36 Questions

Tonight a friend arranged a conversation dinner in which people were paired up (with friends of friends) to try the 36 Questions that Lead to Love which you may have read about a few years ago.

The plan was to do it with acquaintances, but I did it with my partner of four years, and we found it enjoyable and interesting. We each learned a few things, and it was a positive experience overall. It was probably easier and less uncomfortable than it would have been with a stranger or an acquaintance, but that may also have made the experience less powerful; to some extent, we knew and have said some of the sensitive things that the questions attempt to get you to know or to say. Probably the vulnerability, and therefore the effect, would have been greater with someone less familiar.

Because there was an odd number of people, one group did the questions as a threesome. We eventually joined them. Their chat seemed to be more intellectual, less intimate than it might have been one-on-one. One other couple persevered to the end, taking around three hours in total to finish it (we finished it in around two).

Overall an interesting experience, and I look forward to hearing from the couple that persisted—and, I suppose, seeing whether they‘ll become a couple!

I'm Bryan Kam. I'm thinking about complexity and selfhood. Please sign up to my newsletter, follow me on Mastodon, or see more here.