Living in the Space Between (Part 2): The Cost of Not Deciding

Part Two: Why We Stay Stuck, What Decisions Require, and the Courage to Choose

By Alena Neykova & AI, LCSW | Austin, Texas

Clinical Couples Therapist & Clinical Director

Union Station Therapy

Making a Decision Is No Small Thing

We talk about making decisions as though they're straightforward exercises in logic. Gather the facts, weigh the options, choose the most sensible path, and carry on.

But making a meaningful decision asks considerably more of us than that.

It requires conviction. A willingness to arrive at a position and stand behind it, even when other possibilities remain.

It requires volition. The capacity to translate intention into action, rather than endlessly revisiting what we might do.

It requires self-knowledge. Understanding who we are, what matters to us, what we need, and what we're no longer willing to compromise.

It requires alignment with our values. Because a decision that looks perfectly sensible on paper may leave us deeply unsettled if it contradicts what we believe is important.

It requires courage. The willingness to move forward without guarantees, knowing we may experience disappointment, regret, or loss.

And perhaps most importantly, it requires trust and faith.

Faith that we will be okay. Faith that we have the resilience to navigate whatever follows. Faith that even when events don't unfold according to our plans, something meaningful and good can still emerge from the experience.

For some, that faith is rooted in spiritual belief and trust that things can ultimately work together for good. For others, it is grounded in confidence in their ability to adapt, learn, rebuild, and find their footing.

Either way, making a decision often requires us to relinquish the illusion that we can control every outcome.

It asks us to trust ourselves enough to act.

And that is no small thing.

Perhaps this is why we sometimes remain in situations that no longer feel right, not because we lack intelligence or insight, but because we haven't yet developed the conviction, clarity, or trust required to move in a direction.

The challenge, of course, is that waiting for absolute certainty can become an endless exercise.

At some point, not making a decision becomes a decision of its own.

The Science of Indecision: Why Our Minds Prefer to Wait

Psychologists Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir explored an interesting phenomenon in their 1992 research, Choice Under Conflict: The Dynamics of Deferred Decision.

They found that when people face competing alternatives, particularly when neither choice clearly dominates the other, they become more likely to postpone the decision altogether.

Interestingly, having more attractive options doesn't always make choosing easier. Sometimes it makes choosing more difficult.

This challenges the assumption that greater choice necessarily produces better decisions.

Think about that in the context of a relationship.

When staying has meaningful advantages and leaving has meaningful advantages, we're not simply choosing between good and bad. We're choosing between different combinations of loss, possibility, risk, and hope.

And so we delay.

We tell ourselves we need more information, another conversation, another few months, another sign that one direction is clearly right.

Of course, gathering information can be useful. There are decisions that deserve patience.

But sometimes information-gathering becomes an elaborate form of avoidance. We continue searching, hoping that eventually a decision will present itself without requiring us to tolerate the discomfort of making it.

Psychologist Christopher Anderson examined this phenomenon in his 2003 review, The Psychology of Doing Nothing. He identified several forms of decision avoidance, including postponing a choice, maintaining the status quo, and avoiding action.

One important factor is anticipated regret.

We imagine making a decision, discovering that it was wrong, and having to live with the consequences.

Doing nothing can therefore feel safer because it allows us to postpone responsibility for an outcome.

But here's the problem.

The consequences of not deciding are often much less visible than the consequences of deciding.

We can easily imagine the pain of leaving a marriage. We may have a harder time imagining the cumulative cost of spending five years emotionally disengaged from it.

We can imagine regretting a career change. We rarely calculate the cost of another three years spent wishing we'd made one.

Indecision can be comforting in the present while becoming extraordinarily expensive over time.

We Are Remarkably Poor at Predicting How We Will Feel

Another reason important decisions can be so difficult is that we are trying to predict a future we cannot know.

Psychologists Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert have extensively studied affective forecasting: our ability to anticipate how future events will make us feel.

Their research demonstrates that people often overestimate both the intensity and duration of their emotional responses to significant events.

We imagine how devastated we might feel if a relationship ended, how wonderful life might become if we found someone new, or how unbearable it might be if we made the wrong choice.

But our forecasts are imperfect.

We underestimate our capacity to adapt, make meaning of difficult experiences, and find sources of happiness we cannot currently imagine.

This doesn't mean that loss won't be painful or that every decision will eventually turn out well.

It means that the emotional future we're so afraid of may not unfold exactly as our minds predict.

And perhaps this is one of the most important things to remember when we're standing at a crossroads.

We cannot eliminate uncertainty before choosing.

No amount of thinking can guarantee that staying will bring happiness, that leaving will bring relief, or that another path will ultimately prove better.

At some point, the search for certainty can become the very thing preventing us from living.

But What If This Isn't Just About Your Relationship?

Here's a question worth considering.

How often do you find yourself in this space between in other areas of your life?

How often do you postpone a decision because you aren't certain which direction is right?

Perhaps it's a career change, a business idea, a move to another city, or an opportunity that would require you to leave something familiar behind.

You research. You reconsider. You ask other people what they think. You imagine every possible outcome.

You make a decision on Tuesday, reverse it on Thursday, and by Sunday you're back where you started.

I recognize this pattern because I've experienced it myself.

I once spent more than a year and a half deciding what kind of business to start.

I weighed the possibilities, reconsidered my options, changed direction, and at times left the outcome somewhat to fate.

I wanted to make the right decision.

But looking back, I've come to recognize how costly that prolonged period of uncertainty was.

It wasn't simply the time I spent thinking.

It was the time I wasn't building anything.

I wasn't developing momentum, learning from mistakes, refining an idea, or creating something tangible.

I was standing at the edge of several possible lives without fully stepping into any of them.

And I wonder how often we do this to ourselves.

We imagine we're protecting our future by postponing a choice, when in reality we may be postponing the very experiences that would help us create one.

The Most Costly Decision May Be the One We Never Make

There is a seductive quality to indecision.

As long as we haven't chosen, all the possibilities remain theoretically available.

We haven't failed at the business because we haven't started it.

We haven't discovered whether a relationship can be repaired because we haven't fully committed to the work.

We haven't made the wrong choice because, technically, we haven't made one at all.

But this sense of preserving possibility can be misleading.

Time continues moving whether we choose a direction or not.

Opportunities change. Relationships evolve. Circumstances shift.

And the person we might have become through action remains largely theoretical.

I increasingly believe that one of the most costly decisions we can make is to remain indefinitely in a state of not deciding.

Not because every decision needs to be made quickly, or because reflection is unimportant.

But because there is a difference between thoughtfully considering our options and allowing uncertainty to become our permanent address.

When we refuse to choose a direction, we may also be refusing ourselves the opportunity to grow through that choice.

There is something deeply frustrating about remaining stagnant while simultaneously longing for change.

We want clarity before movement.

But sometimes clarity is produced by movement.

We learn what we value by acting on it. We discover our capacities by testing them. We develop confidence by navigating consequences, rather than waiting until consequences are no longer possible.

This doesn't mean rushing into irreversible decisions, and it certainly doesn't mean that leaving a relationship is always better than staying.

Sometimes the courageous decision is to stay and genuinely invest.

Sometimes it's to leave.

And sometimes it's to commit to a meaningful period of exploration, honest conversation, or couples therapy.

What matters is that we begin participating in our lives rather than watching them from the sidelines.

Perhaps the Real Question Is Whether We Trust Ourselves

I've been thinking increasingly about the role of self-trust in decision-making.

Because beneath the fear of making the wrong choice, there is often another fear:

What if I can't handle what happens afterward?

What if I regret it?

What if things fall apart?

What if I discover that the other path would have been better?

We want assurance that the decision will work out before we allow ourselves to make it.

But no one can offer us that guarantee.

Perhaps confidence isn't really about knowing that our decisions will be right.

Perhaps it's about trusting that even if they aren't, we have the capacity to respond.

That we can grieve. Rebuild. Reconsider. Adapt.

That we can pick up the pieces of something that didn't go as planned and still make something meaningful out of what remains.

There is an enormous difference between believing I must make the right decision and believing I can handle the consequences of making a thoughtful decision.

The first demands certainty.

The second makes room for being human.

And I'm finding myself increasingly drawn toward the second.

I'm consciously working to change my own relationship with indecision.

To recognize when reflection has stopped being productive and started becoming avoidance.

To make choices with the information available, accept that I cannot predict every outcome, and trust myself to navigate what follows.

More than anything, I'm choosing to live rather than remain perpetually suspended in the possibility of living.

Choosing to Live

It is certain that not every decision we make will lead us exactly where we hoped.

Some choices will disappoint us. Some paths will prove more difficult than anticipated. Some endings will be genuinely painful.

But I am beginning to believe that a life fully participated in, even imperfectly, offers something that perpetual indecision never can.

Movement.

Experience.

The possibility of discovering something we couldn't have known while standing still.

Maybe we don't need to know how the entire story ends before choosing the next chapter.

Maybe we simply need enough courage to turn the page.

I'm choosing movement over stagnation. Participation over avoidance. Living over standing still, looking into the abyss of every possible future.

Because I've come to believe that remaining forever at the crossroads is its own kind of loss.

And I would rather trust myself to find my way than spend another year waiting for the road to reveal itself.

Union Station Therapy offers individual relationship counseling, periodic therapy groups, and marriage and couples counseling in Austin, Texas. Whether you're navigating relationship uncertainty, struggling with difficult decisions, or hoping to reconnect with yourself or your partner, we're here to help you find greater clarity and a meaningful path forward.

Research and Further Reading

• Tversky, A., & Shafir, E. (1992). Choice under conflict: The dynamics of deferred decision. Psychological Science, 3(6), 358–361.

• Anderson, C. J. (2003). The psychology of doing nothing: Forms of decision avoidance result from reason and emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 139–167.

• Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131–134.