To be pissed of with "I don't mind"

[Bumble1830]

A little bit lighthearted, a little bit rant-y.

Does anyone else get pissed off with "I don't mind" answers to every single question you ask the family? What do you fancy for tea? .... I don't mind. What film shall we watch? ... I don't mind. How would you like to live your last day on earth? ... I don't mind. Seriously, a little clue as to what you fancy for dinners as I'm doing the weekly shop in Sainsburys (other supermarkets are available) would be nice, and then they moan because its the stuff stuff every time....!!! Ggrrrrr. Aannnnnd bbrrreeaaaath 😶

I feel I have to defend the "I don't mind" crowd a bit, because I remember some childhood experiences: it might be that some people were rarely allowed to make decisions while growing up, they always had to go with the flow to keep the peace, perhaps if they had a lot of brothers or sisters.

I much prefer the answer "I don't mind" to the one which is far worse:

"Dunno." Or "s'pose so" to something suggested.

Perhaps some of the "I don't mind" crowd had authoritarian parents who decided everything, and never involved children in their decisions. They might have been told "the only choice is: take it or leave it". Or they might have had parents who frequently gave them commands disguised as choices (as advocated by MN), such as "come on, it's bedtime now. Do you want the Peppa Pig or the Elsa nightie?". An insignificant choice to sweeten the real message, I remember seeing through that. If my mum offered me a choice, sometimes it wasn't really a choice:
Mum: Would you like strawberry or chocolate?
Me: Chocolate.
Mum: Would you mind having strawberry, because it's already open?
Why offer me the "choice" then?

Also "are you going to put your things away?" Or "you can either stand in the corner for twenty minutes, or you can have a smack, and it's all over quickly." What difficult choices.

When I was a driving instructor, I met some teenagers who were so indecisive, it was as if they had never made a decision in their lives, everything had been planned for them. They wouldn't have chosen to have driving lessons, they were given as a birthday present. This seemed to happen more with the wealthier ones. "You're going to Eton whether you like it or not, this is what you will study at university because your Father did, etc."

letsgomaths
Well put, I didn’t really think about it but you’re right in my case, I come from a huge family of ‘children shouldn’t be seen or heard’ and at 16 they’re adults and have 6 months to move out.
It’s a massive shock to go from not being able to have any say at all to being responsible for everything and it makes it incredibly difficult to make even simple decisions

God, yes, my ex did this and it drove me mad. It was part of a much bigger problem of me carrying the 'mental load' for EVERYTHING, even right down to which takeaway we got or which film we watched. It was exhausting.

As someone said upthread, often what you're really asking is "can you help me make this decision?" and what you're saying by answering "I don't mind" is no.
I'm going to try and be more specific with my questions to see if it helps.

I'm going to try and be more specific with my questions to see if it helps. I agree, try beginning a question with "help me decide". And if you're really not going to take "I don't mind" for an answer, then say "you're choosing this time..."

@Greenyogagirl it makes it incredibly difficult to make even simple decisions
As a young adult I also felt under a lot of pressure to make choices quickly so as not to keep people waiting, and took much less time than I really should have done over choosing some really important things, such as university course/job/car/where to live. I suppose an important life skill is knowing the difference between small choices, and really significant ones which need a lot of consideration.

I don’t really mind I want to throw things at anyone who says that .
What do you want for tea I don’t mind agggh
I have a couple of friends who I meet up a couple of times a year for lunch who will never commit to where to go it’s always I don’t mind so I have to pick somewhere. My other bug bear is when can’t decide what to eat when in pub/restaurant so when you say I’ll have lasagna for eg they say I’ll have that too, it’s so irritating I mean have a mind of your own surely you know what you want to eat .

www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html

I hear this all the time. When ones darling family expect you to make all the decisions then decision fatigue sets in! The point is not whether you mind or not, the point is that you do not force the other person to make all the damn decisions however minor, thus exhausting their mental reserves (further) and conveniently maintaining yours. So when you're asked for an opinion, please provide one.

There’s people in my life that I always give I don’t mind answers too. When I don’t it’s very clear that my preference isn’t their preference and this displeases them, but they won’t acknowledge or discuss that, and the whole thing just creates an unpleasant (and utterly ridiculous) atmosphere. I have no patience for that shit anymore, so I say I don’t know and leave them to it.

These people would say they hate making all the decisions, but the thing is they already make all the decisions in their head. They just want someone else to agree with their unspoken choices and verbalise them, and if you say something different then you’ve mucked up their plans. It’s tiresome.

Yes, this annoys me but I've got to used to it. My DH is happy to cook but has only had about three dinner ideas in his life. If I ask, any ideas for dinner tonight, and the answer is "anything/I don't mind", I then just make exactly what I want. And there are no take backs!

Me: Any ideas for dinner?
DH: Nope, I'll have anything.
Me: Great, oven chips and an orange it is!
DH: Hmm, can't we have fish?
Me: (already slicing the orange) You had your chance!

My DP and his entire family are like this... After many years I have learnt that for food, DP just sees it as fuel, and just as long as I don't make something I know he hates, he genuinely doesn't care. He has a couple of nights a week where I am not home until late evening, so he sorts his own dinner out which gives me respite from the 'I don' t mind dance'... He is also very good at springing into action in the general direction of the chippy if I come home and announce I'm too tired to cook!

His family though, are a whole different level of I don't mind, and hate having firm plans. When they come to visit I never know if I have to buy enough food to feed them in the house, or if we will be going out for food. If we end up going out for food, it turns into an hour of choosing where to go where every option is met with 'I don' t mind'..whilst I get silently more and more hangry... once we drove to five different lunch venues until we found one that could accommodate us all and that one family member who previously 'didn't mind' deemed suitable for them and thier children..

There was one occasion where we had agreed in advance that I'd cook everyone a Sunday roast before they headed home that afternoon, then 11am Sunday morning as I was putting a joint big enough to feed 9 in the oven, and having already prepped all the vege, one of the family visitors came in and said 'we thought we' d go to the cafe for breakfast and then head home early...you don't mind do you? '.... Aarrgh!

The mates who always say I don't mind on what's app groups and never organise anything themselves

An “I don’t mind” in my house is taken completely at face value. I reply with ok and don’t go on to offer choices or suggestions that can then be refused. I simply make/arrange/order/book my choice and that’s that.

If you don’t mind, you don’t need an opportunity to veto anything.

yep this drives me insane i get it ALL THE TIME!

When i ask DP and DSS what they want for tea i always get "i don't mind" from DSS and "I don't know" from DP

Then i just go ahead and make something and DSS leaves most of it because he doesn't like it (even though hes eaten it 100 times before) and just as i'm about to serve it DP will say "oh, are there no chips with that then??"

NO! There aren't any chips because you sodding well told me you didn't know what you wanted, had zero input into it so no, the meal does not come with chips!!

NEXT!

I don't like making decisions because if something goes wrong, it's my fault.

"shall we to to the sea Life centre or the museum?" If I pick the SLC and we get stuck in traffic and end up having a shitty day - my fault, because I chose to go there and if I'd picked the museum it wouldn't have happened.

I'd much rather someone else chose so they can feel bad for making the wrong choice, not me!

I also don't want to choose because it makes me feel like "oh I'm so important", i'd rather just go along with what everyone else is doing.

Likewise, if I pick something for dinner that someone else in the group isn't that keen on, I feel like a knobhead.

It's so bad that when I was a vegetarian, I would never tell anyone whose house I visited as a teen, because I didn't want them having to fuss about cooking me something meat-free when they were planning a meat-based meal. I would just eat the meat.

My other bug bear is when can’t decide what to eat when in pub/restaurant so when you say I’ll have lasagna for eg they say I’ll have that too, it’s so irritating I mean have a mind of your own surely you know what you want to eat .

That actually annoys you? seriously? Maybe they just also wanted that or do you own the rights to Lasagna :p

My teens are very good at the ‘I don’t know’ answers as well. It infuriates me. I usually assume it means ‘No’.

It's been really interesting to read some of these replies and analyses. I remember getting really upset when my brother and sister visited me separately, of their own volition, and replied to every one of my suggestions for outings with "if you want to", with the emphasis on "you".
I also know a couple of people who will ask, for example, if you want sliced or unsliced bread. If I say unsliced, they will immediately tell me all the reasons that sliced bread would be better, while the bakery worker stands there waiting, and I will roll my eyes and wave my hands and shout "Sliced, then! Why ask me?"
My brother and sister have a much better relationship with our rather temperamental, authoritarian parents than I do, and after reading people's thoughts here I've been thinking that my siblings' have learned behaviour that works with our parents, although it seems very odd and exasperating to me.

I'm a don't minder...but only because I've been conditioned by DH to become one. Plus I absolutely genuinely don't give a toss whether I eat chicken and rice, beans on toast, or ice cream for tea. That's why he cooks, because I can't and won't, and I'm eternally grateful that he is happy to.

Generally speaking most suggestions I make (for dinner, a film, what time to leave etc) will be vetoed or vehemently criticised. Often with details as to why I'm wrong.

So now I'm paralysed by indecision, and that annoys him too. I can't bloody win.

Parental visits:

Me - What would you like to do, now you're in the big smoke? (Thinking, we've got so much to see and do here, you'll surely fancy something?)

Dad - I'll just do whatever you would normally do.

OK - 5 loads of laundry and an hour or three of admin at the computer? You came all this way for that?!

I just had a holiday with friends and all our kids - so would ask - shall we do x or Y, a couple of kids said Y and then the rest (including the adults) were all 'I don't mind' so I took the stance Y

"I don't mind" is OK as far as I'm concerned; I take it at face value, and more fool you if you really did mind. I'm a bit of a control freak, so I rarely tire of making decisions.
"I don't care" as a reply is absolutely not OK!!!!

I remember being told off as a child when I cheerfully replied to a "would you like..." suggestion with "I might as well". The mum who asked it (not my own) took great exception to this for some reason, she said it sounded like a typical surly reply from one of her own teenagers.

This discussion reminds me of something I read in some awfully gender stereotyped self-help book, on the kind of question every man dreads from his wife: "should I wear the blue shoes, or the gold shoes with this dress?" Many men will answer at random (maybe without even looking), or say "you choose, darling". This book said that the wife doesn't really want her husband to choose; she wants to hear some validation that she looks good in her outfit, but doesn't want to ask for it directly. I'm not sure if I agree with this, but it's an interesting thought.

I think many adults have a deeply ingrained habit of asking questions as a formality, to appear to be involving someone in a decision, to make them feel consulted, or even just to make conversation. I expect those who reply "I don't mind" think that this is what the questioner is doing, and they're not expecting the questioner to genuinely want to know the answer! Ditto questions that we ask almost without thinking: "how's your week been?" "do you have any plans for the weekend?"

Argh!! Another one here who has changed the questions I ask:

"Anything you fancy for dinner next week?" Has now been replaced with "You need to give me ideas for 3 meals you want next week."

"What do you fancy doing this weekend?" Has been replaced by "I'd like you to make plans for us and Baby on Saturday."

I got fed up with doing all the sodding thinking and managing the mental load for the whole family!

"PIL, would you like to come with us to X today or would you prefer to rest at home?" "We don't mind!" I think they are afraid of making a "wrong" choice, but it is exhausting to host them as even offering to make them a cup of tea leads to a five minute Mexican standoff.

@Limpshade It sounds like we have the same PIL!

I think they believe that stating a preference would make them demanding whereas saying they don't mind will make them no trouble at all. The number of conversations I have had that go:

Me: Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?

FIL: I don't mind

Me: Well I am making anyway so would you like one?

FIL: Well yes please if you are making.

Me: Which? Tea or coffee?

FIL: I don't mind

Me: Which would you prefer?

FIL: I don't mind, whatever you are making.

Me: But I am making both! (Usually true because I often have tea but DH prefers coffee)

FIL: Well I don't mind, whichever?

At which point I exit to the kitchen where I can give a silent "Aaaargh!" of frustration.

Parental visits:

Me - What would you like to do, now you're in the big smoke? (Thinking, we've got so much to see and do here, you'll surely fancy something?)

Dad - I'll just do whatever you would normally do.

OK - 5 loads of laundry and an hour or three of admin at the computer? You came all this way for that?!

See reading that I would take from the answer that your dad came all this way to spend time with you so he is happy to just do that and really doesn't mind what you do together? Sounds like he was trying not to be a hindrance to you and doesn't want to make you feel like you need to be going out of your way to entertain him