Privilege Blog

How To Fall In Love With Anyone, Or, Saturday Morning at 9:11am

This is a list of questions to make you fall in love. Sit with your partner, or friend, or even a stranger, both of you asking and answering. At the end you stare into each other’s eyes for 4 whole minutes.

These 36 questions can make you fall in love with anyone

I thought the idea was lovely, and perhaps even true. I sent it to my kids. When my son got my email, he was with a friend who had just told him about the same list. How did his friend know? His mom.

Imagine mothers everywhere, knowing just how much love matters. Wanting our kids to fall in love not from the surface but from what the researchers call, “interpersonal closeness.” Understanding that the more we know of future partners the better. Some rue, some hope, some fingers crossed.

Imagine flights of Mommails, soaring across the world, little modern doves. Of course, accompanied by the less inspirational but just as necessary missives about graduate schools, neurology research, and the great climate of our home state.

AKA why you should move back, soon.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! There’s absolutely nothing I have to do and I’m absolutely thrilled.

28 Responses

  1. It’s an interesting idea. I scanned through them and found I really already knew almost all of the answers about my husband, and I think he would know mine. But I had to laugh about trying to convince them to move back home. I’m – mostly jokingly – trying to convince mine that going to school in NY would be best. Enjoy the weekend!

    1. @K-Line, I love the idea, that we can fall in love just by getting very close and vulnerable, more than per se what the answers are.

  2. I’d better not send it to any of mine, lest their partners suspect me of trying to incite infidelity. Truly, I feel so very fortunate that mine have all found love, the last one taking her time to find it in a form that is sticking, sustaining. Not that I won’t ever still feel that need to look after mine, and not that I ever want to shrug off that responsibility (or sense of) but it’s such a joy and a relief to know that they have a main someone who is not me, not my husband. Someone Else. ’cause I guess I won’t be here forever. . . ;-)
    As for the questions themselves, though, setting aside the issue of my children’s romantic partners, they’re rich and wonderful questions. I might print them out and use them for conversations over dinner dates with my guy. 41+ years on, more Falling in Love would be a good thing, right?

    1. worried I sound too smug about my kids’ partners. But we’ve lived through the hurt times and the lonely times with them, and the difference is huge. And this year, I’m trying to be all about the Joy and appreciate while/where I can. But smack me if I get smug — it’s never a good look! ;-)

  3. These questions appeared in an article in the New York Times on January 9, 2015 written by Mandy Len Catron about a psychologist, Aron Arthur’s social experiment 20 or so years ago. The article was fascinating if you want to check it out:

    http://nyti.ms/1BQibt2

  4. I just read the article in the NY Times today and I thought the idea was delightful!

  5. Have many thoughts about this. To answer all 36 thoughtfully and fully would take… many hours? Days? So, in many hours of connected conversation a person would naturally feel closer to the other.

    Meaningful conversation where we bring our real selves-not our social mask-will feel different (and to most persons, better) than superficial chat.

    In my work I have used versions of this activity (not these questions)-it is called “guided conversation”-to encourage the parties to explore deeper matters. Usually it is valued because of everyone’s need to be seen and heard.

    1. @Duchesse, I don’t think it’s the actual questions, per se, as much as the singular focus. I mean, I guess the topics have to be personal, and soul-searching, but I think it would be important to focus and experience the time together as much as deriving any answers.

  6. I agree with Duchesse, to answer these would take many hours, or even days. But really…aren’t these the kind of things one talks about over the course of the first few heady meetings with our soon-to-be loved ones? I know I sound skeptical…maybe it’s just that the headline sounds a bit like “click bait.” Instead of saying the questions can make one fall in love… might it be better to say that these are the questions people answer/talk about when they’re falling in love? Still. Like Materfamilias… I think some of them may be interesting conversation for those long summer evenings around the campfire….?? If one is given to campfires, of course.

  7. I agree with people saying the questions would be good for couples already together to deepen the connection and check assumptions.

    I was interested in the comments on the Guardian article that some people (men) said that they weren’t that intimate with their spouse. Another person said the only question you really need to ask on an early date is ‘how many people have you slept with’?!

    I am so devoutly glad that I’m not in the dating game as the expectation seems to be to throw yourself into bed just after being introduced and well before you’ve worked out if you’ve actually got anything in common, like each other or built up trust.

  8. I read the NYT article this past week and found it fascinating. I got to know my own SO on the phone (pre internet days). We lived in different towns. We talked for hours and hours. It was helpful for me because I was so shy.

    I thought about sending the article to our son, but he’s already found “the one”. They seem to have a deep connection.

    1. Having some kind of a run up to intimacy seems so important, and while doable on Match.com, not so much on Tindr, I think.

  9. Such a beautifully articulated post, Lisa.

    I read the article too and it did get me thinking about love, relationships and the delicious thought that there are possibilities for both all around us.

    SSG xxx

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