What are you allowing yourself to ask for?

There are things we want and there are things we allow ourselves to want. And those aren’t always the same.

By Jana Denker

We all learn invisible rules. Gender, culture, family. What's acceptable to want and what's not.

Long before we negotiate a salary, tell someone we need more help, ask for an afternoon alone or say I want more from this relationship, we’ve absorbed thousands of small messages about what kind of wanting is acceptable.

You have learned it in your family, seen it in the media, read in books.

From the places where we as women learned what it took to belong and to be loved. Most of these rules don’t announce themselves as rules.

Nobody has to sit you down and say: A good woman shouldn’t care too much about money, or take up too much space.

You notice who gets called ambitious and who gets called greedy. Who is praised for being easy to work with. Who keeps the family running without apparently needing anything herself. Who is admired for being independent.

Eventually some of these ideas can become so familiar that they stop feeling like ideas at all. They start feeling like you. And that changes what you allow yourself to ask for.

Money

Perhaps you are perfectly comfortable earning well.

But asking for more is different.

“This is my fee”. “This is what my work is worth.”

Now you’re not simply receiving money somebody has decided to give you. You’re naming your own value and asking another person to meet it.

And women don’t make that ask in a cultural vacuum. Research on gender and negotiation has found that context and anticipated social consequences matter; women’s reluctance to negotiate cannot simply be explained as an individual confidence deficit.

The invisible rule might sound something like:

I can be successful. I just shouldn’t appear too interested in money.

Help

Then there is asking for help. Something I have been struggling with myself a lot. I would rather have bitten my tongue than saying: “I need you to take this. Can you help me?”

Not because I am incapable of doing it yourself. Perhaps that’s precisely the problem. You can do it yourself and have been doing it yourself. For years now.

Competence is a wonderful thing until it becomes an identity you have to keep proving.

"I have it handled."

Asking for help can collide with the version of yourself you’ve been rewarded for being.

Space

We tell women to make time for themselves all the time. Self-care is practically an industry. But there is a version of taking time for yourself that asks almost nothing of anyone else. Get up earlier. Squeeze in the yoga class. Take the rose petal bath after everybody has gone to bed.

And then there is:

"I need Saturday for myself."

"I won’t be available."

Now your time isn’t what remains after everybody else’s needs have been accommodated. You’re claiming some of it before it’s gone.

The invisible rule here might be very old:

Other people’s needs are reasons. Mine require justification.

Ambition

“I want the role.”

“Put my name forward.”

There is a difference between being successful and allowing yourself to be seen wanting success. The first can still happen while you are being modest, diligent, patient and excellent. The second requires you to declare yourself.

And that can rub against all kinds of ideas about what an ambitious woman looks like and how much ambition is attractive or acceptable.

Sometimes we would much rather be chosen than ask to be considered.

Intimacy

And then:

“I want more time with you. More affection.”

"I want more from this relationship."

Here the invisible rule may have nothing to do with being a “good woman.” It may be much more personal. "Don’t be needy and ask for much."

"Wait and see what they offer."

So you hint, create an opening and hope hope the other person walks through it. And this makes a lot of sense. Because being wanted is safer than saying clearly what you want. This can feel exposing, very vulnerable.

The rules underneath the words

Money. Help. Space. Ambition. Intimacy.

On the surface, they require completely different conversations.

Underneath, I think they invite the same question:

What am I allowing myself to ask for?

Not theoretically. Most of us can say that women should ask for equal pay, help at home, time to themselves, opportunities and the kind of relationships they want.

But what happens when you have to make the ask. What do you minimise before you’ve even said it?

Where do you hint instead of ask? What feels selfish, greedy, needy, difficult or simply too much?

And what happens in your body when you say it.

Or even just imagine saying it?

Tense jaw, a pull back, a slight sense of "Rather not."

That’s often where the invisible rules become visible. And where I start working with women.

And then, finally, we can talk about words.

Because sometimes you do need help finding the right ones. How to ask clearly, no fluff and five reasons instead of one that really lands.

But often, you already have a perfectly good sentence.

The deeper work is allowing yourself to say it.