Questions to Ask Your Partner: 30 That Bring You Closer
Warm-ups
These have one job: get the conversation moving. No need to start in the deep end.
- What made you laugh today?
- If we could go anywhere tomorrow, where are we going?
- What song always reminds you of us?
- If money stopped mattering, what would your week look like?
- What food could you eat every day and never get tired of?
- What made you proudest as a kid?
- What small thing I do would you miss if it disappeared?
- What have you been watching or reading that you can't stop thinking about?
- If we could relive one of our evenings, which one do you pick?
- What made you happy today, even though it was completely ordinary?
Getting closer
These take a beat to answer, and this is usually where the interesting part happens.
- What are you proud of this year that I might not have noticed?
- What do you need more of from me that's hard to ask for?
- When do you feel like I'm actually listening?
- What's worrying you now that you didn't want to put on me?
- What does a perfectly calm day with us look like?
- What would you change about how we spend our weekends?
- When do you feel most yourself with me?
- What did the house you grew up in teach you about love, good and bad?
- Which decision we made together do you look back on most fondly?
- What do we want to be doing together five years from now?
The bolder ten
Here we move into closeness and wanting. Long-together couples tend to assume this subject was settled years ago. It almost never was.
- What makes you feel how much I want you?
- What makes you feel close to me outside the bedroom?
- Is there something you want to try that hasn't been said out loud yet?
- What do you like about me that I rarely say out loud?
- What does a perfect evening, just the two of us, look like to you?
- What was there more of between us at the start that you miss now?
- What could I do so that lands more often?
- What small thing I do affects you more than I probably realize?
- What do you fantasize about that we've never discussed?
- What don't I know about you, simply because I never asked?
How to ask them well
The questions are half the work. The other half is what you do with the answers.
Go first. If you want an honest answer to a bold question, offer yours before you ask for theirs. It's far easier to open up to someone who just did it.
Take turns. A back-and-forth feels like a conversation; a one-way stream of questions feels like a test.
Never use an answer later. Nothing makes someone say less next time faster than hearing "well, you said…" a week afterward.
Letting a silence sit helps too. The most honest sentences tend to arrive a beat after the easy ones.
Where the bolder ten usually stall
Most couples get through the first twenty and slow down at the third group, on the assumption that anything worth saying about sex was said years ago.
Our own numbers say otherwise. In anonymous answers from the Privé quiz, 28.6% of couples have at least one shared hidden want: both partners want the same thing and neither has ever said it. The curiosity is already there on both sides, waiting for someone to ask.
Which is why these work best when you have time and no audience: a long drive, a dinner without phones, the quiet after the kids are asleep. There's no prize for getting through all thirty. If an answer lands badly, our guide to difficult conversations covers what to do next, and if you want to go deeper than this list, there are deep questions for couples and questions that build intimacy.
If you'd rather not run the list
That's the whole idea behind Privé. You each answer the same questions privately, then see where your answers meet. With the bolder ones, only a shared yes is revealed. A single no stays private, so honesty costs you nothing. The first round is free and takes a few minutes, and it's usually enough to start a conversation you've been circling for months.