You're Not Asking for Too Much — You're Just Asking the Wrong People
"You're asking for too much."
Maybe someone said it to you directly. Or maybe you just felt it—that sinking sensation when you expressed a need and saw the resistance in their eyes. The subtle shift in energy that told you: You're being difficult. You're high-maintenance. You're too demanding.
So you did what you've been taught to do: you made yourself smaller. You minimized what you needed. You convinced yourself that maybe they were right—maybe you were asking for too much.
Here's what I need you to hear: You're not asking for too much. You're asking people who can't (or won't) meet you where you are.
And there's a massive difference between those two things.
Why Black Women Learn to Minimize Their Needs
Let's start with the hard truth: Black women are taught from a young age that our needs are secondary.
Not explicitly. Nobody sits you down and says, "Your desires don't matter." But you learn it anyway—through a thousand small moments that teach you to be the strong one, the giver, the person who handles everything without complaint.
You learned it from:
Watching your mother take care of everyone while neglecting herself
Being praised for how much you could carry without breaking
Hearing that "strong Black women don't need anyone"
Seeing what happened to women who dared to ask for more
Being called "difficult" or "angry" when you expressed disappointment
Realizing that the people you loved couldn't always hold space for your pain
So you adapted. You became skilled at reading the room and adjusting yourself accordingly. You learned to ask for less than you needed, to make yourself easier to love, to shrink your expectations until they fit into whatever space someone was willing to give you.
And somewhere along the way, you started believing that your needs were the problem—not the people who couldn't meet them.
The Three Ways You Abandon Yourself
When you've been taught that asking for what you need is "too much," you develop strategies to protect yourself from the pain of rejection. But these strategies don't actually protect you—they just teach you to abandon yourself first so others don't have to.
1. You Over-Explain Everything
You can't just ask for what you need. You have to justify it, explain it, provide evidence for why your request is reasonable.
"I know you're tired, but I've had a really hard week too, and I was just thinking that maybe if you're not too busy, we could spend some time together? But only if you want to. I don't want to pressure you or anything."
You turn a simple request ("I'd like to spend time with you") into a negotiation where you're already prepared to lose.
The cost? Your needs become burdensome before you even finish asking. And the subtext you're really communicating is: I don't actually believe I deserve what I'm asking for.
2. You Accept Crumbs and Call It a Meal
They text you back three days later with "sorry, been busy." They cancel plans last minute—again. They show up for you only when it's convenient for them. They can't remember the thing that mattered to you.
And instead of acknowledging that you deserve more, you tell yourself: "At least they're here. At least it's something. I should be grateful."
The cost? You train people that you'll accept the bare minimum. And you train yourself that wanting reciprocity, consistency, or effort makes you "needy."
3. You Stay Silent to Keep the Peace
You notice the pattern. You feel the resentment building. You know something needs to change.
But instead of saying something, you stay quiet—because speaking up might make you seem ungrateful, demanding, or difficult. Because you've already asked before and nothing changed. Because you're afraid of what it means if you express your needs and they still don't meet them.
The cost? You become a stranger to yourself. You build a relationship where you're constantly performing rather than being. And the distance between who you are and who you're pretending to be grows until you don't recognize yourself anymore.
The Real Cost of Emotional Self-Abandonment
Here's what nobody tells you: The price of making yourself small is always higher than the price of taking up space.
When you abandon your needs to make yourself easier to love, you don't actually become easier to love—you just become harder to know.
You think you're protecting the relationship by not asking for too much. But what you're actually doing is:
Building resentment that will eventually poison the connection
Creating a dynamic where you're constantly managing someone else's capacity instead of showing up authentically
Teaching them that your needs don't matter—and then resenting them for believing you
Staying in relationships that drain you because you've convinced yourself that your standards are "unrealistic"
And worst of all? You're proving to yourself that you're not worth fighting for.
Every time you shrink yourself, you reinforce the belief that you have to earn love by being low-maintenance. Every time you accept less than you deserve, you teach yourself that your needs are a burden. Every time you stay silent, you practice the art of disappearing.
You're Not Asking for Too Much
Let's be crystal clear about what you're actually asking for:
Consistency (not perfection)
Reciprocity (not scorekeeping)
Emotional presence (not mind-reading)
Respect for your time and boundaries (not control)
To be chosen, not tolerated (not worshipped)
To feel safe being yourself (not performed for)
None of this is too much. It's the foundation of a healthy relationship.
If someone tells you that wanting these things makes you high-maintenance, what they're really saying is: I don't want to do the work that real intimacy requires.
And that's information. Painful information, but valuable information.
Because here's the truth: The right people won't make you feel like your needs are a burden.
They won't sigh heavily when you ask for reassurance. They won't make you justify why you deserve basic respect. They won't treat your standards like unreasonable demands.
The right people will meet your needs—or they'll be honest that they can't and let you choose what to do with that information.
How to Start Asking Without Over-Explaining
If you're ready to stop abandoning yourself in relationships, here's where to start:
1. Notice When You're Softening Your Request
Pay attention to the moments when you're about to ask for something and your brain immediately starts preparing the justification.
Before you launch into the explanation of why your need is reasonable, pause. Take a breath.
Then practice asking directly:
"I need reassurance when I'm feeling anxious about us."
"I'd like you to check in with me when plans change."
"I want to feel prioritized, not like an afterthought."
No preamble. No apology. Just the truth of what you need.
2. Stop Negotiating Before You've Even Asked
If your first instinct is to make your request smaller before you say it out loud, that's a sign you're already abandoning yourself.
Instead of thinking, "What's the smallest version of this need that they might be able to meet?" ask yourself: "What do I actually want?"
Start from honesty, not from what you think they can handle.
3. Let Their Response Give You Information
When you ask for what you need without over-explaining, you get to see how someone responds to the real you—not the diminished version you've learned to present.
Do they:
Get defensive and make it about how hard you are to please?
Dismiss your needs as "too much" or "unrealistic"?
Actually listen and try to understand what you're asking for?
Show effort to meet you, even if they can't do it perfectly?
Their response tells you everything you need to know about whether this person can hold space for your full self.
4. Practice Believing You're Worth It
This is the hardest part: actually believing that your needs are valid, that you deserve to be met, that you're not asking for too much.
Every time that voice says, "You're being difficult," counter it with: "Or I'm being honest about what I need to feel loved."
Every time you want to shrink yourself, pause and ask: "What would I do if I truly believed I was worth fighting for?"
Your needs aren't the problem. The problem is that you've been taught to see yourself as the problem.
What Changes When You Stop Shrinking
When you finally allow yourself to take up space—to ask for what you need without apologizing, to maintain your standards without guilt—one of two things happens:
Either the relationship deepens because the other person rises to meet you, and you finally get to experience what it feels like to be loved for who you actually are, not who you pretended to be.
Or the relationship ends because they can't or won't meet you where you are, and as painful as that is, it creates space for someone who can.
Both outcomes are better than staying small forever.
Because here's what I know after working with countless Black women who've spent years minimizing themselves:
The version of love you get when you shrink yourself will never satisfy you. It might look good from the outside. It might be "fine." But it will always leave you feeling empty because it's not actually you being loved—it's the carefully edited version of you that you thought would be easier to accept.
You deserve more than that.
You deserve to be fully yourself and fully loved. You deserve relationships where your needs aren't a negotiation. You deserve people who choose you with the same energy you choose them.
And you deserve to stop carrying the belief that you're "too much" when the real problem is that you've been settling for people who aren't enough.
Reflection Question: What need have you been shrinking to make yourself easier to love? What would it look like to ask for it directly, without apology? Share in the comments—your honesty might give someone else permission to stop minimizing themselves.
Ready to Stop Abandoning Yourself in Relationships?
At Javery Integrative Wellness Services, we help accomplished Black women create relationships that feel as fulfilling as they look through culturally responsive, holistic therapy. If you're tired of making yourself small and ready to learn how to take up space without guilt, we're here to support your journey.
Whether you're working through these patterns individually or as a couple, our therapists specialize in helping Black women and couples build relationships based on authenticity, not self-abandonment.
Complete our intake form to find the therapist who's the best fit for your journey toward relationships that honor all of you. Because you're not asking for too much—you're just ready to stop asking the wrong people.
Or join our email community for weekly insights on building relationships, boundaries, and a life where you never have to shrink yourself to be loved.