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I make the decisions


- because she can never make up her mind

How is this a warning sign? Actually it is several signs. It may show that her husband is dissatisfied with the time it takes her to reach decisions, and why would she want to stay with someone who is dissatisfied with her? It may show that is afraid of being criticised for a 'wrong' decisions, and why would she want to live in an atmosphere of fear? It may show that her husband considers himself superior to her, and why would a woman want to live with someone she is so inadequate for? It may show that she has a problem with self-esteem and needs patience and reassurance from her man - without which she may think herself unaccepted and unacceptable, and why should she stay in a relationship like that?

What's the problem here? Basically, it reads as patronising. Man smart, woman dumb. Not the best path to long-term love and companionship.

Surely a woman must truly appreciate having a man who is decisive, strong-minded and clear-thinking? Surely these are characteristics of a good provider and protector?

Indeed so. But do women feel that way about every decision their strong men make, or do they sometimes have mixed feelings about the decisions that are made for them?

But first, do either you or your woman understand what lies behind her apparent lack of decisiveness? There are perhaps four main causes, and they may act together or in combination. She may:

  • make her decisions on a different basis - women do ("Woman's Way")
  • be equally happy (or unhappy) with all the options, ("Not An Issue")
  • not want to disappoint you, ("Don't Set Me Up")
  • have been taught silence from earliest childhood, ("Mummy Knows Best")
  • With those four causes in mind, we can now consider how women might feel about having their decisions made for them.

    "Woman's Way" - women are different. That's one of the delightful things about them. Most of them have different backgrounds and training from us men. So there are things we men can decide instantly, like where the best seats are at a football match, that some women would take ages over, because they lack the background knowledge and would have to ask for more information, or might be overwhelmed by the problem and never be able to decide.

    Look at it another way: Many men don't like shopping for clothes. We go into the shop, ask for, say, a white business shirt, size 6, long sleeves, pay up, take our parcel and leave. We can make decisions. We're men. And also, we should recognise that many of our clothes choices remain virtually unchanged for our whole lives. Most women, in contrast, do like shopping for clothes, and they face a marketplace in which most of what's on offer won't be there six months later and will never be seen again.

    Women can't just ask for a green dress, knee length, fitted, size 12. There may have been one to be bought four years ago, but if so, you can be sure as hell it won't be there now. She has to look through all the racks to see what's now available in this shop, and then at some other shops - because they all have different stuff - and then decide which of them she'll look best in, and go back, make a final comparison between her short list, and finally buy the one that came out on top.

    Clothes shopping is probably easy for you - white business shirts are always in style and always available. Women face a whole different world, and have had to evolve a whole different way of dealing with it.

    Maybe this comes from our common heritage as hunter-gatherers. Suppose the men hunted, and the women gathered berries and other plants. The men had to make decisions fast. There would have been no sense in a man saying: "Maybe I won't kill that rabbit - there may be a bigger one come along later" - no way. You pull the bow and twang that little sucker, because if no more turn up your family is bound to go hungry otherwise. Better a small rabbit than no dinner.

    Our hypothetical woman, on the other hand, is out picking berries, say. "Now, is this one of the sweet berries, or a poisonous one" She has time to make a choice - berries don't run away. And the choice is important - a mistake could cost the family its life. So she is going to look for all the minutiae that are part of her decision. Just as well she has no men with her - they would be driven mad by the way she goes about getting the food. Just as they are about the way she buys her clothes.

    What can we men do about this? Accept it. Be patient. You found your wife attractive when you met, or when you decided you wanted to wed her. You just didn't know how much time it took her to make the decisions that led to your feeling that way. And that's a decision style that she may unconsciously use for other things, too. Not for all, of course. You want to see fast decisions from your woman - watch her jump to it, just as you do, when she thinks one of your children is in danger. But for the things women decide about more slowly, try to accept it with patience. Unless you'd rather have married a man, of course.

    "Not An Issue" - It may be a matter about which the women would have no strong feelings either way. Or where either choice has a equal likelihood of being wrong. In that case, women may be exasperated to be asked such questions at all. "Honey, should I drive us the Beltway or Park Lane?" - "Whichever you like, Dear." She doesn't give a hoot. Either way is fine. They take about the same time. She's having to deal with the damn kids anyhow. Park Lane is prettier, but when the Beltway traffic is light, that way is quicker, and right now, with the fractious kids, she can't enjoy the view anyway, so speed is the name of her game. So it's "Whichever you like, Dear." And he thinks she can't make decisions?

    "Don't Set Me Up" - Maybe today's route is a decision she really wanted her man to make. He's the driver. He's the protector, and right now she's got her hands full anyhow. Why did the inconsiderate idiot try to lay that on me? she wonders. Why did he, indeed? Does it make sense to you? Or does it suggest that he is indeed inconsiderate, or doesn't appreciate what she's coping with, or doesn't realise the speed with which she's capable of realising it's a no-win game, and getting up from the table is the only smart move left for her. Or maybe he's playing the hard card of the insecure male - setting the woman up for a fall, so he can look good in comparison. Yes, there are men who do that.

    As he drives towards the fork between Beltway and Park Lane, her husband may be thinking "Damn women - can never make up their minds." Well, she's made up her mind, Buster. She's decided that there's something not quite kosher about that question, in these circumstances. She's made up her mind that she prefers peace to confrontation. She may have learnt, as her marriage settled down to its mind-numbing routine, that if she says "Beltway" and it turns out to be crowded, she'll be told, "Honey, it's so slow, why on earth did you want to go this way? And Park Lane is so pretty at this time of year!" As gentle as this put-down may be, it's still a put-down.

    The man who pushes for a decision from her "I only want to please you, Honey - tell me which you prefer." is going to lose her respect. She knows she's being pushed into a corner (Games) and who can love being treated like that? Plus, it's so very obvious. She has to be thinking to herself "Is that the best he can do - and he says I can't make decisions - why doesn't he make the bloody choice for himself? Has his decision computer suddenly gone on the blink?"

    "Mummy Knows Best" - or does she? Even new born infants quickly learn to recognise when their mother is conditional in her love, prone to withhold it if things aren't going her way. This is well recognised as not at all being the best way to raise healthy, happy children to become happy and effective adults. We all grow up from birth only able to learn how to be people from the examples we have within our experience. We learn from our parents or carers. We learn to talk, to tell the difference between praise and anger, to behave in ways that get us rewards rather than punishments.

    Some mothers, perhaps the victims of their own upbringing, get to be control freaks toward their own daughters - and sometimes their sons. They lay an unspoken threat on their little girls - the received message may be something like 'be good or I'll abandon you'. Another is 'if you're bad, you'll never know what you'll miss - I won't tell you, you'll just miss out'. And so they train the child to try to be 'good' all the time, without having to be told, without ever being sure which things might be considered bad.

    If a child doesn't know which things are good or bad, but that the wrong choice will lead perhaps to unannounced deprivation or perhaps some other emotionally dreadful outcome, will they grow up uncomfortable about making choices where other people, powerful people in their lives, will know what choices they make, and be able openly or secretly to judge them? [too complex, rewrite] Yes, there are women who do that to their children, who then grow to adults incapable of making some sorts of decisions. Eventually, many such victims develop the insight and courage to overcome those internal barriers. Some work their own way out of this bind, some get professional help, and others still manage it with the assistance of understanding, patient, tolerant, friends or family.

    But there's one decision all unhappy wives can make. That's the one about leaving you. She may have to wait until the children are older, maybe even until they have left school or later, when they've left home. Of course that's a surprise for the husbands. These are women who seemed never to be able to make a decision, and now they have - how come?

    You need to recognise the common thread in all the patterns of "indecisive wife syndrome" (do you want to call it IWS - that's okay, but we're not going to, because it's too misleading. Read on and see why).

    The common thread is the relationship with the husband. It is he who now handicaps her decision making. Either he only lets her choose the things that don't matter to him, or he fills her ear with criticisms when she does make a choice, or else he has unwittingly taken over the role that her mother used to play in the crippling "conditional love game".

    But a woman's decision to leave her husband provides freedom from all those factors. That's what this book is about, so here's a heads-up on how it works in this situation, based on the three causes for 'indecisive wife'.

  • Does her decision, to leave, matter to him? She thinks he doesn't love her any more, so it can hardly matter to him if she does go.
  • Will he criticise that choice? Probably, but she won't be there to hear about it. What a relief for her.
  • Will he withhold his love? That threat loses it's power the moment she stops seeking it. It was a part factor in her leaving her mother's home back when, and it may still be true today, in relation to you.
  • What to do about it? Let's recap: You think your wife doesn't make decisions, or makes them impossibly slowly. You think you know why. Let's look at this in the context of the four causes we have discussed.

    "Woman's Way" - Maybe your wife is just being a typical woman - for most of them take ages to decide about clothes buying, what to wear, and sometimes even what to buy from the supermarket. Sorry friend, you choose a woman, you get a woman. Learn to suffer it in silence. If you ever find out how to change this aspect of a wife, let me know, please. Or write another book about it. For this one, you have to change your own attitudes, and see it as charming. Or try to fool yourself that it is. Or get heated up and add another to the wrong side of her internal "will I leave him or won't I" balance scales.

    "Not An Issue" - Here, the solution is in your own hands. Where it's really your job to make a choice - make up your own mind. If you want to give your wife a say in the matter, be honest about your preference. Try this for size - "Honey, I think we'll take the Beltway today, that okay by you?" if it's truly hard for her to make choices, your taking the responsibility will be a relief, and if she does have a strong preference, for Park Drive perhaps, you've given her the chance to say so.

    "Don't Set Me Up" - This one is a walk-over. Do as the title tells you - don't set her up. If you ask her to make a choice - any choice - be prepared to live with her decision. It might not be the one you would have made - tough, if you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.

    Maybe it all goes pear-shaped. Her choice leads you both into all sorts of trouble. Accept it like a man. Help her in dealing with the consequences. Never complain. And learn for the future.

    Learn what? Learn that we all have strengths and weaknesses. If you are going to ask your wife to make big decisions, (that is, the ones that have big consequences) maybe you have to be sure beforehand that you both know what all the issues are. Maybe you need to say: "Honey, I'm thinking that we should move house, but there are some things we need to work out before we get to that point - would you help me with that please?" Maybe that would be better than; "Honey, we're selling this house and buying that one at the corner of Maple and Bond - Yes or No - hurry up, I don't have all day!"

    "Mummy Knows Best" - this one is a doozy. For whatever reason, you may have married someone with a disturbed childhood. You may have had a disturbed childhood yourself and felt an overwhelming empathy between the two of you.

    This is not a book about how to help family members who are genuinely disturbed and who may need professional help. It's about another matter entirely - it's about the various ways some men unwittingly create the conditions in their homes, that drive their wives away. And, of course, it's also about what those men can do to improve matters - so that their wives never have to reach the point where leaving their husbands starts to look like a good option.

    Troubleshooting: Maybe, after reading this chapter, you still can't work out how to make the changes that will help your indecisive wife. Maybe you can't work out whether she is indecisive by nature, or has become so only when she is with you. Maybe you're feeling completely overwhelmed, and don't know where to start.

    If that's you, there is something you can do, that will truly help, nine times out of ten. That's this: give your wife a little space, a little time. Be patient, encouraging, strong but gentle. You know your wife. You know what sort of decisions give her trouble. Don't force her to make such choices. But when she does, if you don't agree with her preference, please don't criticise her. Be gentle and tactful with her.

    And when you're making plans with her, and she never seems to know what she wants when you ask, you might try telling her what you'd like to do, so she knows where she stands, and then sort of ask her permission to do that, like: "Is that okay with you, Dear? Or is there some other way that you'd prefer?" If she feels powerless, that's one way to show her she has a veto, and is an equal partner with you.

    Outcomes: Each of the patterns has its own action for you to take, and a different course to its resolution.

    "Woman's' Way" - When you let your wife make her decisions in her own way, let her take her time over shopping for clothes, let her make her own route through the supermarket aisles, you remove a source of conflict. One change you will notice is that the arguments over those things will immediately cease, because you will no longer raise them as issues. As time goes by and she comes to realise this is a permanent change, you should expect her to be happier about shopping and about your tolerance and affection for her in this regard.

    "Not An Issue" - When your wife has opted out of making choices, you need to start supporting her decisions. But you can't , because she doesn't do that any more! If you try to force her to make some, so you can get started, you'll make things worse. Don't! Just wait. Eventually she will make some small decision, perhaps something you would once have argued over. Again, don't! Your patience will eventually prevail, but this will take considerable time to become effective, because initially your opportunities to display such patience will be few and far between. In addition, when this wife eventually decides on something that you disagree with - and it's a law of nature that this will happen - the way you express this disagreement will be crucial. Push and you're dead. Best is to let it go without comment, and gladly accept any cost of error as a small price to pay for rescuing your marriage. But if it's more serious and can't be let go, then an adult debate, without put-downs, anger or pressure, has the best chance of getting a good compromise decision and encourage your wife to work constructively with you in future.

    "Don't Set Me Up" - If you had been making the key decisions unilaterally, because you felt yourself superior to your wife at such matters, and you suddenly act as if you now think yourself no better than her, she'll wonder what's up. She may suspect your motives. For if you have experience or training that really does put you ahead in the quality of your family decisions, that's something she should value, provided her needs and preferences are considerately taken into account. Therefore, try adding the gathering of her points of view and desires as part of your lead up to your decisions, and discussing with her how you propose to incorporate them into the plan, and then asking her if she feels those needs would be well met by your proposal. Even the first time you do that, if you are patient with her, you should notice an initial hesitancy, but a gradual growth in confidence at amiably putting her point of view. Of course, if you were never the superior in these matters, but merely pressured you wife into doing things your way, you only need to back off and let her natural prowess get a proper airing. Be aware that in this case you may face some initial (and hopefully short-term) resentment that you didn't see the light sooner! Apologising for being a slow learner might help. If you can weather this phase you should reach a stage of cautious cooperation on decision-making, that could lead to satisfying debates on such family choices in future.

    "Mummy Knows Best" - Wives whose childhood, perhaps, led them to have low self-esteem, need kindness, support and encouragement. They may truly be apprehensive about making any life decisions for themselves. It's not unknown for their mothers even to have had quite a say in who they finally settled on as their husbands. You may have to keep on making the decisions for such a person. But if you involve your wife, discussing the factors that could affect the outcome, eliciting her preferences, showing how you are incorporating them in the decision, and above all avoid being patronising, you should over the months see a gradual easing of the signs of that apprehension. You could even see a gradual increase in confidence about going some matters on her own, initially after discussion with you. But as the years go by these discussion could come to look more like statements of intent - from a woman obviously much more confident and happy with herself - and with her husband.

    Copyright © 2007 Peter Leon Collins
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