The five questions your house already runs on, rewritten so they open, plus a three-part ladder for the thing you two keep circling and one question for each decade you've been married.
Count up what you asked your wife today. Did you call the dentist back. Can you grab milk. Where's the soccer bag. You good?
Every one of those had a right answer, and every one of them was over in about a word.
That isn't a character flaw. That's a household running. Closed questions are how you run one. The problem is that at some point they became the only kind either of you asks, and a marriage can't live on inventory.
A closed question calls for a fact or a yes. An open one calls for a story. You need both, and you have probably stopped using one of them.
In A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger draws the line this way:
A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something
Ambitious and actionable, both. Not a riddle, not therapy homework. Something big enough that she has to think, small enough that she can answer it standing at the counter.
Berger's own instruction for getting there is almost boringly mechanical:
And take questions that are closed (meaning they call for simple factual or yes/no answers) and open them up.
Nothing about that requires a personality transplant. It's a rewrite of things you were already going to say.
One of the questions I sent out to my newsletter list was What currently gets in the way of fully appreciating that you are alive today? Katherine A. wrote back:
While I think it is a question that needs to be asked, my husband and I are generally very easy going and happy individuals.
Two happy people, stopped for a second by one sentence.
A question like that needs somewhere to sit. It's why I keep pointing husbands at something to do together rather than a talk to schedule, which is what Date Nights Dancing is: easy swing taught at home, fifteen minutes at a time, the two of you learning the same moves together from the first video on. No studio. No dance experience required. With something in front of the two of you, one question doesn't have to become the whole evening.
These are the five closed ones with the most mileage on them. Take the open version, keep the tone you already use, and don't announce that you're doing anything.
1. "How was your day?"
Berger has a direct swap for this one: "So instead of asking, How was your day today?, try What made you smile/laugh today?"
Anything that asks for one specific piece of the day works. What was the best part of today? is the plain version. If she gives you nothing, name the best part of yours first and ask again in a minute.
2. "Are you okay?"
Asked at the wrong moment, this reads as a request for reassurance, and the honest answer costs more than the yes does. Try What's taking up the most room in your head right now? instead. It gives her permission to name something without having to declare a crisis, and it doesn't ask her to rate herself.
3. "Do you want to do anything this weekend?"
The closed version puts the whole planning burden on whoever answers, so the cheapest answer is no. Open it up: If this weekend had nothing on it, what would you want in it? You'll get the real answer, which is usually smaller and more doable than either of you expected.
4. "Did you have a good time?"
Asked on the drive home, this is a request for a grade. What part of tonight would you do again? asks for the same information and hands you next month's plan at the same time. Then answer it yourself, in the same detail you asked for.
5. "Is everything alright with us?"
This one is closed and heavy, which is the worst combination, because the only kind answer is yes. What's one thing we used to do that we've stopped doing? gets at the same worry from a direction she can answer. Expect something small. Small is what you can put back.
For the thing you two keep circling, one open question won't clear it. Berger built a three-part progression for that, and in A More Beautiful Question he describes the parts like this:
we can use Why questions to help us understand a problem; What If questions help us imagine possible alternatives; and How questions lead us toward a practical solution
It's tempting to open at How, because How feels productive. How do we get a sitter. How do we afford it. Starting there means you're solving a problem neither of you has described to each other yet.
Say the stuck thing is that you two never see each other on a weeknight. The ladder runs:
In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Warren Berger puts the test on action: a question that never ends in a step is philosophy. So the ladder isn't finished until somebody names a Tuesday.
In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger names a category he calls counterfeit questions: criticism, advice, or a rote token wearing a question mark. Each one arrives as what it really is, and she hears it that way.
1. Criticism in question form. What were you thinking? is a verdict. It has no answer that improves the evening. Berger's replacement is the one to steal: ask her to help you understand what led to it. Same information, none of the defending.
2. Advice in question form. Why don't you just call them? is your own fix with a lift at the end, and she can hear the lift. If you've got a fix, say you have a thought and ask whether she wants it.
3. The rote token. How's it going? asked without looking up is a greeting, not a question, and it gets greeted back. This is the one worth retiring first, because it's the one you use most.
Different years have different unopened doors. Pick the one that matches the years you've got behind you.
1. The first decade. What's surprised you most about living with me? Early on you're both still revising the file on each other, and this makes the revision sayable instead of private. The follow-up: What did you expect instead?
2. The second decade. What's something you want that you've stopped bringing up? By now you've both got a shelf of wants that got shelved for good reasons, and nobody has checked the shelf in years. Whatever comes back, don't solve it in the same conversation.
3. The third decade. Which version of me has been your favorite so far? It sounds like a compliment fish, and it partly is, but the answer tends to be a specific year with a specific reason attached. Ask what she was like that year, too.
4. The fourth decade. What do you want the next ten years to have in them that the last ten didn't? You're both past the stage where the calendar belongs to other people, and this is the question that says so.
5. Forty years and past it. What are you proudest of that nobody outside this house knows about? Most of a long marriage is invisible from the outside. She keeps her own list of it, and no one has ever asked her to read it out.
The follow-up is where the answer usually is. In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger names the highest-yield thing you can say after a short answer: and what else?, which he credits to the coach Michael Bungay Stanier. It pushes past whatever was on top of her mind without steering her anywhere.
Berger gives the limit along with the question: asked without real interest, or more than about three times in a row, it stops working and starts to irritate. Two is plenty.
The other half of this is doing nothing. A few seconds of silence after a real question is not a failed question. That's her deciding whether you get the short answer or the true one, and every word you put in that gap makes it the short one.
One a week is a real pace. That's what The Spark is, if you'd rather have them show up than think them up: a few questions in your inbox weekly, which is where Ask Mode started.
If you want more of them at once, there's a longer list of questions to ask your wife, and the professional question shapes brought home if you already ask for a living. When an open question turns out to be the big one, that's the conversation you've been deferring. The rest of it lives in the ideas hub.
And if what you want is more time in the same room without a topic, that's Date Nights Dancing: fifteen minutes at a time in your own living room, both of you starting at the same place.
You've been asking her questions all day, every day, for years. You just need about five of them to have no right answer. Going looking for the better ones was your idea, and she didn't have to ask you for it.
The Thursday reminder over 100,000 couples love: ideas and conversation starters that deepen love, laughter, and intimacy.
