indecision

Again Barker showed some signs of indecision.

Anger, amazement, consternation, and indecision swept over it in turn.

To know that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness as nothing could have conquered, but the state of indecision in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate, and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into repeating something of Bingley, which might only grieve her sister further.

This pervasive, creeping indecision is largely driven by the inescapable economic concept of opportunity cost, which quietly haunts every selection we make.