Hello, I am writing because there is a consistent challenge facing my wife and I in our decision-making process. I can't go into a lot of details, but the summary I am going to provide has been approved by my wife as a fair representation of the situation. We work in a field that requires a fair amount of family-impacting decisions that have tight external constraints, particularly in regards to making a definitive decision in a short amount of time. The challenge we face is that one of us is very decisive and one of us is very indecisive. The decisive spouse (DS) tends to approach decisions rationally, the indecisive spouse (IS) tends to approach them intuitively. DS tends to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of a decision against long-term goals and desired states that we've agreed on (ie those goals and states are not contentious), then move to making a decision, preferring to have space between the decision and the deadline. IS tends to prioritize their feelings about the decision, about each of the possible outcomes, and would like a joint decision, but does not enjoy making decisions. IS struggles with deadlines in general, and is best in relational situations that don't require pressured deadlines, DS struggles with relational decisions and lack of deadlines. The problem that we've faced is that our work involves deadlines that don't have a lot of lead time, and sometimes the decisions can be as big as where we live, how many children we have, etc. It attempting to apply the POJA, the problem we have is that IS can feel overwhelmed and "lock up", avoiding the discussion in the hopes that the issue will resolve itself, while DS can become irritable and engage in Love Busters (particularly disrespectful judgments/angry outbursts as the deadline approaches without discussion advancing towards either decision, then independent behavior/dishonesty if the deadline arrives. I hope that I've explained this clearly enough; we are both very much in love, we are Christians, and we believe in this policy and practice it in most of our decisions, but in this category of decision, we have a long-standing difficulty. Thanks for any help that you can provide.

Welcome Havalynii; it sounds as if you have the perfect combination - a rational decision maker and an intuitive decision maker. Why is that perfect? Because the rational spouse may fail to take feelings into account and the emotional spouse may fail to be practical. But instead of getting joy from each other's strengths you are fighting against them so not only is this damaging your ability to make good decisions but, as you have observed, it is damaging your relationship.

I am decisive and married to an intuitive spouse. He came into the marriage so indecisive that it took a full summer just to work out where we should go on our first holiday together. Every evening over dinner I would throw out a few ideas. We kept it brief and enjoyable. Initially he agreed to everything I suggested but gradually as time went on he started to express his view. He needed to trust that I would not become disrespectful. Eventually we decided on a holiday that was better than one that either of us would have thought of alone which is of course the entire point of the exercise.

You have to start slowly with little stuff that is not life changing. POJA takes practice, patience and above all time. As you get better at it you can take on on more complex decisions. In the meantime the default is to do nothing. Remember also that any decision made by either of you can be changed at any time. The other person has to be gracious and understanding. Then the POJA starts again from the beginning.

Thank you, living_well. It's encouraging to know that our current work on lower-risk decisions is a step in the right direction, although we're still a bit at a loss regarding the rather frequent deadline-sensitive decisions.

The default position is always to do nothing. Just find a way to put off the deadline sensitive decisions for now. That might seem impossible but it is amazing how many apparently time sensitive decisions can be postponed. Every time you put pressure on her, you will undo all the good work you are doing with the lower-risk decisions. Far better to not take that wonderful new job than destroy your marriage!