This terminology comes from a brilliant web posting by Andrea Donderi that's achieved minor cult status online. We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything – a favour, a pay rise– fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid "putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept."

Neither's "wrong", but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleasantness results. An Asker won't think it's rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor – or just an Asker, who's assuming you might decline. If you're a Guesser, you'll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it's a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they're diehard Askers.

The usual pattern is that I give and give, wrongly assuming that, like me, they wouldn't ask for something if they didn't really need it...

The usual pattern is that I give and give, wrongly assuming that, like me, they wouldn't ask for something if they didn't really need it, until eventually I get pissed off at them for taking advantage of me, and they get pissed off at me for getting angry instead of just saying no. Pretty much all of my previous relationships in a nutshell, actually.

She also had a huge problem with me saying 'no' when she asks me to do something- to me it's not a big deal. Her asking and me saying no is how negotiation or discussion starts- to her it's a conversation ender.

Frequently things that I see as simple questions or requests that can be denied are interpreted by her, and her family, to be demands.

She also had a huge problem with me saying 'no' when she asks me to do something- to me it's not a big deal. Her asking and me saying no is how negotiation or discussion starts- to her it's a conversation ender.

Lol, I've always assumed, in my personal life, that when someone says no, they mean it, not that they're enticing me into a discussion or negotiation - that's something to consider. I must say though, that sounds much like my 4 year old's reception of the word "No" - the beginning of a negotiation.

Guesser to the core. Represent, yo. Y'know, if you want. Not saying you have to, just thought you might like to. Whatever...whatever's fine with you.