Questions

Written for particular moments rather than as a generic list of a thousand prompts. Free, no signup.

Everything in this section

• The once-a-year conversation — An hour, once a year, on purpose. Twenty-eight questions covering the year behind and the year ahead, and the reason to do it while nothing is wrong.
• 32 questions to ask before moving in together — The conversations worth having before the lease, ordered — money, space, mess, guests, and the exit. Free, no signup, and each section ends in somethi
• Before you get engaged — Not a compatibility test. Thirty-two questions covering the things couples discover afterwards, arranged by how expensive they are to find out late.
• Blended families and stepparenting — The hardest part is rarely the children. It is that two people brought two sets of rules, two histories and two other households into one house withou
• Families, in-laws and the holidays — Arguments about family are rarely about the family. They are about whose discomfort gets absorbed and who is expected to absorb it. Twenty-eight quest
• Friends and friendships — Whose friends you keep, who you stopped seeing, and the friend one of you cannot stand. Twenty-four questions about the part of a relationship that er
• 30 questions for long distance — Long distance fails on logistics-only contact and unspoken expectations, not on distance. Questions in four groups — the actual rhythm, the hard conve
• 28 questions for talking about money — Money arguments are usually not about money. Questions ordered to surface the beliefs underneath before the numbers, with a structure for the conversa
• Talking about sex and intimacy — The conversation most couples avoid entirely, and the one where avoidance costs the most. Twenty-seven questions about wanting, mismatch, change and w
• The first six months — Early enough that everything is still negotiable, late enough that it is a real relationship. The questions that are much easier now than in year thre
• The first six months with a baby — Sleep, the invisible load, resentment nobody says out loud, and how to have a five-minute conversation when five minutes is what you have.
• The first year after retirement — Retirement changes the structure of a relationship more than almost anything else, and almost nobody plans that part. Thirty questions about time, spa
• The first year of living together — The things that go wrong in the first year are almost never the things people worried about beforehand. Questions for the labour split, the money, the
• The mental load: 30 questions about who is holding what — Most arguments about chores are not about chores. They are about who notices, who remembers, and who has to be asked. Thirty questions for the convers
• When a parent is ill — One person's parent becomes both people's situation, and almost none of it gets discussed until a decision is forced. Twenty-nine questions, including
• When one of you is in therapy — Individual therapy changes a relationship even when it is going well. Questions about what to share, what stays private, and how to talk about change
• When one of you is unwell — Illness changes a relationship in ways neither person expects, and most of it goes unsaid because saying it feels ungrateful or like complaining. Twen
• When one of you travels for work — Travel does not damage a relationship. Re-entry does, and so does the version of the week each person tells themselves. Twenty-six questions for the g
• When one of you wants to move — Geography is the one thing that cannot be split. Twenty-six questions for finding out what each of you actually wants, before it becomes a deadline wi
• When you are both too tired to talk — The evenings that need a conversation least are the ones you have most of. Twenty-five questions that take under a minute to answer and do not require
• When you are not sure you want to stay — Not a decision aid and not an argument for either answer. Twenty-six questions for working out what you are actually unsure about, which is usually no
• When you disagree about children — The one disagreement that cannot be split. Twenty-six questions for finding out what each of you actually means, before the conversation becomes a dea
• When you sleep at different times — A small logistical difference that quietly removes most of a couple's shared time. Twenty-three questions about the bedroom, the evening, and what you
• When you have different social needs — One of the most common ordinary mismatches, and one of the least discussed, because both people think their position is obviously reasonable. Twenty-f
• When you work together — Running something together, or working in the same place, removes the boundary everything else was relying on. Twenty-five questions about roles, disa