For me, accepting what people offer has been absurdly difficult. Not so much anymore.

Wanting people to offer me something that I didn't have to ask for, a pretty deep longing. Wanting something enough to ask for it even if it wasn't offered, kind of a big thing.

Not wanting to do something someone else wanted me to do, really hard to refuse. Still is. But having clarity on what I do want helps me get there. Say no. Sometimes I think someone wants me to do something, and it turns out they were just chatting rather aimlessly, and have no stake in it one way or the other. When you have a history of coercion, forced to do things you didn't want to do and no child should have to contemplate, the safety of compliance still lives in there no matter how fiercely independent you are now.

It seems to me that you are clear: say you do not want to vent as part of your therapy. It's possible she was more interested in the conversation about why or why not rather than advocating you should do it. What we say and what people hear, or what is said to us and what we hear, those can be very different.

If you want tea, as opposed to T offering tea, then ask. It occurs to me that you could also ask that she offer you tea next time she is making it. But someone who is willing to make you tea in a moment of abstractness is not necessarily going to translate that to asking you at this particular time if you want some. So you still may have to ask at the next opportunity. If you want the tea. If it is T's behavior you want to change, that might be a longer road.

One of the things I've been working on in recent years is not trying to get people to change their behavior or have a stake in what they do. This is particularly challenging when raising a teenager. I've long thought that everyone would be better off if they thought about things the way I did or did what I thought they should do.

But that's a thumb on the scales of balanced relationships, my desire to control how others relate to me. When I've been able to let go of that control, to change the way they respond to me, the relationship opens up in closeness and connection. It makes me braver in asking for what I want and more accepting of the times when others can't do that. It helps me to try to construct it as my responsibility to ask for what I want from others, whether I've done what I can to ask for it, whether it's okay to not get it.

Turns out the vast majority of people in my life want me to ask for what I want, because they want to give it to me if they possibly can. Without me telling them, they don't necessarily know that I want anything at all (fierce independence and general competency aren't exactly cries for help) and the reasons why they don't offer have little to do with me.

So to me, your discussion of tea and venting is part of a larger landscape of relationship where want and don't want are old trees with deep roots and full branches. Seems like there's a lot there.