Can you get close to another person in forty-five minutes? In 1997 psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues put it to the test in the lab: they sat strangers across from each other and gave them a list of 36 questions. Pairs who worked through the questions felt closer to each other than pairs who simply made small talk.
At e-wehikul we turned the experiment around. Instead of asking these questions to someone else, you ask them to yourself – today, and again a year from now. In between, your answers wait in a letter to the future.
Where the 36 questions come from
Aron’s questions are split into three sets, and each one asks for more openness than the last. The first is about dreams and preferences: who you’d invite to dinner, what your perfect day looks like. The second is about values and memories. The third touches what we rarely say out loud: tears, regret and things left unsaid.
In 2015 the questions went viral thanks to an essay in The New York Times, and ever since a myth has followed them around: that they “guarantee falling in love”. The study never promised that. It showed something more modest and more interesting: good questions open people up – including to themselves.
Three sets in Games with time
Some of Aron’s questions only work for couples, like “tell your partner what you like about them”. We picked the ones you can answer on your own and arranged them into three sets – from the lightest to the most personal:
- Warm-up questions – seven questions about dreams and preferences. Who would you invite to dinner? What are you most grateful for? Which one ability would you like to wake up with tomorrow?
- What matters – seven questions about values and memories: what you value in friendship, what you’re proud of, what you’ve long lacked the courage to do.
- No masks – the six most personal questions. When did you last cry in front of someone? What would you most regret not having told someone?
You can skip any question – a single answer is enough to create a letter.
How it works
You answer in writing, in your own words – no points, profiles or scores. At the end you choose when the letter should reach you: in six months, in a year, in 3 or in 5 years. You enter your email address and confirm it with one click, like every e-wehikul letter.
On the chosen day you receive a letter with the questions and your answers from months or years ago. The skipped questions are there too – with a blank space you can fill in for the first time. The letter is never public and no one but you will read it.
Why answer twice
Asked about our perfect day, we usually answer without hesitation and feel sure we’d say the same a year later. Most of the time we’re wrong. The people we’d like to have dinner with change, and so do the things we’re proud of – even the things we regret. The change is just slow, so we don’t notice it.
A letter with your own answers works like an old photograph: suddenly you see how far you’ve come. Before you read it, try answering again – in your head or on paper – and then compare. Which answers are still yours? And which were written by someone a little different?
Start with one question
If you don’t know where to begin, choose Warm-up questions – they’ll take a quarter of an hour, and your answers will come back to you in a year. When you feel like going deeper, What matters and No masks are waiting.
And if you’d rather play a game with a result, try the “You in the future” quiz – seven questions, four profiles and a letter on the date you choose.