Welcome to part 7 of the series How To Get Your Relationship Back On Track.
In this episode, we explore making requests in your relationship in a way that increases your influence and leaves you feeling better about yourself. Generating feelings of calm and openness before asking for help will serve you better than asking from a place of hurt, frustration, or resentment, which only leads to more disappointment. When we make requests without demanding we are showing up in a powerful way.
If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women.
Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com
Welcome to part 7 of the series How To Get Your Relationship Back On Track.
In this episode, we explore making requests in your relationship in a way that increases your influence and leaves you feeling better about yourself. Generating feelings of calm and openness before asking for help will serve you better than asking from a place of hurt, frustration, or resentment, which only leads to more disappointment. When we make requests without demanding we are showing up in a powerful way.
If you are ready to become the woman God says you already are, you have to join me in Clarity+Courage, my cost-effective coaching group for Christian women.
Learn more and enroll at www.myhappyvault.com/clarityandcourage
Questions? Email Jill directly at Jill@thehappiestlives.com
You're listening to the Happiest Lives podcast with Jill Lillard, episode number 46. Welcome to the Happiest Lives podcast, where you'll learn to think better, feel better and become the woman God says you already are. Here's your hoax, jill Lillard hey, hey, hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today we're gonna talk about making requests without demanding, and so we have been Focusing on our relationships, how to get your relationship back on track, and we started with episode number 40, creating a healing separation, which is so foundational to being able to do all the other parts of this, to be able to see you and your partner as two separate people that God has given you each free will, different brains, different feelings, different desires and preferences. And when we can honor that, when we are able to find Appreciation for our different perspectives, then we are able to come together and find ways to love and honor Each other. And so, really, when we create that healing separation, we are creating space for deeper intimacy and connection. So if you have not been following the series, you can start at the beginning, on episode 40, where we talk about creating that healing separation, and then, in the next episode, we get into regulating your emotions, which is also very foundational to being able to have conversations and connect. If you don't know what you're feeling, then your emotions Maybe running the show. We would follow that with making deposits in your love bank, nurturing the positive sentiments and good feelings so that you have a good base to withdraw from when you are dealing with conflict. So it's so important to be able to nurture and make those deposits in your love bank. We then followed that Talking about conflict, and in every conflict there is a hidden dream and if you can find the dream, you can connect in a deeper way and then you are ready to move into Solving conflict and maybe solving is not the right word because maybe some problems don't need to be fixed, but you can find a way to honor each of your hidden dreams and A way that feels that you really care about the other person, that you really value who they are and what it is that they want, and you value yourself. You're not doing it at your own expense, but when you do this, you can find compromises that you both own the compromise.
Speaker 1:The next week we talked about being a better listener in A conversation. If you do not feel like the other person hears you or understand you, you may not listen very well. The problem we have is, if both people show up and they are not feeling understood, they don't feel like the other person is listening to them Then we're both fighting to be understood and nobody is listening. And so sometimes we have to step up and listen, slow down the process, realizing we will get our chance to be the Sharrer and that the other person gets to listen to us. The next week we talked about sharing honestly. That was last week's podcast and really I feel like today just piggybacks on that. You're gonna show up authentically in the relationship. Then you need to know what it is that you want, what it is that you desire, and you want to show up authentically in the relationship, sharing your thoughts, your feelings, your desires and wants, and Be part of of the conversation. And so, as we piggyback on that, we want to talk about making requests.
Speaker 1:And so when you make requests, there are some different options of how you do that. I mean number one you can just not make any request in the relationship. You may just not ever ask for anything. You can kind of just show up, accommodate the other person, let them lead, and never really ask for them to help meet your needs. That is an option. Another option is that you can make requests in a way that's demanding, where you feel entitled to expect the other person to show up, believing if I don't fight to get my request met, then there are never going to be mad, and so there is a sense of maybe even tension in your asking. And then the third option is to make requests in a way that is not demanding, and of course that is what I am advocating for today. But as you look at that option, you want to consider what those alternatives are.
Speaker 1:So the problem I see in some relationships I have had women who tend to maybe be more demanding and maybe forthright in what it is that they're asking for. Maybe they have asked before in their relationship for certain things and their partner has not delivered. They have not wanted those same things. Or maybe their partner has just tried to comply, or maybe they haven't followed through. And so you may have a woman, a wife, who is feeling hurt and disappointed and discouraged, and yet she may still continue to ask for what it is that she desires, but those requests are coming from a place of hurt and disappointment. They are actually thinking the worst of the other person, and so we know that is usually not effective in creating deep, authentic connection, and it's not really effective in, if you want, to have more influence on the other person. On the other end of this, we may have the woman who does not know exactly what it is that she needs or wants, but she is constantly pleasing other people, like she's making her decisions based on what others around her want.
Speaker 1:And I am thinking of a couple in particular who I worked with. Sarah and Mark is what we will call them. On the outside, their relationship looked very content, but underneath there was just this growing disconnection. So Sarah was a very selfless person, and she was always prioritizing others. In that process, though, she really lost touch with her own needs. Or maybe she never knew what her own needs were. Maybe just this desire, the need to please others and gain their approval, maybe that was the primary need, but she did have unspoken desires, and that was creating some tension, leading her husband really longing for a deeper, more intimate connection with her. So, initiating a conversation, mark discovered that Sarah really struggled to identify what it was that she wanted, and so together they were able to come together deep in understanding and unravel layers of unspoken desires. So, through patience and passion, they were able to rebuild that connection, learning that acknowledging and expressing your needs is really vital for a thriving relationship.
Speaker 1:So you may be in a relationship where you are demanding things from your partner or you're really fighting to get your way and they may comply, but if they don't feel connected to you, is that, is that really what you want? Do you want someone resenting you or do you want someone always resisting you? Even feeling like that, you do carry a lot of demands now sometimes, I mean, I would say those who are maybe demanding in their relationship may not see themselves as a powerful person. Maybe they're demanding because they actually feel powerless and their the partner may see them very differently than they see themselves, and I I think that is the case so much of the time where one partner feels powerless but the other partner would say they felt the same way. They would feel like maybe the other person was overbearing or that the other person was controlling the relationship through their Assivity in in the engagement.
Speaker 1:So, as you consider your alternatives one of not asking Just know the the gain from this. If we don't ask for what we want, maybe the benefit would be that we don't have to be disappointed, right, if we don't request? If we don't ask, then we're not setting ourselves up for rejection or our disappointment. But the risk is the disconnection of not really actually feeling connected and not getting your, your needs met. And so the other alternative to request with a spirit of entitlement, request by making demands that has a Risk as well the. The risk that we take with that is also Disconnection. If we are attaching love to somebody's actions if you love me, then you will do this Then we are putting we are really Making someone's actions loaded with a lot of meaning they that may not actually be there.
Speaker 1:What I hear from those who are more demanding in their relationship is that if they Stop asking for what they want, if they stop demanding that from the relationship, they're never gonna get it. And so they feel like they have to keep Putting the, the pressure or the you know, making those demands from from their partner, even though that has not even been effective. And so you can look like well, do you want to just keep continuing what it is you're doing? Is it effective? Is it working? And it's. It's usually not not working, even if the other person is complying. It is not creating the connection that, ultimately, that you are Desiring, and so being able to ask for what you want without attaching it to Love or happiness. You know, not making the other person's compliance equal, love or happiness is going to free you To be able to just ask in a way that's more neutral, feeling more neutral whether they say yes or they say no, whether they agree or follow through or don't follow through. Being able to make the request from a more neutral place, a more just, logical place, can make it less of a you know, more of a non Event. So there's not so much wrapped up in that.
Speaker 1:And so how do we ask without demanding? I think number one is just recognizing that the other person can't say no, and that is actually changing the result that we're going for. So we talk about inside my coaching groups, we talk about knowing what it is that you want to achieve, the outcome you're trying to create when you have a conversation. What is the results you're trying to get by having the conversation? If you're putting the other person in that result line that they respond in a certain way, then you're going to be very disappointed in that conversation. Now they may respond in the way you would like and they may not respond in the way that you would like, but if you change your result to how you're going to show up, if you maybe just make the result that I'm going to make a request without demanding, then you can achieve that result and it doesn't matter if they respond in the way that you would like them to respond or not. You can at least know that you're showing up authentically in the relationship and that you are asking for what it is that you need and you want.
Speaker 1:And the second tip that I would give you is to consider the emotion from which your request is coming from. Is it coming from a place of hurt, frustration? Are you thinking the worst of the other person when you are making the request? Are you feeling resentful? Because that energy is going to come through in your interaction. It's going to come through in the way that you ask. And if that's where your emotion is, that's okay, that's genuinely where you are. But I would say, let's start there. Let's do the work on processing through some of that hurt that you are experiencing. I don't want to dismiss the hurt, the pain that you're experiencing in your relationship, but if we just slow it down a little bit, then we can do that underlying emotional work, we can consider the results that we've been trying to create and the results that we would like to create, so that we can really change the way that we're having conversations and the way that we're making a request, the way that we're handling our own desires and wants.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, it's not another person's job to make you happy. That's your job, and other people aren't going to meet the deepest longings of your heart. The Lord is the only one who can meet that. Now God has given us relationships with other people and I think he wants us to engage with them. He does want us to turn toward that we are interdependent upon one another, that we work together, but that's part of the growth, that is part of the work that we do in terms of trying to figure that out. How do we love imperfect people and how are we interdependent with others without being codependent on them? How do we invite people to turn toward us? How do we invite people to be part of our life? And how do we turn toward others without being codependent? And then, how do we not go to the other extreme of just being very independent, where we cut others out. So that is all the work that we do in relationships, and it's important work, and so don't be frustrated with the process. Don't be frustrated what a relationship requires of you, because it is a wonderful place that we can experience more of God's love and grace, that we can learn more about him, and that gratitude and that feeling of abundance that we receive in our relationship with the Lord can help us to love others more abundantly as well.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to close this with sharing an example of something that I've been doing to be able to make requests without demanding, and a lot of it has to do with housework, dishes, cooking meals, all of that stuff that I seem to take ownership for in our house, and I have learned that getting frustrated or expecting other people to see everything that needs to be done the way that I see that it needs to be done, or for them to desire to have a certain result or way our house looks, it's not always going to match up with the way I see it, and so I have just learned to say who better than me to manage this aspect of our home, and I have learned to make request to say if we're leaving the house, when normally I might think, okay, I'm going to straighten things up a little bit before we leave, if it's feeling really cluttery, because I don't want to come home to a messy house, and so, rather than me picking up 20 things, I could say, hey, everyone, can everyone pick up five things before we leave. That might be a cup that needs to go in the dishwasher, or folding a blanket that's piled on the floor, or are putting your shoes in a bin, I don't care what it is. But if each person can put away five things, that is going to be 20 less things that I had to do and it really is pretty effortless. I can just make a request in a non demanding way from a place that is just kind of logical, happy, open, and it can be extremely effective. Where it just becomes a non event, everyone typically at my house everyone pops in, does it and we get out the door. Now, you may not have that experience at first. When you try this and this is where I say maybe the result is you are just learning how to make more requests in a non demanding way and learning how to shift the energy from what you're where you're making your request. That might be the results you're going for and you want to just see how do people respond to that and give it some time, but just start changing the way that you're showing up.
Speaker 1:Another thing is after dinner time. I would love it, I would love it if people just hopped in and initiated and sometimes they do. But oftentimes I have to ask okay, who's going to run the dishes, who wants to vacuum the floor, who wants to wipe off the counters? Or if I'm meal propping in the kitchen, sometimes I have to yell at someone hey, can someone come in here and help me chop some vegetables? And I do find that my family is pretty responsive in that. But I do think it makes such a difference if I'm asking from a place of hurt, frustration, resentment, fear of being disappointed. I honestly don't feel like that would go as well, because even if they did help, I'm not going to feel very good about that.
Speaker 1:So just a little thing that you might want to try this week if you need more help around the house. Just kind of asking in a matter of fact way, but really looking at what it is that you are thinking about the tour that needs to be done, what you're thinking about the other people in relationship to the tour, how you're feeling about them. You really have to do that work first to be able to just kind of throw those requests out there in a way that is non-demanding. So I hope you guys found the podcast helpful today. Next week we are going to talk about establishing rituals of connection in your relationship. I hope you guys join me then. Have a great week.