Column · relationship decision
A communication problem improves when information is exchanged. A decision problem does not: the same argument returns with different examples because the underlying question has not been answered.
The same conversation, three or more times, with different details and the same shape. That repetition is the signal that the topic is not informational.
One of the available options becomes unavailable. Not preferred — unavailable. Until something is foreclosed, the conversation continues, because it is doing the work of avoiding the choice.
Because it sounds like an ultimatum. It is not. It is the observation that the current arrangement is already a decision — the decision to keep the question open, indefinitely, at a cost that is paid quietly by both people.
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