10 Types Of Questions To Ask Someone Close To You
Getting to know someone is not a mechanical process that is completed by simply spending time together with someone.
It is necessary to understand well their way of thinking and acting, and to do so, on many occasions we must take the initiative. That is why Knowing the types of questions we can ask people close to us helps so that there are no “blind spots” in the relationship.
Types of questions to ask people in your immediate environment
These are the main categories of questions that we can use to get to know better those we already know to a large extent and, in the process, ourselves.
1. Questions about your own relationship
The first group of question types are those that They explicitly refer to the type of relationship that the other person believes they have with oneself These are questions that are best posed to well-known and intimate people so as not to generate rejection and reactivity. However, they can be very beneficial for adapting one’s own expectations to the framework of the relationship held by the other person.
2. Questions about childhood
Close people can give us access to more personal information about your past, something that will help us understand them and empathize with them even more. Those that refer to childhood are one of those types of questions that, when investigating the first years of a person’s life, allow us to intuit what events helped shape their personality.
People with whom you have a close relationship They offer the possibility of getting to know yourself better from another point of view, since they are characterized by being more sincere than the rest. That means we can ask them things about ourselves. It may surprise us to see how differently they see us from ourselves, even in regards to those aspects of our personality that we believe define us.
4. Questions about one’s own weaknesses
Technically, these types of questions are part of the previous one, but their importance means that they have to be highlighted. They give us the possibility of knowing the public image that we give and the aspects that others consider most improvable about ourselves.
5. Questions about one’s own appearance
This would also belong to the category of questions about oneself, but it is more circumstantial. It is used to ask for honest opinions about the appearance shown, and they are important in those cases in which we care highly or moderately about the image we give. However, these types of questions can become obsessed if we become “addicted” to them, so it is better to reserve them for special occasions. After all, beauty standards have a lot of power and can be too normative.
6. Questions about future plans
In this type of question, it is not only possible to be interested in the more formal aspects of the other person’s plans (such as the professional career they want to develop), but also It is also possible to refer to expectations and passions that drive the other person to make plans to achieve certain objectives.
This type of question is very general and that is why they can be asked to people we have just met, but when we use them with close people we can ask some hypothetical questions that only make sense in these cases. For example: do you think we would be good roommates? This way It delves into what the other person thinks about the relationship and each person’s way of being
8. Questions about third parties
Close people are more capable of offering us honest opinions about other people that are not totally shaped by social pressure and the desire to belong to a group. This makes their opinions on the subject often more nuanced and rich in detail, and therefore useful for gaining more insight into the way others are.
9. Questions about political opinions
In many cultures it is frowned upon to ask people you don’t know very well about political opinions, and that is why they are reserved for people from the closest and most intimate environment. Inquiring about this can serve to understand the other person’s way of seeing the world, and to know their ethical scale and the priorities they have.
10. Questions about the family situation
Family problems are a big taboo in our society, but In some cases we can become close enough with someone to ask them about the topic In this way we will know how we can help that person, if there are problems, and we will also better understand their behavior and their way of thinking.
