Why Husbands Don't Say
Where The Good Questions Come From

You asked your wife something at dinner and it turned into a real conversation, the kind the two of you used to have without trying. Then she says something like, where did that come from. Not suspicious. Impressed.

You got the question off a list. Somebody else wrote it. You picked it, you asked it, and you did not mention where it came from.

You're not the only man doing this, and you're not doing anything wrong. Picking a question off a list still counts as your work, and there's something true you can say the next time she asks.

One Husband Has Kept The Same Joke Running For Sixteen Months

I send out a weekly email with conversation prompts in it, and people write back. One man, Tommy B., has written to me about this exact thing twice, about sixteen months apart, and both times the funny part was the same.

The first one:

I have used everything you add: book recommendations, quotes, text msg suggestions, and the questions. My wife will text, "Where do you get this stuff from?" I respond, "I do the research to improve myself every week. I put in the work."

Then, well over a year later:

That questionnaire two weeks ago with additional questions was particularly insightful and appreciated by my wife (though she still thinks I come up with them myself)!

I want to be straight about the evidence here. It's one man, twice. I'm not going to tell you it's what husbands generally do, because I don't know that. What I know is that he's kept the same bit running for over a year, still thinks it's worth writing to me about, and that his answer to his wife is true.

He does do the research. He does put the work in.

Using Somebody Else's Question Still Counts As Your Work

The rule you're worried about breaking is one you'd never apply anywhere else in your life.

Nobody thinks a man faked dinner because he cooked from a recipe, or cheated on the trip because he read reviews before booking the hotel. No one is waiting for him to invent a lasagna from first principles to prove the meal was sincerely his.

Nobody invents swing dancing in their kitchen either. Date Nights Dancing is easy swing taught at home, fifteen minutes at a time, the two of you doing the same moves together from the first video on. Following it is not a lesser way of dancing with your wife.

A question off a list is the same kind of thing. It's a tool for a job you wanted done.

The Work Happened Before You Opened Your Mouth

Four things had to go right before that conversation existed, and she can't see any of them.

1. You went looking. Nobody assigned this. At some point you decided the two of you were talking about logistics and not much else, and you went and did something about it instead of filing it under a problem for later. That decision is the whole origin of the evening she enjoyed.

2. You chose that one for her. A list of fifty questions is not a plan. Most of them are wrong for her, wrong for this week, or wrong for a kitchen with the dishwasher running. Choosing the one that fits your wife takes something no list has, which is that you know her.

3. You asked it anyway. Every question with a real answer in it carries the chance that she gives you one you weren't ready for. That's the only genuinely risky part of the evening, and you took it.

4. You stayed for the answer. You didn't check your phone, you didn't fix anything, and you didn't turn it into your turn. That's the hardest of the four, and it's the one that produced the conversation.

None of those four came off the page.

She Noticed The Question, Not Who Wrote It

In Power Questions, Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas describe a man who says he can always tell how experienced and insightful a prospective consultant, banker, or lawyer is by the quality of their questions and how intently they listen. That's a business book making a claim about client relationships, not a study of marriages, so I'd hold it loosely.

The mechanism still travels. What a person registers is the question they got asked and how hard you listened afterward. Neither of those changes based on who typed it first.

Sobel and Panas also point out that the cheapest way to go deeper with anyone is to ask them to tell you more, and to ask it often. You didn't write that one either. It works anyway.

Your wife is not scoring your originality. She noticed that somebody was curious about her and stayed in the chair for the answer, and that was you.

Telling Her And Keeping The Bit Are Both Fine

There are two versions of this and I've got no problem with either.

If you keep it to yourself, you're keeping a joke, not a lie. Tommy B.'s line to his wife is accurate: he does read about this every week, and he does put the work in. The list didn't ask her anything. He did.

If you tell her, you get something out of it too. What she finds out is that her husband has been reading about marriage on purpose, weekly, for months. That's not an embarrassing fact about a man. She may also want in on the questions, which is a better problem than the one you started with.

The one version I'd avoid is denying it flat if she asks you straight. That turns a small joke into a small lie, over something that would have made her happy.

What To Say The Next Time She Asks

Men tell me the thoughtful prompts I send them are great, that they'd like to use one, and then they don't, and the reason is always the same: she's going to ask where this came from. So here are three answers, in order of how much you're giving away.

1. Keeping it. "I do the research. I put in the work." Delivered with a straight face, it's true and it's funny and she'll enjoy both.

2. Half-opening the door. "I read a lot about this stuff. Want to see where I get it?"

3. All the way. This is what I coach men to say when they're stuck: "I've been researching ways to be more thoughtful towards you. I'm trying this stuff because I want to show you how important you are to me. Forgive me if it's not the perfect wording, but I'm trying to get to a better place." Put it in your own words before you use it.

If you want more of the questions themselves, I keep a set of questions to ask your wife sorted easiest first, and a piece on running one good question a week instead of trying to use twenty. There's also one on still finding new things about each other nine years in, which is where this habit goes if you stay with it. More pieces like this one are collected on the ideas page.

The weekly email is called The Spark. It's free, it's one email, and most weeks it carries a couple of conversation questions plus one idea for the two of you. It's the email Tommy B. keeps writing back to. If you'd rather have the next set sent to you than go hunting for one, the box below is where your email goes.

The Instinct Is Yours Even If The Question Wasn't

The reason any of this bothers you is that you'd rather be a man who asks good questions than a man who looks like one. That instinct is worth more than the questions are, and it's yours, and no list gave it to you.

Your wife got asked something real and got listened to all the way through. That happened, and you're the one who made it happen. Who wrote the question down first doesn't come into it.