I'm 30 years old, and about to make what might turn out to be the single most important decision in my personal life.

Should I stay and have children with my current partner?

She is a great person, we're great friends, together for a few years, no red flags, but no chemistry on my side. Mathematically, I think I should stay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

I feel that having kids and many decades together should be a decision easier to do than what I'm going through. This is the sort of decision I would say: "do it, if it's obvious; if you're having doubts, well, it's a tell". I've been with other partners where I wanted to have kids much more enthusiastically (although in a more distant future).

Anyway, I'm trying to be as introspective as possible, and understand what I'm feeling and why.

How can I, at least, not regret - not the decision - but the decision process? (is there a difference?)

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I like Ruth Chang's framework on her Hard Choices TED talk. 1. Is it lack of information? Sometimes even if you have the ability to see the full future outcome of both alternatives, it is still hard. 2. Hard choices are an opportunity for us to realize and choose what we value most, and define ourselves. "Who am I to be?"

There's Bezos' regret-minimization-when-I'm-80-years-old framework.

There's Larry Smith's "Why you will fail to have a great career" talk and how not to make yourself prisoner of others, namely your partner and your children.

There's expected value maximization, multi-objective optimization, exploration-exploitation trade-offs, billion-dollars-russian-roulette decisions, and sunk costs fallacy. Go with your gut, and double check it? Research others in similar previous situations? Ensemble all these models?

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What tools and processes do you use to make your most important decisions?

How do you decide on your personal and professional "wicked problems"?