Reply to Fussy, finicky people who can’t just go with the flow

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[quote=Anonymous]I hear you OP and it’s a negotiating style difference - that or anxiety - maybe both. Trust me, there is no activity that my husband’s family can’t find a way to make 5x more complicated or take 3x longer than necessary. I am also the classic inflexible person who is grumpy when I’m out of my routine.

In my family of origin, you throw out an opening offer as an invitation for rebuttal. In your example I would say “Let’s see a movie” and that’s a chance for people to counter “what about the zoo?” Or I’d say “the kids and I are interested in the 3pm showing of Migration” and that’s an opening for someone to say “Are there any earlier times?”. You can’t just shrug and expect people to present you a complete menu of all the options and pros/cons. You are expected to articulate what it is you have an issue with? The activity type? The movie title selection? The timing? The theatre location? 90% of the time the person who started the discussion is willing to be flexible, they are just placing the starting bet.

In my husband’s family of origin, they value harmony more than anything. They start off with the most passive of questions. If planning dinner it will be something like “Is anyone’s feeling hungry?” Then they will proceed to take a poll of preferences for cuisine, sit down/take out, location, time, etc. Then once a choice is made (hooray! It’s taken 30 min, but we’re going to sit down at a pizzaria!) they will proceed to look up and review / discuss / compare 4 menus for another 30 min before we can leave the house.  They just dance around these little statements like “we haven’t had Italian in a while” instead of saying “I want pizza” until everyone feels out the other people’s position and no one has the experience of suggesting something and being told “No”. They cannot handle conflict at all. When I was first married I’d say “Let’s have pizza at Dino’s at 6pm” and they would all say “ok” because they didn’t know what else to do and later my husband would ask why I was always so rude. Conversely my parents are convinced my husband has 0 opinions or preferences and will go along with anything they suggest. 
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