Why Is It So Hard To Ask For What We Want?

Because we are trained to caretake for our parent’s emotions

Like a lot of married men, I used to have a problem with Valentine’s Day. Every February would come around and my wife and I would do some kind of a strange dance called “Prove how much you love me.”

Read the full article for free at https://seagertp.substack.com/p/why-is-it-so-hard-to-ask-for-what?sd=pf

The way that dance works, I’m supposed to show her how well I know and care for her by getting her the perfect gift and creating the perfect experience for her entertainment, without asking her outright what would please her, or expecting her to tell me what she wants.

It might sound ridiculous, but it probably also sounds familiar.

After about ten years of miserable failures on my part, we dispensed with the notion of testing my meager powers of romantic telepathy, and changed the pattern of heightened, Hallmark-driven expectations followed by disappointment to something more realistic.

I said, “Honey, please just tell me what you’d like for Valentine’s Day.”

“But if I do,” she said, “Then it won’t count.”

Her point was well taken. Since Valentine’s Day is a relationship exam for Men, if the Woman just tells her Man the right answer before the test, then that’s like cheating and he shouldn’t…