I might just be unlucky but I feel like I am dealing with a plague of indecisiveness and it’s infuriating.
I’m not talking about genuinely difficult choices, but rather picking between two options which are both basically acceptable, and turning it into a festival of angst.
I have three people in my life who do this constantly, and involve me in these endless decision trees. Say they have to pick between two restaurants. Both are similarly priced, similarly fancy, they like both, they know they would enjoy themselves regardless of which option they pick. But they still require me to participate in a multi-text conversation about which one to go for. Usually I say ‘both are lovely, no wrong choice’. But that’s not good enough. So I am decisive to help them out - I say ‘ok, go for option B, it looks lovely.’ Then I get back ‘but I prefer the starters at option A’. So I say ‘great! Option A it is!’ Only for them to say ‘but then, option B has more vegetarian options’. And it just goes on and on and on. If I say there’s no bad choice they complain that they can’t decide. If I pick for them, they question my pick.
How do they not realise how exhausting and pointless this is? It’s such a low-stakes decision! Even if they got it wrong, the consequences would be so minor!
A relative of mine once spent THREE WEEKS making up her mind about a decision just as inconsequential as the one outlined above. She must have sent me 20 options and questioned me extensively about each one. I wanted to scream by the end of it.
Is there any way of stopping this from happening short of causing a fallout by saying ‘stop involving me in the tedious minutiae of your life, I couldn’t care less what minor decisions you make and I certainly don’t want to hear about them!’