The second issue exacerbates the first one when it comes to making joint decisions. But they aren't the same. If you precede your W in death, she may take 2 weeks to pick out the casket.
People who have a hard time making decisions are afraid they will make the wrong choice. In making a choice, you walk through a doorway - you never get to find out what is behind the other door. People who can make decisions effectively look at the alternatives, get an appropriate amount of information, weigh the positives and negatives, make their choice, and don't look back afterward. An indecisive person seems to be incapable of weighing and balancing the risks and rewards of multiple alternatives. The information at hand is never enough to make a decision, so they send you off to collect more information. Having made a decision, they will second guess themselves - What if I'd done the other thing, maybe things would have turned out better.
I worked for a guy like that. I would make a proposal to improve a process that would result in a better product and reduce cycle times. My boss and I would agree on a set of experiments to prove that the change would work out OK. My experiments would show the desired improvements and point to the things we needed to do to make a smooth transition. My boss would react by asking for more experiments. This would happen until everyone else in the company would gang up on him, or I would get tired and give up. No fun.
I'm also married to someone who is indecisive. When we moved in 1995 to the Detroit area, it was an extremely inflationary housing market. After watching houses go on sale and get snapped up before I had a chance to even see them, I put an offer on the next house that I saw that met our needs and that we could afford. I put an offer on it the same day I saw it. My wife was appalled, but she grudgingly agreed. She proceeded to drive me nuts spending the next year shopping for houses, utterly convinced that a better one or less expensive one would come up for sale. Of course it never did. Which is not even the point. Sometimes things do go wrong, but sh't happens to even the best laid plans.
Sorry, I digress. The second point about intimacy is more about your letter. I'm sure she has feelings. She is afraid to tell you. You may have something to do with this. It is really important that you examine every important conversation that you've had with her to figure out if you have made her feel unsafe about telling you things, such as minimizing her feelings, getting defensive, or trying to fix her issues instead of just hearing and acknowledging them. Or, you might not have done anything wrong. She might have learned it from her family. Whatever. But she is afraid of what the reaction will be if she reveals herself. This happens in joint decision making: if she expresses a preference, she might create conflict. Honeypot has analyzed this one in depth on one or more of her current threads. How will you react? She doesn't know. And that's why she won't say. Because she is afraid of the worst case scenario, whether that is conflict, or apathy, or rejection.
That's what ties these two threads together: an inability to manage her fear of the unknown, and a strong suspicion that whatever she does will be a big mistake.
Instead of addressing the contents of the letter, maybe you need to focus on getting her to tell you why she won't discuss it.
SM
"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." Henry David Thoreau
