
In my example with my husband, he wanted to spend time with me, but not in the middle of a good movie. I should have waited and been forthright with my request. Be considerate of what you are asking for and when you are asking. Don’t assume someone is able or willing to meet your needs based on their role in your life.
When you do ask someone to compromise their needs for yours, make it easy for them. Why would someone interrupt their leisure time to pay attention to someone who just criticized them? If I had invited my husband to go out, he would have been more receptive.
Look for the Win-Win
Try to create a win-win situation with your requests. Don’t make a habit of asking people to sacrifice for you. While relationships are rarely 50/50, you shouldn’t be the one always on the receiving or requesting end.
Sometimes the payback is as simple as a heartfelt thank you and appreciation. That may be all a child needs to comply with chores. Instead, many parents tell their children how grateful they should be that they have a roof over their heads. That’s bullying, not negotiating.
If you want your partner to be more responsive to your emotional needs, have a conversation about their emotional needs. Request emotional responses about their needs instead of yours.
“Let’s give each other back rubs tonight” is better than a demand for a back rub. Don’t assume your partner owes you a back rub because you cooked and cleaned the house.
A person should feel like you are equally invested in their interests. Your boss may want you to notice or care about their pressure to perform. Your spouse may want to be acknowledged for their contribution to the relationship. Your friends may want to feel challenged in the relationship. Understand the needs of the person you want to negotiate with before you negotiate so you can create a win-win.
Responding to Rejecting
Sometimes, no matter how good your negotiations are, the answer is no. The raise is denied, the chores are undone, or the time is not granted. You lost the negotiation. The sense of rejection is triggered, and you feel unseen, unheard, or unappreciated. How you respond to those feelings matters most in your ability to win your next negotiation.
Your response to the feeling, not the rejection, is essential to acknowledge. You are responding to your internal sense, not the reality of the response. Denying your raise isn’t a rejection of you or an unappreciation for your work, no matter how much you feel it is. Your child not doing chores is not a sign of disrespect, even though you feel disrespected.
Your feelings are not facts. If you want to check them out as fact, you should do so. You can ask your boss if he appreciates your work and your child if they respect you. Then, you must accept their reply and own your feelings as your reaction. Your emotional reaction is connected to all your life experiences up to this point, not just this single negotiation.
You must process your reaction to avoid creating an emotional deficit in the relationship that will impact future negotiations. If you do any of the following, future negotiations will be negatively impacted.
1) Withholding — showing your power based on the response
2) Internalizing — determining your value based on the response
3) Re-approaching — ignoring the response
Negative Responses to Rejection
Feeling rejected can make you feel powerless. You naturally respond by compensating. You may attempt to regain power by withholding resources. You punish the person who seemed to take away your power by rejecting you.
For example, you slow down your work efforts so that your boss is less likely to meet their goals. You withhold physical affection from your spouse. You make your child walk to school instead of driving them.
You aren’t trying to teach them a lesson. You are trying to level up your power. You are letting them know that you will not take losing lightly. But, you were not negotiating power. Or at least you shouldn’t have been. So, retaliating with power is inappropriate. Power never needs to be negotiated.
The second response error is internalizing rejection. Some people respond to rejection by beating up on themselves. They make fewer and fewer requests over time, feeling unworthy of consideration. When you feel unworthy, you take fewer risks. When you silence yourself in a relationship, your presence may not be felt, and people may assume you don’t want to be there.
The boss may overlook you for the next promotion because you stopped giving input. Your child may perceive you as selfish because you stop paying attention. Your spouse may spend less time with you and more at work or hanging out with friends since you are accommodating. Being passive rarely gets your needs met.
The third response error is when you ignore the response and repeat the ask over and over. You may change tactics but put forth the same request. Your request comes off as nagging, stubborn, or uncooperative. When you make a different request, the other party ignores it out of habituation. Habituation is the natural tendency to stop responding to repetitive input.
You may develop a stagnant relationship that centers around the unmet need. Your interaction with the person who rejects your needs could become conflict-ridden. The person who rejects and the one who is rejected may both feel inadequate, unappreciated, and unheard. Connection with one another becomes a challenge when that happens.
Releasing Rejection
No one likes rejection, but it is a part of life. We receive small and big ones throughout our adult lives. The boss that denies the raise, the spouse that directs their attention to something other than you, or the child who disobeys isn’t necessarily reacting to you. They are responding to their needs.
You will be better off finding out their needs before internalizing or reacting negatively to the rejection. It is better to connect, then correct. Once you connect, your response will have a greater impact.
Rejection is a response to a request, nothing more. It is a statement of interest or ability on the other person’s part. When you are rejected, separate the rejection from the parties involved. Either the person has a competing interest, or they can’t fulfill your request.
Rejection must not be interpreted as a statement of care or appreciation. If you make a request to prove how someone feels about you, then that deserves a deeper and more direct conversation.
Upon rejection, position yourself for your next ask rather than withdraw or retaliate. Keep the relationship open for fair future negotiations. You will get your interests validated, and your needs met sometimes, but not always.
We negotiate our needs daily. When we are comfortable rejecting requests, we become more comfortable accepting rejection. We will struggle with rejection to the degree that we allow ourselves to be uncomfortable to accommodate everyone’s needs. Having solid boundaries will allow you to accept both sides of rejection.
