The 36 Questions

I love the 36 Questions That Lead to Love, published back in 2015 in the New York Times Modern Love column. If you're not familiar, the article came out of research by psychologist Arthur Aron, who looked at the intimacy that develops between two people when they ask each other a series of 36 questions broken into three sets of twelve.

I wish I could say I remember the first person I "did" the questions with, but in the ten-plus years since the article came out, I've walked through them with individual friends, couple friends, larger groups of friends, and with Wesley more times than I can count.

You might be wondering what we could possibly get out of answering the same 36 questions again and again after a decade of dating and marriage. Some of our answers do stay consistent—in a lot of cases we could answer for each other. But others change depending on the year, or what's happened, or what's different now.

One of the more traditional questions is, "If you could have anyone as a dinner guest, who would you choose?" Most people follow up by asking if the person has to be living. Do you have to know them, or can they be famous? I always say there aren't any more stipulations than the ones in the question.

For years my answer was Eleanor Roosevelt. In elementary school I did a book report on the formidable First Lady, and I've thought ever since that I'd enjoy the chance to ask her questions over dinner.

Speaking of dinner guests—a few weeks ago, on a recommendation, I ordered a copy of The Art of Gathering. As most of you know, I love to host, and this seemed like an appropriate book to delve a bit further into that space. But I'll be honest, I didn't love it. In fact I stopped reading it.

But one idea did stick. She argues that every gathering should have a purpose. I'm not sure I followed her all the way to where she took that, but I do think there's something to the idea that when we spend time with people, we can ground ourselves in something. And that often, structure is what does the grounding.

At the beginning of August we threw a birthday party for Wesley—a blind bourbon match play situation. I had it all. Each bourbon was a golfer. They were paired off in single-round elimination. You knew the personality of the bourbon based on the golfer, but you didn't know what you were drinking. We tasted, we voted, and we all cracked up when Jim Beam Black won, ousting Knob Creek and Woodford Reserve along the way.

For the people who hadn't been to a gathering at our house before, the start of the evening was a little surprising.

There were rules. There were instructions. There were worksheets and pencils. There was a schedule.

"Oh, I just thought we'd be tasting bourbon as we wanted"—not for this school leader!

But what resulted was a night of people who don't all know each other arguing about whether Jordan Spieth or Scottie Scheffler really should have won. It breaks the ice, and I find the conversation follows from there.

I think the same is true of the 36 questions. Is it really about the questions? Maybe a little. But as unusual as it is to have this as a party trick you bring out, you end up in conversations with friends—and sometimes strangers—that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

This weekend we were at the lake with another family and I whipped out my favorite 36 questions. "Oh no, here she goes," exhaled Wesley.

But over three nights, the four of us shared more about ourselves. Some of it was practical—yes, of course Wesley rehearses phone calls ahead of time. Some of it wasn't. Question 22 asks you to alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner, five items total. We changed it. Each of us went around and named something about the other three, out loud, to their faces.

We kept coming back to it after the kids went down.

Whether it's 36 questions, a bourbon tournament, or a million other ideas, the structure is what grounds us. It's what gives us the opening to say, "I'd love to get to know you, and for you to get to know me.” Even when we've known each other a long time.

My answer to the dinner guest question this weekend was my grandfather, George.