What Happened When Real Couples Tried the 36 Questions to Fall in Love

In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron ran an experiment.

He put two strangers in a room, gave them a list of 36 questions that gradually increased in intimacy, and asked them to take turns answering. At the end, they stared into each other’s eyes for four minutes without speaking.

The result: several pairs reported significantly increased feelings of closeness. One couple got married six months later.

The study sat quietly in academic journals for nearly two decades. Then, in 2015, a New York Times essay called “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This” sent it viral. Millions of people read it. Tens of thousands tried the questions. The 36 questions became one of the most discussed psychological experiments of the decade.

But what actually happened when real couples, not strangers, but people already in relationships, tried them?

What the Original Study Actually Found

Before the results, it’s worth being precise about what Aron’s study did and didn’t claim.

The study found that a specific kind of sustained, mutual, escalating self-disclosure created feelings of closeness between strangers faster than small talk. The 36 questions were designed to do exactly that, each set of twelve questions going slightly deeper than the last, until both people had shared things they rarely shared with anyone.

The study did not claim the questions make you fall in love. It claimed they create closeness. The distinction matters closeness and love aren’t the same thing, and the experiment was designed to test the mechanism of intimacy-building, not romance specifically.

What went viral was a more compelling version of that finding: ask these questions and fall in love. Which is why the results, when couples actually tried them, were more complicated and more interesting, than the headline suggested.

What Couples in Established Relationships Reported

The 36 questions were designed for strangers. When couples who already knew each other tried them, something unexpected happened: they found out things they didn’t know.

Not dramatic revelations. Quiet ones.

A partner mentioned a childhood fear they’d never brought up. Someone described a version of their ideal future that differed slightly from what their partner had assumed. A question about what they’d want to know before they died led to a conversation neither of them had planned.

The most common report: “I thought I knew everything about them. I was wrong.”

Which makes sense, once you think about it. Long-term couples develop conversational patterns the same topics, the same register, the same level of depth. The 36 questions forced both people out of those patterns and into territory they hadn’t visited in years, or ever.

The Questions That Hit Hardest

Not all 36 questions land equally. Across the accounts of couples who tried the experiment, a few came up again and again as the ones that opened something.

“For what in your life do you feel most grateful?”

Simple enough to seem easy. Hard enough to answer honestly that most people pause for longer than they expected.

“If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?”

This one tends to go somewhere. The answer usually reveals something about how a person learned to love and what they’ve spent years trying to unlearn.

“What is your most treasured memory?”

People often find the answer surprises them. Not the memory they’d have predicted. Something smaller, more specific, that turns out to carry more weight than they’d realised.

“When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”

This is the one that tends to produce silence before the answer. The gap between those two in front of someone vs. alone, reveals something about how guarded a person actually is.

“If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?”

Couples who tried this one reported that the answers diverged more than they expected. Same life, different things they’d change. Sometimes very different.

What the Eye Contact Did

The four minutes of silent eye contact at the end of the experiment is the part most couples either skipped or found unexpectedly powerful.

Eye contact between couples sustained, intentional, without conversation is rarer than it sounds. Most couples spend time together without looking directly at each other for more than a few seconds at a time. Screens, tasks, side-by-side activities. The eyes rarely meet and stay.

Four minutes of sustained eye contact, after 36 questions’ worth of mutual vulnerability, produced something most couples described the same way: strange at first, then moving.

Several reported feeling more connected in that silence than in the conversation that preceded it. As if the questions had opened a door and the eye contact walked them both through it.

Does It Work for Couples Who Are Struggling?

This is the question that comes up most often and the honest answer is: it depends on what “work” means.

The 36 questions don’t fix a relationship. They don’t resolve conflict, rebuild trust after betrayal, or replace therapy for couples in serious difficulty. What they do is create conditions for honesty which is only useful if both people are willing to be honest.

For couples who are generally okay but have drifted into routine who feel the closeness has dulled without knowing exactly when or why the questions tend to do exactly what Aron’s experiment suggested: create a faster-than-usual sense of connection through sustained mutual vulnerability.

For couples who are avoiding something, the questions can surface it. Whether that’s useful depends on whether both people are ready for what surfaces.

What This Tells Us About Intimacy

The 36 questions became famous because they offered a shortcut a formula for closeness that bypassed the years of gradual disclosure that intimacy usually requires.

But the couples who tried them and found them meaningful weren’t using them as a shortcut. They were using them as a structure a framework that made it easier to go somewhere real, together, than they would have managed on their own.

That’s what questions actually do. Not manufacture feelings that weren’t there. Create conditions for feelings that were there but hadn’t found a way out.

The 36 questions work when they work, not because of magic, but because two people chose to answer honestly, and the other person actually listened.

That’s available any time. The questions just make it easier to start.

The 36 Questions. Sets One and Two

Set One:

• Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
• Would you like to be famous? In what way?
• Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you’re going to say? Why?
• What would constitute a perfect day for you?
• When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
• If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
• Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
• Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
• For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
• If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
• Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
• If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Set Two:

• If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
• Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
• What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
• What do you value most in a friendship?
• What is your most treasured memory?
• What is your most terrible memory?
• If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
• What does friendship mean to you?
• What roles do love and affection play in your life?
• Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
• How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
• How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?

Set Three available in the full GetOurTime app, along with 1,500+ questions designed for every mood and moment.

GetOurTime: Couple Conversation was built on the same principle as Aron’s experiment: that the right question, asked honestly and answered truthfully, creates connection faster than almost anything else. 1,500+ questions across 8 decks. Free to download on iOS.

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Related reading: The Famous 36 Questions That Made Strangers Fall in Love | 200 Deep Questions for Couples | What Couples Married 20+ Years Do Differently