For me, it depends on what the request is. I'm not even considering being "ordered" around as that automatically has me checking my perception of the situation.

My husband is very sensitive to being ordered so, when I had my hands full of grocery bags and called anxiously to him to "Get the door!" (open it) as the grocery bags were slipping from my grasp, etc. he stopped to argue with me instead. It was an eye opener to me and I work hard now to try and remember to "request" he get the door instead of just baldly stating my need without any thought of how the other person might perceive it. However, a key is that I don't feel badly about having stated it the way I did but I love my husband and want him to be happy. I cannot change him/his perceptions, only my own, so I choose to work to learn to state things in a way he can hear them well and respond in a way that helps us both.

But, if as it was originally stated someone "asks more of you than you can or are willing to give" I look at the relationship I have with that person and weigh how difficult/onerous the request is to me and how it might impact that relationship and then decide whether to be honest and say "No", or ask for more information, or just do whatever anyway.

I was 39 when I got married and was thinking of not changing my last name to my husband's since I had credit cards, etc. all in my name. We weren't planning on children so there would be no confusion problems but when I mentioned what I was thinking to my stepmother she got upset and I weighed how much longer my relationship to my stepmother was likely to be (10-15 years) versus how much I really cared about whether or not I changed my name and went ahead and changed it. I cared more about my relationship with my stepmother than whether I had to do the chores necessarily with changing my name.

If I didn't care that much about the person I might just say "No" (local club I belong to asking me to volunteer for something, say). If I weren't sure how I felt I would "stall" by asking clarifying questions that might clear up the situation, my perception, give me more time to figure out how I felt.