What Happens When You Finally Stop Asking for What You Need

You asked for a long time. You asked in different ways, direct ways, indirect ways, hoping someone would understand what you were really asking for. The asking took energy. The asking took vulnerability. The asking took hope that maybe this time someone would give you what you needed. Then one day the asking just stopped.

The stopping doesn’t happen because you got what you needed. The stopping happens because you gave up on getting what you needed. The stopping is surrender. The stopping is acceptance that the asking isn’t working and it’s never going to work so there’s no point in continuing to ask. The stopping is the moment you realize that you have been asking the wrong people, asking for the wrong things, asking with false hope that something would change.

What’s strange about the stopping is that there’s a relief to it. The relief of not asking anymore. The relief of giving up hope. The relief of accepting that you are not going to get this need met by this person or from this relationship or in this situation. The relief comes from the end of effort. The relief comes from surrender.

The people around you might not notice that you have stopped asking. They might just think you have become more independent or more self-sufficient. They don’t realize that the stopping isn’t strength, it’s resignation. They don’t know that you have accepted that they are not going to meet you halfway. They don’t see the moment where you decided that asking was pointless and stopped.

What happens after you stop asking is that the relationship changes shape. It becomes what it actually is without the hope that it could be different. It becomes the thing that it is without the energy of your asking trying to make it into something else. The relationship settles into its actual form which might be less than you wanted but at least it’s honest.

The stopping of asking also means you stop feeling disappointed when your needs don’t get met. You can’t be disappointed by something you have stopped hoping for. You can’t be let down by people when you have stopped believing they would come through. The stopping of asking is also the stopping of heartbreak about this particular need not being met.

Inside you might still want what you stopped asking for. The need might not have gone away just because you stopped expressing it. The need might be smaller now that you have given up on it being met but the need is probably still there. The difference is that you are not waiting for someone else to meet it anymore. You have accepted that you are on your own with this particular need and somehow that’s easier than continuing to ask.

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