36 Questions in Quarantine

Illustration by Yinne Smith

Remember when the 36 questions took over the internet in 2015? Five years ago, writer Mandy Len Catron wrote a personal essay for the New York Times titled “To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This” based on a psychological study from 1997. The study proposed a set of thirty-six questions of increasing intensity followed by four minutes of locked eye contact, in order to escalate intimacy between two people. Catron’s personal venture with the questions landed her a husband, though she is adamant that they would have fallen in love anyway. Irrespective, her Times essay was so popular that she did two Ted Talks on the subject and wrote a book. The New York Times published an accompanying website to host an interactive list of the questions, for readers to participate in themselves. Not that they’d be hard to find, because various think pieces on the study were already flooding the google algorithm, where they continue to sit at the top of the search results today. Now that I’ve jogged your memory on the subject, this Is really just to preface that I just did them for the first time myself, over a FaceTime date with a stranger. 

I had been on a self-professed dating hiatus until recently, when my roommate inspired me to try out some of my newly established healthy-dating-strategies (my own phrase). Essentially I wanted to see if I could open myself up to romantic interactions without negatively effecting my mental health. So I downloaded Hinge for all of one week, and started a quirky email-esc correspondence with a guy, who then asked me on a phone date.

I’ve never been on an official phone date, but have spent the last few months talking to people who have been doing exclusively just that. Folks of all kinds who have been using their phones and the internet to navigate the dating landscape during the ongoing pandemic, so I was unusually curious. I prefaced to him however that it kind of terrified me, and he suggested that could play a game to make it more comfortable or… better yet: we could do the 36 questions. He’d always wanted to do them, he told me. I had also always wanted to do them too. And considering the anticipated awkwardness of this impending phone call, it seemed like a good idea to have scripted guidelines. Mind you, at this point he had already made it clear that he was sick of the dating scene and looking for a relationship. I too have always been relationship minded, I can’t help it. Which reminded me of something that Catron reflected on in her essay: she realized that love is not something that happens to you, but rather an action that you participate in. Her and her partner didn’t fall in love on a whim, they fell in love because they chose to build that out of the connection they had. She writes also: “I see now that one neither suggests nor agrees to try an experiment designed to create romantic love if one isn’t open to this happening.” 

In order for these questions to have an effect in any context, I think both parties have to be open to genuine vulnerability. I found that was easier to exchange once mutual parameters had been established, because I no longer had to worry about what was appropriate to say in the context. Expressing to someone on a dating app that you are looking for a relationship, I’ve realized, is not so much an expectation for that person but rather a profession of what you’re hoping to give to the interaction. My phone date and I were both willing to put a decent amount of energy into our call, and while that might have something to do with believing it’s possible to fall in love with someone through a series of questions, it’s also a testament to the openness and acceptance that can exist between two complete strangers.

In the original study, the questions are listed under a heading titled “Task Slips for Closeness Generating Procedure”, and are split into three sections. Our first phone call lasted nearly three hours, and we only got through the first two sections- twenty-four of the total thirty-six questions). The study suggests an approximate hour to get through all of them, but let’s just say it doesn’t account for tangents. Nearing 11 pm and the end of this initial phone call, I actually found myself quite exhausted. Not only is it emotionally taxing to divulge authentically personal information to a stranger, but doing so over the phone requires an additional energy. I think it’s because there are more physical cues to rely on in person that allow conversation to flow undetected. Whereas over the phone, there is a lot of verbal initiating required to move the conversation forward. 

In order to see if the visual of physical manner would ease this, I suggested FaceTime for our next date. A few days later we completed the third section of the questions in a similar multi hour span, and I was right that it felt a lot lighter. It was encouraging to see him smile when I said something I considered witty or to see him thinking about the more provoking questions in the study. I did however, have to spontaneously introduce him to all three of my roommates who happened to walk through the space I was hosting this date in (my backyard), but in retrospect, it was just another touch point for conversation. We skipped the four minutes of unbroken eye contact on the basis that it would simply be too awkward and possibly counterproductive over FaceTime, but I’m not necessarily against bringing it up when I eventually meet him in person. Ok, well I’m a little against it, but that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t tell you if I think my chances of falling in love with this guy are higher because we’d completed the questionnaire, but I can agree that I already feel more open and trusting towards him. For the purpose of building a connection with someone in the disconcerting times that we are collectively living through, I would recommend the 36 questions as a virtual exercise. Because why not? An activity that helps people connect with each other in a more genuine way is nothing but a needed kindness right now. Besides, if you are virtual dating and running out of date activities, this is an iconic and oddly unique one to try.