How these two meet
The restaurant question takes eleven minutes, and you both find it funny and neither of you finds it funny.
It is not indecision. It is two people each running a calculation about what the other one would prefer, on data that is entirely fabricated, because neither of you has said.
Venus weighs. That is the faculty, and it does not stop, because a relation is never finished. It also turns retrograde less often than any other planet here, so once a value settles it stays settled.
Two of those means every question gets weighed twice and answered by nobody.
The house is pleasant. Genuinely, not as a euphemism. Everybody who comes here is comfortable, and the two of you made that on purpose and are allowed to be pleased about it.
And underneath it there is a running total, on both sides, of concessions neither of you was ever asked to make.
For one of you, the work is answering the restaurant question in four words with no question mark on the end.
For the other, the work is accepting the answer without checking whether it was a real preference or a kindness.
And a third: the running total exists. You both know what is on it and neither of you has ever put a single item on the table.
The question
When did either of you last state a preference?
One conscious action
four words, no question mark
For one week, whoever is asked answers first and flatly. No returning the question. No offering the alternative.
Keep count of how often you fail at it. The number will be higher than either of you expects.
Venus weighs and does not stop, and there are two of them in this house and no third body to settle anything.
The cost is not the eleven minutes. It is that after all this time neither of you could say, under oath, what the other one would have chosen.