You’ve probably heard the story. Two strangers walk into a room, ask each other a specific set of queries, and walk out ready to plan a wedding. It sounds like a rom-com plot or a viral TikTok challenge, but the 36 questions for love actually started in a stark, fluorescent-lit laboratory.
People get this wrong all the time. They think it's a magic spell. It isn't.
Arthur Aron, the psychologist who pioneered this research back in 1997, wasn't actually trying to create a "love potion" for the masses. His original study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was titled "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness." He wanted to see if he could force-start a sense of intimacy between total strangers in just 45 minutes. It worked. One of the original pairs actually did get married six months later, which is the "fact" that usually blows up on social media, but that was an outlier, not the rule.
Why we’re still talking about these questions decades later
In 2015, Mandy Len Catron wrote a piece for The New York Times Modern Love column that basically broke the internet. She tried the experiment herself. Since then, millions of people have used these prompts on first dates, long-term anniversaries, or even with their roommates.
The secret isn't in the specific wording of the questions. It's about "sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure." That’s the academic way of saying you start with small talk and slowly, painfully, peel back the layers until you’re both feeling a bit exposed.
If you just jump into "How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?" while ordering appetizers, you’ll probably just scare them away. You have to earn the right to the deep stuff. The 36 questions for love act as a structured ladder. You climb one rung at a time. If you skip steps, you fall.
Breaking down the three stages of intimacy
Aron and his team didn't just throw 36 random thoughts into a hat. They organized them into three distinct sets. Each set gets progressively more intense.
💡 You might also like: Finding the most affordable way to live when everything feels too expensive
Set One: The Icebreakers
This is where you find out if someone is actually interesting or just well-rehearsed. You ask things like who your ideal dinner guest would be or if you’d like to be famous. It’s safe. It’s light. But even here, you’re looking for values. If someone says they want to be famous for their "contribution to humanity" versus "having a billion followers," you’re already learning who they are.
Set Two: The Pivot
This is where things get real. You start talking about your greatest accomplishments and your most terrible memories. One of the heavy hitters here is: "If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?"
That question is a landmine. It’s also a bridge. Honestly, most people spend months or years avoiding that topic. Forcing it into a 45-minute window creates a sort of "intimacy fast-track" that can feel incredibly intoxicating. Or terrifying.
Set Three: The Deep End
By the time you hit the final twelve questions, you’re discussing death, family dynamics, and your immediate impressions of the person sitting across from you. You have to tell them what you like about them. Not just "you have nice eyes," but something honest like, "I like that you actually listen when I talk about my dog."
It’s the reciprocity that does the heavy lifting. You share, they share. You’re both vulnerable at the same time. No one has the upper hand.
The 4-minute stare: Don't skip the awkward part
Mandy Len Catron’s essay emphasized a part of the experiment that people often conveniently forget: the four minutes of silent eye contact at the end.
📖 Related: Executive desk with drawers: Why your home office setup is probably failing you
It is excruciating.
Try it. Sit across from someone—even someone you love—and set a timer for four minutes. Don’t talk. Don’t look away. Just look. In our digital world, we almost never look at people for that long without the buffer of a screen or a conversation. It’s in that silence that the "closeness" actually solidifies. Research by Dr. Elaine Aron (Arthur’s wife and fellow researcher) suggests that this kind of intense gaze can trigger the release of phenylethylamine, a chemical associated with that dizzying feeling of new love.
Does it actually work for long-term couples?
Most people think the 36 questions for love are only for strangers. That’s a mistake.
Long-term couples often stop "dating" each other. They stop asking new questions because they think they already know the answers. "How was your day?" becomes the default. But people change. The person you married five years ago might have a completely different answer to "What represents a 'perfect' day for you?" today than they did back then.
Using these prompts in a long-term relationship can actually combat "habituation"—the psychological process where we stop noticing the things we're exposed to constantly. It forces you to see your partner as a separate, evolving human being rather than just the person who forgot to take out the trash.
Where the 36 questions for love fall short
Let’s be real for a second. You can’t "hack" a soulmate.
👉 See also: Monroe Central High School Ohio: What Local Families Actually Need to Know
If you have zero chemistry with someone, no amount of questioning is going to create a spark. Biology still matters. Values still matter. The study showed that these questions create closeness, but closeness isn't the same thing as romantic compatibility. You can feel incredibly close to a person you would never actually want to live with.
Also, some people find the structure too clinical. If you’re reading these off a phone screen like a script, it can feel like a job interview. The magic only happens when you let the conversation breathe. If a question sparks a twenty-minute tangent about your childhood summer camp, stay there. Don't rush to the next number just to finish the list.
Putting it into practice tonight
If you’re going to try this, don’t do it in a loud bar. You need to be able to hear the nuances in their voice.
- Set the stage. Acknowledge that it's a bit cheesy. Say something like, "I found this weird list of questions that are supposed to make us fall in love/get super close. Want to try a few?"
- Go slow. Don't try to power through all 36 in one sitting if it feels heavy.
- Be honest. The whole thing fails if you give "safe" or "polished" answers. If you’re going to do it, actually do it.
- Mind the "reciprocal" part. If you find yourself doing 80% of the talking, stop. Ask them to expand on their answer.
The goal isn't to finish the list. The goal is to reach a point where you feel like the other person truly sees you. That’s what the 36 questions for love are actually for—cutting through the noise of modern dating to find a moment of genuine human connection.
Start with the first set over dinner. If you find yourself still talking three hours later and the food is cold, you're doing it right. Focus on the "why" behind their answers rather than just the facts they share. This shift in perspective often reveals more about a partner’s character than years of casual observation ever could. When they describe their most embarrassing memory, look for how they've processed it—do they laugh at themselves, or is there still lingering shame? Those details are the true building blocks of intimacy.