Decisions about your own life seem to get made without you. You resent choices you agreed to. Asked what you want, you go blank, and a day later, alone, you know. There is a low grief in it that you would struggle to explain to anyone. The questions underneath are short ones: Who am I? What do I really want?
The blankness may not be a lack of preferences. It may be a habit of dropping them early.
01
What you do when it happens
Look first at what happens to a want between having it and saying it. It tends to go one of two ways.
Sometimes it comes out disguised, as a hint, a joke, or a question. Do you feel like going away this year? Nobody picks it up, and you are hurt in a way you can't explain to them.
Sometimes it doesn't arrive at all. You are asked where you would like to live, or whether you want the job, and you describe what would work for everyone. Your own answer is not on the list. I went along with whatever they wanted, every time. I told myself that's what loving somebody is.
People call this being indecisive or easygoing. That may be all it is.
Think of ski tracks. The first run down fresh snow cuts a groove, and every run after it follows the groove because that is the easiest way down. If setting your own want aside was the easy way down for long enough, "I don't mind" stops being a decision. It is where the slope takes you. Knowing that you do this is a view of the hill. It doesn't cut a new track.
02
What dropping the want may be protecting
Further down is the question of what the habit is for. Going along is something you do. It doesn't say why. Three candidates here. None is a finding, they are not the only possibilities, and none of them may fit.
"If everyone is okay, then I'm okay."
A want is a possible disagreement. If you want one thing and they want another, somebody ends up put out, so the want may get withdrawn first.
Read about Peace →"I'm still working for someone who may not even be watching anymore."
Wants may once have been measured by one particular person, and some passed and some did not. You may still be sorting them that way.
Read about Approval →"I need to be chosen."
The want may bend toward whatever keeps you picked. What you want becomes what they would like you to want.
Read about Chosen →03
What is under the rule
Under each of these, a want is a risk before it is a wish.
Under Peace, the fear may be that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. Under Approval, that without that person's verdict you don't know what you are worth. Under Chosen, that if you are not selected, you were not enough.
That may be where the grief comes from, and the thought that tends to come with it: I just want to get back to who I am. It may not be about where to eat. It may be about a long run of wants that were judged too costly before you had finished having them.
04
Two questions, in order
Can you name the person? Ask it at the moment a want starts to form and then closes. One specific person, the same one whether you are choosing a job or a sofa, suggests Approval. Whoever is in front of me suggests Chosen.
If it isn't one named person, ask the second. Would you rather have no conflict and be nobody's favorite, or be someone's favorite and have friction? No conflict leans toward Peace. Favorite leans toward Chosen.
Two questions narrow it. They don't close it, and more than one of these can be true.
Ruling one of these out is the point. That is how subtraction works: take away what doesn't account for the evidence, and see what is left.
05
One thing to try this week
Once this week, when someone asks what you would like, stop before you answer and ask yourself privately: if nobody else were affected, what would I pick? See whether anything answers.
If something does, say it as a statement and not a question. I'd like the Thai place. Afterward, check what it cost. Was anyone upset? Did you picture a face? Or did nothing happen?
If nothing answers when you ask, that is not a verdict on you. A want that has gone unasked for a long time can be quiet without being gone.
Where this can lead, if the big decisions keep being made by whoever does say what they want, is described in When nothing in your life feels like yours.