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Asking for Gifts We Really Need from Those We Really Love

By Bob Minor
Minor Details

When we find ourselves caught up in the gift-giving season, no matter how religiously or unreligiously we frame "the holidays" - Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Days Off - we are the children of our past. Whether these holidays are happy remembrances or depressive or painful ones that we'd prefer to forget, we're affected by our childhood experiences.

When we were very, very young, the adults around us defined the season and we were the recipients of gifts more than givers. We were too young to be expected to give much.

It was fun to get things from people who loved us. We could ask for things, assuming that it was okay to request exactly what we wanted from the people around us. We didn't always get our heart's desires, but it just seemed to be okay to ask for what we really cared about.

We soon began to learn a couple of lessons along the way to growing up. First, it grew clearer that often we wouldn't get what we asked for. We weren't in control of what others would, or could, give us. There might have been good reasons for this. We could have been asking for something that was too expensive for the giver's budget or that the giver felt would be harmful.

The second message affected us more subtly. We learned not to ask for the things we really wanted at all. At times, those around would turn good or bad reasons for saying no into criticism of us for asking so openly. It was as if we didn't have the right to ask for what we really wanted anymore. It would be selfish to ask so directly. So, we learned to try to figure out what we could ask for, what was permissible, what wouldn't get us into trouble or criticism, and what would keep the adults happy with us.

The messages were clear. You won't get what you ask for. If you ask for what you really want, you'll be ridiculed or rejected by those around you who also had learned that they couldn't come right out and ask for anything they really wanted. You'll be considered selfish, too assertive, too egoistic. After all, who do you think you are?

As adults, we took these messages into our relationships, including our most intimate ones. Sometimes in our friendships, but more often in our most significant relationships, we continued to act on a lesson that hinders real intimacy and closeness. When we partnered up with another, we came to believe that if we asked for what we really wanted from our partner, we'd anger, alienate, or even lose them.

So, we learned to pre-negotiate in our minds. We tried to figure out what we could request that would work, would keep this relationship running smoothly, or wouldn't threaten a break-up. We lost opportunities to tell the person we loved exactly what we wanted in life, how we dreamed our lives would be, what our real passions were, and how we'd like our partners to fit into the dreams and plans that deeply moved us.

In the process our loved ones couldn't know what we were really about. They were denied the opportunity to be intimate with our dreams, passions, goals, desires, hopes, and needs. In order to protect or preserve our closest relationships, we didn't communicate what was really close to us.

Instead of stating fully, clearly, unashamedly how we wanted our lives and our relationships, and how we wanted our loved ones to fit into them, we pre-negotiated in our minds. Instead of allowing them to negotiate with what we really wanted, we moved from the hard work of such intimacy to settling for the best we could get.

A healthy relationship is one where partners can state exactly what they want and how they want things to be. Then the negotiation begins. The process of negotiation, figuring out together how things can be, and compromising openly, is a work of closeness, a desire in love to work things out. Then, the compromise each partner must make is freely chosen and in the open. Any further resentment for having to compromise is the issue of the resenter, not the one who stated their needs clearly.

Not communicating to our partners what we really want hurts personal closeness, breeds resentment, and doesn't allow our partner to really know us. A relationship based on such pre-negotiation is not an intimate one.

When we do decide to ask for what we really want, great fears and important questions arise. If I tell my partner my real wants, needs, and ideas, will that end the relationship? If it does, was the relationship one that was good for either one of us? Is the relationship more important to me than living my passions? Is the fact that I can't speak openly without pre-negotiation a sign that this is an unsatisfactory relationship? Is the response that there is no room for negotiation a sign that I can no longer grow in this relationship? Do I want to be in a relationship where I cannot speak openly about what I want?

These are important, difficult, and real questions. Not facing them keeps us from our own growth, from facing our own fears, and from providing a basis for the growth of our relationships.

Asking for what we want is neither selfish nor fatal. It's letting people know who we are. It's also the beginning of real negotiation and compromise from a position of understanding and openness.

Author Sam Keene says there are two questions each one of us asks in life: Where am I going? and Who will go with me? The problem, he adds, is that we tend to ask the second question before we answer the first.

An intimate relationship is built on knowing where we want to go, making that clear, and finding along that path someone who will walk there with us. It's based on being able to communicate what we want, and what we need from those who will walk with us. And it's based on real, open compromise, if both parties are emotionally able to do that.
Robert N. Minor's newest book is Gay and Healthy in a Sick Society (HumanityWorks!, 2003). His 2001 book Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human, was a finalist for both a Lambda Literary and the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas and can be reached through www.fairnessproject.org .
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