Questions to ask your long-distance partner on your next call

How was your day is a bad question. Not because it is boring, but because it is unanswerable. It asks for a summary of fourteen hours with no hint of what would count as a good answer, so it gets answered with "fine" by people who are not remotely fine.

Every question below has edges. It is answerable in one sentence, it cannot be met with "fine", and it works on a day when nothing happened – which is most days, and exactly when you need it.

Questions to ask your long-distance partner about today

• What was the most annoying five minutes of today?
• Who did you think about that you did not message?
• What did you notice today that nobody else would have?
• What is the last thing that made you laugh out loud on your own?
• What did you eat standing up?
• What is something small you are dreading tomorrow?

Questions that are actually about you two

• What is something small I do that you would miss immediately?
• When did you last feel proud of me, and did you say so at the time?
• What do you think I am wrong about and have decided not to argue with me over?
• Which version of me do you miss most – and be specific, not romantic.
• What is a thing we used to do that we have quietly stopped doing?

Questions for the distance itself

• What part of this is hardest that you have never said out loud?
• What do you tell people when they ask how we are doing?
• What is the first ordinary thing you want to do together next time – not the big plan, the ordinary one?
• Is there a day of the week that is reliably worse for you?
• What would make the next month feel less like waiting?

How to ask them without it feeling like an interview

One at a time. The whole point of a narrow question is that it is cheap to answer, and firing six of them at somebody turns a conversation into a form.

It also helps enormously if you answer first, and answer properly. A question asked from behind cover is a test. The same question asked after you have gone first is an offer.

Questions that are worth saving for a visit

A few of these do not belong on a call at all. They need eye contact, or a walk, or the particular safety of being in the same room, and asking them down a patchy line does them a disservice.

• What have you found harder than you expected, and did you hide it?
• What do you want the next year to look like, specifically, with dates in it?
• What is something you have wanted to ask me and have not?

Keep a short list of these somewhere rather than trying to remember them. The visit disappears fast, and the good questions are always the ones you think of on the way to the airport. If you are short of things to do with the time instead, we keep a longer list of long-distance ideas that are not another video call.

Why one a day beats a list of thirty

A list like this one has a failure mode: you read it, you feel briefly inspired, and you never use it. That is why Talking Hearts sends exactly one question a day rather than handing you a deck to binge.

It also seals both answers until you have both replied, which changes what people write. When you can see their answer first, you write a response. When you cannot, you write the truth. That is the entire reason the mechanic exists, and it is the one place in KTL where one person can leave the other waiting – deliberately, because it is what makes the reveal worth anything.