The Top Ten Questions to Ask a Potential Life Partner

By Janice D. Bennett, Ph.D.

Choosing a life partner requires that you be a good detective. Although chemistry and attraction contribute to a relationship's foundation, singles should be sure to investigate mutual interests, values, experience, habits, priorities and life goals. Here are ten questions designed to help you gather important information to identify a potential life partner:

1. What do you want out of life?

Knowing what your dating partner's goals are in life helps you to determine if they are ones that you can share. More important, asking this question helps to open up communication about what really matters to each of you, and what you ultimately want to accomplish in your lives.

2. How important is your job or career?

Since levels of ambition vary among people, be sure that you are compatible enough in this area to support your partner's energy and drive to attain his/her financial goals.

3. How important are family and children?

People can vary a great deal in their desire to be involved with their families. Welcoming children in one's life also lets you know, regardless of age, the desire to create and nurture one's own family environment.

4. Are you spiritually or religiously affiliated? Do you participate in religious practices and rituals?

Belief in a higher power, and one's devotion to it, can be a central focus in the lives of many people. Be sure that you and your dating partner share enough of an interest and investment in religious practices, so that this major area becomes a source of joy and pleasure in your relationship, not one of burden and resentment.

5. What obstacles or challenges have you encountered, and overcome, in your life so far?

Learning how your dating partner has dealt with challenges or hardships tells you about his/her ability to adapt and change. Knowing what your dating partner has learned as a result of overcoming challenges lets you know how s/he may handle them in the future, especially within a relationship with you.

6. How important are neatness and punctuality?

This question is included as an example of how some personal habits around cleanliness, punctuality, and even table manners can undermine the good feelings that two people would otherwise have toward one another. Be sure to observe if your dating partner engages in behaviors that really annoy or irritate you.

7. How would you describe the quality of your parents' marriage?

Relationship behavior is modeled by the people we are closest to, such as our parents. Knowing what your dating partner has witnessed lets you know his/her image of marriage and relationships. Find out about the quality of your dating partner's parents' marriage, especially whether they enjoy, or merely tolerate, each other.

8. How would you describe your relationship with your mother? With your father?

Our relationships with our parents teach us, on very deep levels, about love, giving and trust. How we experience parental love, for example, whether it is conditional or not, provides us with the foundation for loving others throughout life. Investigating the quality of your dating partner's relationship with each parent helps you to determine whether or not s/he is emotionally mature. This information also tells you about your dating partner's gender and sex role expectations.

9. What do you like about your life?

You'll want to know whether your dating partner is happy, and why. Find out what gives his/her life meaning.

10. What inspired you today?

The world is filled with awe-inspiring events that can easily be taken for granted. Asking this question helps you to discover just how aware and alive your dating partner is. Sharing your observations with each other helps to increase closeness and intimacy, as well as your mutual appreciation for all that contributes to finding and creating a life partner relationship.

Practicing as a psychologist for over 25 years, Dr. Janice has treated many singles looking to get married, but who had become depressed and demoralized by the dating process. Living in New York City with her husband and three children, Dr. Janice now uses her skills and experience to help healthy singles overcome the obstacles preventing them from attaining the relationships and lives they really want. Janice has been quoted in Us Weekly, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan Magazines, and gives teleclasses, lectures and workshops. Follow her on Twitter, and check out her "Get Your Love Right!" blog, read other dating-related Q's&A's and articles, and sign up for a complimentary 40 minute telephone coaching session by visiting her website at http://www.DoctorLoveCoach.com

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