Getting to know someone is not a mechanical process that is completed simply by spending time with someone.

It is necessary to understand their way of thinking and acting, and for that we must often take the initiative. That is why knowing the types of questions we can ask people close to us is a help to avoid leaving “blind spots” in the relationship.

Types of questions to ask people in the immediate environment

These are the main categories of questions that we can use to get to know those we already know best and, by the way, ourselves.

1. Questions about one’s own relationship

The first group of question types are those that explicitly refer to the type of relationship that the other person believes he/she has with him/herself . These are questions that are best asked to people who are very familiar and intimate so as not to generate rejection and reactivity. However, they can be very beneficial to adapt one’s expectations to the framework of the relationship held by the other person.

2. Questions about children

People close to you can give us access to more personal information about your past , something that will help us understand 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 which facts helped to carve out his or her personality.

3. Questions about oneself

People with whom you have a close relationship offer the possibility of getting to know yourself better from another point of view , since they are characterised by being more sincere than the rest. This makes us ask them questions about ourselves. We may be surprised to see how much they see us differently from ourselves, even with regard to those aspects of our personality that we believe define us.

4. Questions about your own weaknesses

Technically, these types of questions are part of the previous one, but their importance makes them necessary to be highlighted. They give us the possibility to know the public image we give and the aspects that others consider more improvable about ourselves.

5. Questions about one’s appearance

This would also fall into the category of questions about oneself, but is more circumstantial. Serves to ask for honest opinions about the aspect shown , and are important in those cases where we care highly or moderately about the image we give. However, these types of questions can become obsessive if we become “addicted” to them, so it’s best to reserve them for special occasions. In the end, beauty canons are very powerful and can become too normative.

6. Questions about future plans

In this type of questions it is not only possible to be interested in the more formal aspects of the plans that the other person has (such as the professional career that he/she wants to develop), but it is also possible to refer to the expectations and passions that drive the other person to draw up plans to achieve certain objectives.

7. Hypothetical scenario questions

This type of question is very general and therefore can be asked of people we have just met, but when we use them with people close to us we can pose some hypothetical questions that only make sense in these cases. For example: do you think we would make good roommates? In this way we can find out what the other person thinks about our relationship and our way of being .

8. Questions about third parties

People who are close to us are better able to offer us sincere 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 richer in detail, and therefore useful for having more information about the way others are.

9. Questions about political opinions

In many cultures it is frowned upon to ask about political opinions of people you don’t know very well , 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 to someone to ask them about it . In this way we will know how we can help that person, if there are problems, and we will also understand better their behaviour and way of thinking.