How to Get to Know Someone Again

1. The Science of Intimacy
2. How to Inquire the 36 Questions
1. Grab a Partner
2. Find Your Space
3. Focus on the Means Not the End
4. Information technology'south Non Polite to Stare
3. The 36 Questions
1. Gear up one Questions
2. Set ii Deep Questions
3. Ready 3 Deeper Questions
4. Do The 36 Questions Really Work?
1. Hither'due south What Others Say About the 36 Questions
2. Bonus: The 36 Questions in Action

Do you know the right questions to enquire your pregnant other?

I mean, have you really, truly, securely asked the best questions to get to know them equally a person?

I'm a victim of the How Trap. The How Trap is when you are stuck just request "How are you?" and nothing more. In the How Trap you get caught upward in day-to-solar day logistics and check-ins.

Put simply:

I don't want to know just how you are. I want to know who you are.

You know you are in the How Trap if:

• Most of your questions commencement with "how." Like "how are you?" or "how are the kids?" or "how are you feeling?" or even, "how was your day?" These just bear on the surface.
• You lot don't brand eye contact while you speak. You are doing the dishes, driving or cleaning up the business firm when you speak. This ways your attention is not going deep.
• You rely on social media posts to cheque-in. Practice you feel like yous already know everything that is going on in your people'southward lives because y'all follow them on social media? Sometimes this gets you caught in the how trap.

Sometimes we feel like we actually know someone, but on the surface we are only familiar with the day-to-day.

For instance, when my husband and I get really busy, we can go days without asking any questions beyond logistics-type questions. We see each other at the end of the solar day and ask "How was your day?" and we go through what we did and what happened. Nosotros talk near plans for the weekend and updates from friends we saw on Facebook.

The other 24-hour interval, I had this big Aha moment…

I realized nosotros were talking, only we weren't sharing.

I retrieve this happens with couples, friendships, and especially parents and their kids. We get so wrapped upward in the day-to-twenty-four hours that nosotros are lucky to go to the 'how are yous?' merely we very rarely become to the 'who are you?' Particularly when you have known someone for a long time, we forget to inquire how they take changed. We allow the deeper questions fade away.

The Scientific discipline of Intimacy

Psychology Professor Dan McAdams has studied what information technology takes to truly know someone. He believes there are "three levels of knowing" and that these are the three stages people progress through to become intimate friends, lovers, or companions.

• Level 1: General Traits At this level, you go to know someone's full general personality traits. Specifically, where they fall on the Big v spectrum: how loftier or low they are in Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. See our overview of the personality traits here.
• Level 2: Personal Concerns This is where someone gets to know a person'southward goals, values, and motivations. They also become a broader pic of the decisions and attitudes that shape their life.
• Level 3: Self-Narrative Finally, when yous truly know someone, you know the stories they tell themselves about themselves—how they have made sense of their journeying and purpose through life.

The question is: How do y'all move through these three levels?

Level 1 is easy—typical conversation can help you lot with this.

Level 2 can happen naturally as yous live with someone, travel with someone, and take shared experiences.

Only Level 3 only can be done purposefully and with the right questions in a safe space. This brings me to the 36 couple questions.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

How to Ask the 36 Questions

Take hold of a Partner

Notice your meaning other, friend, parent, blood brother, sister, travel buddy, stranger you met online… really, ANYONE y'all want to get a picayune closer with! Make sure they are interested in completing the 36 questions with you lot.

↑ Tabular array of Contents ↑

Detect Your Infinite

Find that placidity place where you won't be interrupted for at to the lowest degree 45 minutes to an hour. The last thing you desire is to be interrupted past a phone call from your landlord!

READ: You lot exercise NOT take to do these all in 1 sitting—in fact, I recommend against it. Sometimes, intimacy takes time to build up. So commencement with 1 per dinner perhaps or i per automobile ride. Have your time, bask them, expand on them, and see where they accept you. One of my friends and I answer one of these each week.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Focus on the Means Not the End

The questions are categorized in three dissimilar sets, with each set of questions a fiddling flake more personal than the last. You'll take turns with your partner request these questions, and both answering the questions.

It's important to Not skip the questions, even if you know the answer to them. Keep in mind, vulnerability brings people closer. The indicate of these questions is to accept sustained, escalating, and reciprocal self-disclosure. Take fourth dimension having both people answer the questions and truly mind to the answers without judgment.

Information technology'll expect something like this:

• Person A asks the first question.
• Person B answers the kickoff question.
• Deep discussion! Aha moments! Surprises!
• Person A answers the kickoff question.
• Deep discussion! Aha moments! Surprises!
• Person B asks the second question.
• So on…

↑ Table of Contents ↑

It's Non Polite to Stare

When you're finished asking the questions, at that place is I more step that the original experiment suggests:

Stare in your partner'southward optics for four minutes.

This step is completely optional, but according to a 2022 study by Japanese researchers, eye contact activates the special parts of our brain responsible for empathy. If you really have the time to look into your partner'south optics, it'll be a special finish to your round of questions!

Just make sure to blink… otherwise, that'southward just a little chip creepy.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

The 36 Questions

These 36 questions were developed to aid people break through each of the intimacy levels. Yous tin can exercise these with your partner or with friends. I highly recommend them to parents and teens!

You can even print these out or electronic mail them to a friend!

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Set 1 Questions

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a phone phone call, do you ever rehearse what y'all're going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a perfect 24-hour interval for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to alive to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or trunk of a 30-year former for the last lx years of your life, which would you choose?
7. Practice y'all take a secret hunch almost how y'all will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to accept in mutual.
9. For what in your life do you feel virtually grateful?
10. If you could modify anything about the way you lot were raised, what would it be?
11. Accept four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail every bit possible.
12. If yous could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or power, what would it be?

↑ Tabular array of Contents ↑

Prepare 2 Deep Questions

13. If a crystal ball could tell y'all the truth most yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that yous've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What practise y'all value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change annihilation about the way yous are living now? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do dearest and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you lot consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a full of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you experience your childhood was happier than most other people'southward?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your female parent?

↑ Tabular array of Contents ↑

Set iii Deeper Questions

25. Make three true "nosotros" statements each. For example, "we are both in this room feeling…"
26. Consummate this judgement: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share…"
27. If y'all were going to get a close friend with your partner, delight share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what y'all similar about them: Be honest this time, maxim things that you might non say to someone you've only met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front end of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like near them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked almost?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you nearly regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you ain, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have fourth dimension to safely make a final nuance to save any one item. What would it exist? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family unit, whose decease would you observe most agonizing? Why?
36. Share a personal trouble and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, enquire your partner to reflect dorsum to y'all how you seem to exist feeling about the problem you lot have chosen.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Practise The 36 Questions Actually Work?

To observe out if the questions actually work, allow'due south turn to the creator of the 36 questions—a psychology professor named Arthur Aron.

"I looked for the inquiry on love, just there was about none" — Arthur Aron

Because there was a lack of dear in the scientific customs, Aron wondered: What's the best fashion to create dear between ii people?

So later numerous tests, he came up with these deliciously intimate questions to bring strangers closer together.

And when he put these 36 questions to the exam, he institute that…

Pairs of strangers who asked these 36 questions felt greater closeness than strangers who simply engaged in pocket-size talk.

How about couples in a long-term human relationship? When I asked my husband these questions on a Friday appointment night, it was immediately a pace upwards from the usual "how was your day" spiel. We were both hooked as we fired off these questions back and along! And the best part?

We both learned something new nigh each other.

That night, we finished dinner saying to each other, "Wow! I didn't know that well-nigh you!"

And nosotros aren't the but ones that felt that way.

↑ Tabular array of Contents ↑

Here's What Others Say About the 36 Questions

• A woman asked her boyfriend of 5 years the 36 questions.

What she said: "I realize that this dialogue is entirely new for the states, and that I've learned something about my boyfriend."

• A millennial woman asked these questions with a stranger she just met online.

What she said: "The 36 Questions warp speed two strangers into intimacy and vulnerability before they know whether or non a relationship is even possible."

• New York Times writer Mandy Len Catron tried it at the bar with her university acquaintance.

What she said: "You lot're probably wondering if he and I vicious in love. Well, we did."

In Aron's original experiment, 2 participants of the experiment fifty-fifty got married! They also invited the entire lab to their nuptials ceremony.

So are you lot ready to attempt the 36 questions yourself? Possibly y'all'll even autumn in beloved!*

*results not guaranteed.

↑ Table of Contents ↑

Bonus: The 36 Questions in Action

Check out these real life strangers request each other the deep stuff. You won't believe what happens at the cease!

krausesubbeirie.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/deep-questions/

Share this post