Ask For It

The idea of asking for something I want feels alien to me. I suspect this is because, as a kid, asking my parents for something was often a waste of time. I’ll never forget how my brother and I once confronted my dad about how cold the house was at night. My father was turning the heat down when he went to bed, to save on the bills.

“You’re cold?” my father said. “Too bad. Heat costs money. I’m not cold!”

Mind you, he had a huge down-filled duvet.

“Well, can we have some better blankets?” I asked. “The ones we have suck.”

“Buy your own,” my father said, laughing in my face. He laughed like I was stupid for even asking him.

Confronted by that year after year, I quickly learned asking for anything was pointless.

Of course, not everyone is as insane as my parents. So now it’s a lesson I’m trying to unlearn: if I want something, I should ask for it.

I work for the government. My office chair broke. I could sit on it, but it wobbled and was on the brink of collapse. I turned to my much more experienced coworker – she has about a year until she retires.

“How do I get a new office chair?” I asked.

“You don’t,” she said. “You steal an existing office chair from someplace else.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” she answered. “I’ve never seen anyone ever get a new chair any other way.”

I mulled this over. “You know what? I’m going to ask our manager for a new chair. Do you want one too?”

“Sure, I guess. But don’t get your hopes up.”

A week later, we had new chairs. All I had to do was ask – and fill out a form. (You can’t do anything in government without a form.)

My coworker was stunned – new chairs! How could this be? Were such things possible?

Most of the people who work in our area were equally stunned.

“Oh my god, you have a new chair!” people kept saying. “How did you do that?”

“It’s the most amazing trick,” I answered. “Get out a pen and some paper and I’ll let you in on my secret. Ready? I asked for one.”

I was stunned too. Imagine a world where, if you need something, you can simply ask someone for it, and they give it to you. It seems almost incredible.

(By the way, the reaction of my coworkers led me to suspect that, if you work for the government, you’re prone to pessimism and despair. Clearly we all need to get out more. And cheer up.)

I should mention that not everyone suffers from this “I can’t ask for things!” shyness. Most people seem to be utterly shameless when it comes to laying their demands on people.

“I want a million dollars and a jet!”

“Uh, why should I give you that?”

“BECAUSE I WANT IT, YOU BASTARD!”

Most two year old kids are better at asking for things than I am. I’ve never really mastered the fine art of the temper tantrum.

Anyway.

I am obsessed with Dan Savage. He writes a sex advice column called Savage Love, but I prefer to listen to his podcast, the Savage Lovecast. People phone in and leave messages asking for help with their sex lives. Every week, Dan offers up advice and commentary. One particular class of questions comes up over and over again.

“My husband does this weird thing, and I want him to stop.”

“I want my wife to do this weird thing, and she doesn’t.”

“I want more sex, and I’m not getting it from my lover.”

After a number of these questions, Dan can’t help but get frustrated, and he occasionally yells something like:

“What are you asking me for? Ask them! Ask your partner! Negotiate! You have a right to be happy – fight for your desires! Communicate your needs! Ask for what you want. A relationship takes two people, where both have their needs met. If you’re not asking for what you want, and you’re miserable, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

This should be painfully obvious. Everyone should instinctively know this. If you want something from someone, the best approach is to ask.

“Honey, will you dress up as a cheerleader and spank me with wooden paddle while we listen to the soundtrack from the movie Grease?”

The odds that such a thing could just spontaneously come together, without discussing it, are slim.

So what makes a person suffer in silence, not expressing their needs? Why do we not just ask for what we want?

There’s my parents who are better described as roommates I had as a child.

Another aspect comes from our “spectator culture”. We watch other people on TV doing things, while we always sit outside of the action. When it comes to taking action for ourselves, we choke up. It seems impossible. We’re so used to being invisible, watching, not participating. We’re the audience. We’re never on stage. The reality we are presented with appears to be beyond our control.

The first time I sent out writing to a magazine, hoping to be published, I was shaking with nervousness as I dropped the envelope in the mailbox.

“There are millions of would-be writers out there,” I thought. “Why would anyone want to read my words? Why should anyone listen to me?”

(The answer is, they should listen to me because I am awesome. But I sometimes forget how awesome I am.)

Asking for something makes us vulnerable. Saying, “I want this,” means someone else can say, “Well, you can’t have it!”

One approach for handling rejection is to toughen up. This one person said no to your request. Maybe the next person will say yes. Keep trying.

Or, in the case of a lover saying no to weird sex, you can always negotiate terms.

“Okay, we drop the soundtrack from Grease and keep everything else. Deal?”

The less healthy approach – one that worked for me for years – is to just give up on asking for things.

“Everyone says ‘no’ to what I want. So why should I bother asking for anything? Screw it. I’ll just rely on myself.”

The problem is, if you want to get anything done, you’re going to need to collaborate with others. There are very few situations in life where I can do everything on my own. (Believe me, I’ve counted them.) That means we must ask other people for help, ask for what we need, have a voice, be present in the world, risk rejection.

The printer at work was getting grungy, leaving a black smear down the left margin.

“Oh well,” everyone said. “Guess we’ll just have to grin and bear it. You know how things are around here. No one cares about us.”

Remembering my experience with my office chair, I asked for a new printer. And I got it.

Sure, it’s small potatoes. But it’s a start. Soon, I’ll start asking for bigger stuff – like an army of minions to do my bidding or a Twilight Zone pinball machine.