important to realize the other half of this: some people may see requests of yours as demands, or trust you as an authority, and if you keep an eye out you can save a lot of strife. Especially if you're confident or are perceived to have more experience.
edit to clarify: this isn't "be Ever Vigilant", but instead "just keep an eye out so you can clarify early if it seems someone parsed you as such"
another good clarification: https://cohost.org/Osmose/post/5616045-imo
Avoid the temptation to find the "right" wording that makes people start seeing your requests this way. You wanna be clear that you're requesting something, but "Were you gonna do X?" comes off as passive aggressive a lot of the time.
If you notice or suspect someone is treating your requests as demands, just ask, or clarify that you're making a request: "Would you handle X? No big deal if not." "Hey, I wanted to check to be sure, how are you feeling about my requests for help lately? I wanna make sure you feel able to say no sometimes if you want to."
That latter quote could be perceived as pressure as well if things have deteriorated a lot, but honestly if that's the case then you kinda need to sit down and talk about it (or get help from someone else) anyway. That kind of fear and avoiding talking about it is what kills healthy communication.
