When You Get Married, You’ll Soon Learn Agreeing On Dinner Is The Most Difficult Part

I get so indecisive sometimes, I can’t make up my mind about anything, even the simplest of decisions, like last night, my wife and I are trying to figure out dinner, she’s like, “What do you want?” and I’m like, “I don’t know, anything’s good I guess, whatever you want,” and she says, “Sushi?” and I say, “Sushi? Didn’t we just have sushi?” and she goes, “That was like a week ago,” to which I reply, “Yeah, I guess, but it feels like we just had it, you know what I mean?” and she shoots back, “Yeah, well you had pizza for lunch and dinner yesterday, why can’t we have sushi separated by a whole week?”

And I can tell immediately that I’ve f’ed up, me being the one telling her we could order “whatever, anything she wanted,” but she doesn’t bring it up right away, I know she will, eventually, if I can’t decide on something, but she makes another suggestion first, “Indian?” and I don’t know, I kind of just stare off into space, like thinking it over in my head, it’s not even that I don’t want Indian, it’s that I don’t have any feelings for it whatsoever, like her saying the word Indian registers in my head, I hear her say it, but it doesn’t spark anything inside me, neither good nor bad, and so I can’t respond with anything, I can only continue to stare, to zone out, maybe if I just completely ignore it, she’ll move on to something else.

“Rob? Indian?” and I need to engage here, but the best I can muster is, “Eh. I don’t know,” and now I know it’s coming, she’s going to get fed up, I’d be fed up, if I asked her what she wanted for dinner, and she pushed all onus of responsibility my way, of course I’d get a little annoyed if she started vetoing all of my decisions.

But I can’t commit. Do I want Indian? I don’t think so. Even sushi wouldn’t have been terrible, but I had already issued a complaint, which, maybe that was a little hasty of me, maybe I was being a tad difficult, because maybe sushi, I guess I could do sushi. She interrupts my thought process, “OK, so no sushi, no Indian,” and here would have been a good time to let her in on what was going through my head, about maybe warming up to the whole sushi thing, but I thought better of it, we were already too far into this that if I were to backtrack on the sushi, that would have been it, sushi for dinner, game set match, Rob zero, wife one.

“Mexican?” and I love Mexican, but the Mexican place by us is so heavy, so at least I have something to say here, I tell her, “That Mexican place is so heavy …” and she rolls her eyes, I don’t want to put off her suggestion entirely, so I add, “But I like it. It’s a great Mexican place. Just really heavy. Do you really feel like eating something so heavy?” and again, I think I got too busy defending my initial reaction, because sure Mexican is heavy, but now that I’m thinking about it, I wouldn’t mind eating something heavy.

“Actually, Mexican sounds pretty good,” but she’s already been swayed by my comment, “No, you’re right, I don’t really feel like eating anything that heavy,” which is my own fault, I set myself up for that one. But now I can’t get the taste of those tacos out of my head, “But what about those chorizo nachos?” I try to tempt her, and she pauses, but I can tell it’s going to be dismissed, “No, maybe next time. What about falafel?”

And now we’re swinging the other way, all because of my heavy comment. Note to self: unless I’m really set on not eating something for dinner, don’t describe it as heavy. I like falafel, but, “Honey, that’s not really a dinner,” which, I don’t even know what that means, but it’s the best I can come up with without giving her a minute to collect her thoughts, a desperate move on my part to try and avoid what I know to be coming next, an exasperated, “OK, so you tell me that you’ll eat anything, that it’s whatever I choose, right?”

There it is. “Right,” I tell her, “So let’s just get Mexican, you said it, obviously because you want it, right? You want it, I want it, let’s get Mexican,” and there’s a pause, I think that she’s considering it, but I’m mistaken, that face isn’t one of consideration, it’s one of apprehension, “But,” and I know it’s not going to happen, “It’s so … heavy.”

And then I think, sushi. Sushi wouldn’t be terrible, I could eat sushi. So I say, “You know what? Let’s just have sushi. You wanted sushi, so let’s get it,” and she’s like, “Are you sure?” and I should just be a grown up here and be happy with the fact that after all of my indecisiveness we’ve actually come to an agreement, but I can’t help myself, there are relationship points to be earned here, selfless points, I can use this in the future, something like, “Well you got to pick sushi last week …” and so I spit it out, “Well, I mean, I’ll get it … if that’s what you want. I can eat sushi, for you,” and she looks at me and smiles and says, “Thanks hun,” and I’m like, “Hey, no problem, anything for my one and only.”