We all want to love and to be loved. Love is all we need!
What if I told you that falling in love is actually a recipe – where all you need is a partner, 36 questions, and four uninterrupted minutes of looking deeply into each other’s eyes?
These questions only take about 45 minutes to discuss and almost always make two people feel better about each other and want to see each other again. This quiz helps boost intimacy in friendship, romance and even provoke a marriage.
These 36 questions to fall in love are a set of questions developed in the 1990s by psychologists Arthur Aron, Ph.D., Elaine Aron, Ph.D., and other researchers to see if two strangers can create an intimate connection just from asking each other a series of increasingly personal questions. They published their results in “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness” in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (1997).
The experiment became massively popular after the New York Times Modern Love column published an essay by Mandy Len Catron in 2015 about her experience trying the questions with an acquaintance whom she went on to marry.
What are the 36 questions to fall in love? Some of the questions are pretty innocuous, others confronting. Completed all at once, they can be a shortcut to intimacy in an hour.
The questions are divided into three sections, which gradually become more and more intense. Each of you should take a turn answering each question.
If you want to go even deeper with each other, try the Marcel Proust Questionnaire, written by Marcel Proust, a famous French writer, when he was 13 and 20. In the late 19th century, when Marcel Proust answered them, these questions were a popular parlor game played by guests in high society gatherings—much like Truth or Dare!
Try out the 36 questions with a partner or stranger below. It’s a great way to get to know yourself and others. Have fun!
Did you have a surprising result? Email us!
You can also create your own 4th set of questions for each other to make is more personal and exciting.
Here are a few variations:
- If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon-to-be-born child, would you do it?
- Would you be willing to have horrible nightmares for a year if you would be rewarded with extraordinary wealth?
- While on a trip to another city, your spouse/lover meets and spends a night with an exciting stranger. Given that they will never meet again, and could never otherwise learn of the incident, would you want your partner to tell you about it?