All Options Are Acceptable Except Those Proposed

Both people are hungry.

Both people would like to eat soon. Both people have been asked what they want and have said, with sincerity, that they are happy with anything. This is true, as far as it goes. The anything in question does not include several specific things, which will be revealed sequentially as those things are suggested.

The Field Notes

Person A said they were happy with anything. Person B suggested a place. Person A said that sounded good, though they had been there recently. Person B said they were also fine with anything. Person A suggested somewhere else. Person B said that worked, though it might be a bit far on a weeknight. Person A mentioned a third option. Person B said they had been meaning to try it, actually, and left a pause that communicated something Person A interpreted as mild reluctance.

Both parties confirmed they were happy with anything. Four options had been named. No options had been chosen. Three things had been not-rejected in a way that functioned as rejection.

The Mechanism

Nobody is lying. The preference for anything is genuine. It coexists with a set of conditions that cannot be stated directly because stating them sounds picky, and both parties have self-images as people who are not picky. The conditions include: recency of visit, distance, price, whether the other person seems genuinely enthusiastic, and a quality that cannot be named but which is recognizable when absent.

Both parties are monitoring the other for genuine enthusiasm and offering polite non-rejection in response to options that don't produce it. Neither party wants to be the one who decided, because deciding means owning the choice if the choice turns out to be wrong.

The Resolution

One person gets slightly hungrier than the other and names a place with enough conviction that it functions as a decision rather than a suggestion. The other person agrees immediately. Both people are relieved.

The place is usually the second or third option mentioned. It was always going to be fine. The whole process was about who was going to say so first.