Talking about pay: why it is so hard to say the number

“As for the salary … whatever you think is fair.”

That sentence came out of a mouth that had prepared something quite different. At home, the number had been written on a slip of paper, checked against three job sites and said twice in front of the mirror. Then the interviewer asked, “And what are your expectations?”, there was a short silence in the room, and instead of the number came politeness. On the way home, what remained was a feeling many people know: I gave something away. Not my employer — myself.

A conversation about pay looks like a business matter. It is about data, ranges, budgets and negotiating tactics. All of that is true, and all of it is useful to know. But when I listen to people whose number gets stuck in their throat, it is almost never a lack of information. It is about what the number wakes up: what we learned about money at home, how much we are allowed to ask for ourselves, what happens to a relationship when you ask for something. This post is about that second part — and about how to prepare so that the number comes out even when your chest tightens.

The number that gets stuck in your throat

First, something that seems obvious but isn’t: most people know how much they would like to earn. They may not know exactly what is realistic on the market, but they have a figure in their head. The problem is not that they don’t know it. The problem is the moment they have to say it out loud to a person who has the power to say no.

In that moment something interesting happens. The number is no longer just a number. It becomes a statement: “I think I am worth this much.” And because you say it to someone who is evaluating you, it feels as if you are also asking: “Do you agree?” That is why it is so tempting to hand the responsibility back to the other side — “whatever you think is fair”, “you know what the situation is like”, “money doesn’t matter that much to me”. An answer like that rescues you from exposure for a moment. The price comes later, every month again.

In Slovenia we generally don’t talk about salaries. Among friends we would sooner say how much we paid for the car than how much we earn. Colleagues often don’t know what the person at the next desk is paid. This silence is not neutral: if you don’t know where you stand, it is hard to know how much you may ask for. Silence about money is a rule of the system — and like every rule of a system, it benefits some more than others.

What the research shows — and where it is careful

In 2003 the economist Linda Babcock and her co-author Sara Laschever published a book with a telling title: Women Don’t Ask. Its most quoted figure comes from a smaller study among master’s graduates at Carnegie Mellon University: 57 per cent of men and only 7 per cent of women had negotiated their starting salary. The figure went around the world and is often repeated as if it described all women everywhere.

Caution is needed here. It was one programme, one cohort and a relatively small sample. Later research complicated the picture considerably. In 2018 the economists Benjamin Artz, Amanda Goodall and Andrew Oswald found, in a large sample of Australian employees, that women ask for a pay rise about as often as men — they are just less likely to get it. Earlier still, Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock, with their colleague Lai, showed in a series of experiments that evaluators often rate women who negotiate as less pleasant to work with, while for men this “penalty” is much smaller.

Why am I being so precise about this? Because the difference between “women don’t know how to ask” and “women know that asking may cost them” is huge. The first explanation places the problem in the individual: be braver. The second points to the system: the environment rewards some people for the same behaviour it punishes others for. And people who grow up in such an environment learn this quickly and precisely. What looks like timidity from the outside is often a very reasonable assessment of risk.

The money nobody talked about at home

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we start from the idea that no feeling arises in a vacuum. What you feel when you have to say a number began long before your first job — at the kitchen table, in your parents’ conversations (or silences) about money.

When I ask people what they heard about money at home, the answers vary a great deal. “Money isn’t important, what matters is being a good person.” “You have to slave for money.” “Rich people are rotten.” “Don’t ask how much it costs, we can’t afford it.” “Be grateful you have a job at all.” Some remember arguments about money that taught them it was a dangerous subject. Others remember that only one parent decided about money, and the other had to ask. I wrote about how money in a family becomes a language of love and control in Money as love and control: parents and adult children.

These messages don’t disappear when you grow up. They move into the office. Someone who heard at home that asking for something for yourself is selfish will feel exactly that in a salary conversation: selfishness. They won’t recognise it as an old family rule, but as the truth about themselves. Someone who grew up in a family with little money, where the parents sighed at every purchase, may feel guilty at the mere thought of having more than they did.

Often the role someone had in the family shows up as well. The child who was “the one who doesn’t need anything” — because the parents had enough worries with a sick brother, a divorce, getting by — learned that their needs were a burden. As an adult they are often an exceptionally reliable colleague. And very bad at asking for a pay rise. You can read more about how family roles shape adult life in the knowledge base under family roles.

Shame: when the number is really a question about you

The emotion most often behind the trouble with the number is not fear of rejection. It is shame. Fear says “maybe I won’t get it”. Shame says “who do you think you are”.

The difference matters. When you are afraid you won’t get a raise, you can prepare, gather arguments, look up data. When you are ashamed, no argument helps, because the question is not whether the request is justified — it is the feeling that you don’t deserve to ask for anything at all. I wrote about why shame works differently from guilt in Guilt and shame are not the same — and the difference matters; you will also find a short explanation in the knowledge base under shame.

In a salary conversation shame shows itself in several ways. A person lowers the number before they even say it — “they’ll say no anyway”. Or they say it and immediately add an apology: “… but of course I understand if that isn’t possible.” Or they start justifying at length, listing everything they have done, as if they had to prove they are even allowed to be in the room. People who carry impostor syndrome know this particularly well: every request feels like an invitation for someone to finally unmask them.

Where a person’s worth is fused with their work, the salary conversation is even harder. If you are worth as much as you produce, then every number is a verdict on you as a person — this is the subject of When you are worth only what you produce. It helps to say something simple out loud before the conversation: pay is the market price of the work, not an assessment of me as a person. You won’t believe it straight away. But each time you say it, there is a little more space between you and the number.

Work as a system: roles, triangles and loyalty

A workplace is a system, much like a family. It has rules nobody says out loud, roles people don’t consciously choose, and alliances that go beyond the organisational chart. The salary conversation happens inside this system, not outside it.

Think of a few typical patterns. Loyalty: “My boss was so decent to me when my child was ill. I can’t ask him for more now.” Here kindness turns into a debt that is repaid with silence. The triangle: instead of talking to the person who decides, you complain to a colleague — or you find out what a colleague earns and get angry with them rather than with the system that set the pay. The role of the reliable one: the team knows you will always do what needs doing. That is exactly why nobody thinks you need to be kept — and you have internalised this role so deeply that it doesn’t occur to you that you could leave. I describe why these are the very people who burn out most often in Why it is the most responsible and reliable people who burn out.

When you become aware of these patterns, the conversation changes. You don’t enter the room as a child asking a parent for pocket money, but as an adult agreeing the terms of working together with another adult. This shift sounds small, but it is often decisive. We find ourselves in old roles at work in other ways too — that will be the subject of The boss who reminds you of your father: why we slip into old family roles at work.

What happens in your body when you have to say the number

In 2011 Alison Wood Brooks and Maurice Schweitzer studied in several experiments how anxiety affects negotiation. People who were anxious before negotiating made lower first offers, responded more quickly to the other side’s offers, left the negotiation earlier — and ended up with worse outcomes. So anxiety doesn’t just squeeze your chest unpleasantly. It literally lowers the number.

This matters because of a phenomenon researchers call anchoring. Adam Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler showed that the first number spoken in a negotiation strongly influences where it ends. Whoever speaks first sets the anchor. Whoever lowers their number out of anxiety anchors themselves lower than necessary — and that carries through every subsequent pay rise.

So preparation is not only about arguments. It is also about calming your body a little before you go in. The vagus nerve responds to a lengthened out-breath: a few breaths in which the exhale is longer than the inhale slow the heart rate somewhat. You will find the exercise in the knowledge base under breathing with a lengthened exhale. It doesn’t remove anxiety, but it gives you back a few seconds of space between the trigger and your answer. Sometimes that is enough to say the number instead of “whatever you think is fair”.

How it can sound

This is what part of a session might look like when someone is preparing for a conversation about a pay rise (composite, not a real person):

“I’ve written everything down. What I did this year, what people get elsewhere. And I know I’m entitled to it. But when I think about having to say it to her face …”
“What happens?”
“I feel I’ll disappoint her. As if I were betraying her.”
“Have you known that feeling before? That asking for something for yourself means disappointing someone?”
A long silence. “Mum always said my brother and I were her only joy. And that she didn’t need anything for herself. She never bought herself anything.”
“What would your mum say if she heard you asking for more now?”
“That I’d been spoilt.” A laugh, but not a happy one. “I know that isn’t true.”
“Maybe we can try. Say the number to me. Right here, out loud.”

When she said the number, the first time there was silence, the second time she added an apology, the third time she said it and waited. It isn’t a trick. It is about the body experiencing that nothing terrible happens when the number is spoken — and that the family rule that forbade it was made in another time, for other circumstances.

Exercise: preparing for the conversation in five steps

If a salary conversation is ahead of you — when taking a job, at your annual review, or because you want to start it yourself — try these steps. You can begin today.

1. Write down the message about money you brought from home. One sentence someone repeated often, or one that was heard without words. Next to it write: “This is my family’s rule. It isn’t necessarily the rule of my work.”
2. Gather data on the range. What others pay for similar work, what the pay bands say if there are any, what people in your field know. Data doesn’t remove shame, but it takes away its excuse that you have no idea.
3. Decide on three numbers. The one you want (the one you will say), an acceptable one, and a floor below which you will start considering other options. Keep the floor to yourself.
4. Say the number out loud three times. In front of the mirror, to a friend or in the car. Let the first sentence be the number, and only then the reasons. After it, wait three breaths and add nothing.
5. Write down in advance what you will say if the answer is no. For example: “I understand. What would need to be different for us to talk about this again in six months?” That way the conversation doesn’t end with a refusal, but with a next step.

The hardest is usually the fourth step. The silence after the number feels endless, but in reality it lasts a few seconds. It is the time when the other side is thinking — not proof that you have said something inappropriate.

When it isn’t about your confidence

Up to now I have written as if the key lay within you: in your family messages, your shame, your anxiety. That is an important part of the story. But it isn’t the whole story, and it is only fair to say where this view falls short.

Sometimes the system really has no room. In the public sector, pay is tied to pay grades and promotions over which an individual often has little say. In a small company in difficulty there may genuinely be no raise. Then no amount of courage will change the number, but it can change how clearly you know where you stand — and whether that is acceptable to you.

Sometimes caution is wise. The research I mentioned shows that some people are penalised by their environment for negotiating. Someone on an insecure contract, someone who is the only one who is different in their team, someone who knows their boss is vindictive — they don’t need the advice “be more assertive”, but a considered judgement about when, how and with whom to talk. Sometimes the right step is looking for another job, not a better sentence.

Sometimes it is a legal question. If you suspect you are paid less because of your gender, age or other personal circumstances, or if your employer doesn’t pay what was agreed, this is not a matter of confidence but of rights. In that case, turn to your trade union if you are a member, or seek legal advice. In 2023 the European Union adopted a directive on pay transparency that commits member states to greater openness about pay; what this means for you specifically in Slovenia is something they can tell you reliably — not a psychotherapist.

And sometimes the number is acceptable and the problem lies elsewhere. Some people keep circling around pay because it is the only measurable thing they have. The real question may be whether the work still fulfils them at all, whether anyone sees them, whether it has perhaps emptied them. A higher salary then doesn’t bring the relief they expected.

Where therapy can help

You can learn negotiating techniques from a book or at a workshop, and that is perfectly fine. People come to therapy with the subject of pay when they know the techniques but can’t use them — because at the crucial moment something happens to them that is stronger than everything they have learned.

In sessions we don’t work on how much you ought to earn. We work on what the number sets off in your body, where that comes from, and to whom you may still be loyal through your silence. It often turns out that the problem with pay is not isolated: the same pattern appears when you need to tell your partner what you need, when you need to say no to a friend, when you need to set a boundary. The knowledge base entry on assertiveness is about standing up for yourself without becoming aggressive.

If you are curious how messages about money, work and modesty have been passed down through the generations of your family, a longer session with a genogram, which I call A Look into the Past, can be useful. When you see on a single sheet who in your family worked for others and never asked for anything, who slaved for money and who suffered because of it, a great deal becomes clearer. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work in English.

What to remember

• Trouble with pay rarely comes from a lack of data. More often it comes from what the number wakes up: shame, old family rules and fear for the relationship.
• The claim that women don’t ask should be read with care: later research shows that an important part of the problem is how the environment responds to the question.
• Anxiety literally lowers the first offer. So calming your body counts in preparation, not just arguments.
• The number first, then the reasons — and after the number, silence, not an apology.
• Where there is discrimination or unpaid wages, it isn’t a question of confidence but of rights: turn to a trade union or legal advice.