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43 questions to ask your long distance partner

The problem with "how was your day" is that both of you already know the answer, and neither of you has anything to do with it. These are the questions we actually use, one a week, in an app built for exactly this.

They come in pairs on purpose. One question is turned inward, about your own week, your own head. The other is aimed straight at them. A pair does something a single question doesn't: you get to say what your week was actually like, and you get to be told what you look like from the outside, in the same sitting.

How to use them

Pick one of each, once a week. Both of you answer both questions separately, without reading the other's answer first. That last part matters more than it sounds. If you can see what they wrote, you will write toward it, and you will both end up somewhere smaller than where you would have gone alone.

Then read them together, out loud, on a call. Not over text. The whole point is hearing it.

Questions about your own week

These are the ones you turn on yourself. Answer honestly, including the boring weeks. A boring week described well is more interesting than a big week described badly.

• One thing you're proud of this week that you'd only tell them.
• Describe your sky right now, at this exact minute, in three lines.
• What was the hardest hour of your week? What got you through it?
• Describe your current view from where you're sitting. Every detail.
• Write a weather report for your heart. Highs, lows, fronts moving in.
• One fear that felt smaller this week, and why.
• What's on your bedside table right now? List everything, no editing.
• Describe the last time this week you laughed alone.
• If this week were a chapter title in your story, what's it called?
• What did you almost buy this week and talked yourself out of?
• Rank your week's three best moments. Podium ceremony, full speeches.
• What song was this week? Name it and say why.
• Tell them about a stranger you saw this week who stuck with you.
• What's something you've been putting off, and what's actually behind it?
• What did you learn this week that you didn't expect to?
• Where did your mind wander to most this week, when it was left alone?
• What's one thing you did this week purely because you wanted to?
• What have you been listening to on repeat, and what's it doing for you?
• Something small that went right this week that nobody else noticed.
• What are you carrying into next week that you'd rather put down?
• If you could relive one ten-minute stretch of this week, which one?

Questions about them

These are the ones aimed at the other person. Some are easy. A few of them are the kind of thing people go years without saying out loud, which is exactly why they are on the list.

• What's one tiny thing that happened this week you forgot to tell them?
• What's something they did recently that you're still thinking about?
• What smell reminded you of them this week?
• If they were here right now, what would you two be doing tonight?
• What's a small habit of theirs you miss more than you expected?
• Describe them to a stranger in exactly five words.
• What would you cook for them if they landed tonight, no notice?
• What's a question you've been meaning to ask them? Ask it now.
• Describe the outfit you'd wear to the airport to pick them up.
• What's the first place you'd take them in your city right now?
• Write the toast you'd give at dinner if they were across the table.
• Write down one thing you want to do together within a year.
• What do you want your first shared kitchen to smell like?
• What's something they're better at than they think they are?
• When did you think of them this week and not say anything?
• What's a story about them you'd tell at their birthday dinner?
• What do you hope they say when they read this?
• What's a version of them you've watched grow this year?
• Something you'd like to thank them for that you've never said out loud.
• What's the most them thing they've done recently?
• Describe the ordinary evening you'd want with them most. No occasion.
• What's a promise you'd make them for next week? Small and keepable.

Make it a ritual, not a chore

The thing that makes this work over months is that it happens on a schedule and it ends in an event. Weekly, not daily. Daily turns into homework by week three, and skipping a day starts to feel like a failure, which is the last thing a long distance relationship needs more of.

Write your answers early in the week. Seal them. Then pick a night, five to eight days out, when you are both free, and open them together on a call. Waiting is the part that makes it feel like something. If you can read their answer the moment they write it, it is just a message. If it sits sealed for a week and you open it at the same time, it is an occasion.

One more thing worth doing: keep them. Answers to the same question a year apart are a startlingly good record of what changed, and neither of you will remember accurately without them.

Where to put the answers so you both actually see them

A shared note works. A chat thread does not, because the answers sink and the last thing either of you sees is a grocery list. What you want is somewhere the answer waits for the other person instead of arriving at them.

Three ways we have seen work, in order of effort. A shared document with one heading per week, which costs nothing and is a little joyless. An email to each other you both agree not to open until a set night, which is better because the waiting does something. Or the app this page belongs to, which seals both answers and only melts the seal when you both press it at the same moment, and then keeps every one of them.

If you want more to do with the person on the other end of these, the date ideas are sorted by how much planning they take, and the games page covers what to play when you are never awake at the same time.