A piece in the New York Times offered 7 questions to strengthen your relationship. The suggestion was to sit down with your partner and answer each question together.
It’s a fine list.
I admittedly thought the question about monogamy was a little strange. There’s nothing wrong with deciding that monogamy isn’t right for your relationship anymore (or never was), but using a New York Times list to reveal your changing feelings about monogamy seems a little abrupt.
I also think the question, “Who takes out the garbage now?” dodges the real question that needs to be asked.
As I said, it’s a fine list, but given that I wrote an entire novel in list form, I couldn’t resist writing my own, far better list.
I originally wrote about 25 questions for my list over the course of three weeks, then I whittled it down to just 9, keeping the best and forgetting the rest (as all great list makers should do).
I purposely left off any questions about parenting and children because many couples don’t have kids, and those that do have children of varying ages, which would change the questions considerably. Instead, I’ve tried to address possible parenting issues with other questions on the list.
I’ve also retained one item from the New York Times list because it’s too good to pass up.
The list is designed so that one person in the relationship asks the other all 9 questions, then the positions are reversed.
If you use my list, I’d love to hear how it goes. I haven’t conducted any formal trials of my list, and Elysha and I haven’t used the list (she doesn’t even know that the list exists until she reads it like you), so any feedback would be welcomed.
Matthew Dicks’s 9 questions to strengthen your relationship:
- What aren’t you doing that you really wish you were doing?
- Do you think work and chores are shared fairly in our relationship?
- Is there a subject that makes you uncomfortable to talk about with me?
- What are three of your favorite things about me?
- What are three of our favorite things to do together?
- Do you think we should be having more sex, less sex, better sex, or exactly the same sex?
- Do we feel the same way about our finances?
- What is something worrying you that you haven’t told me about yet?
- What is one small thing that I could do to make you feel happier?
