The alignment check

20 compatibility questions for dating

Chemistry answers one question: do you want to see this person again? Compatibility answers a different one: what happens if you keep seeing them? The first is obvious by the end of a phone call. The second hides for months unless you go looking for it.

Compatibility isn't sameness. Two savers can be compatible; so can a saver and a spender who both know it and have a plan. What breaks couples is not difference — it's difference discovered late, after the habits have hardened and the stakes have grown.

These twenty questions go looking early. They're organized by the five subjects that actually predict whether two lives fit: money, family, daily life, conflict, and intent.

Money

Ask about behavior, not philosophy. Everyone believes in "being responsible." What varies is what people do on the 28th of the month.

1. 01Do you know roughly what you spent last month, or would you have to look?
2. 02If an extra thousand dollars appeared today, what would actually happen to it?
3. 03In a long relationship, do you picture shared money, separate money, or some of each?
4. 04What's a money habit of someone else's that you know you couldn't live with?

Family

Family questions are really questions about obligation, geography, and the future — the three things romance is worst at negotiating on its own.

1. 05Do you want kids? If yes, roughly when — and if you're unsure, what is the unsureness about?
2. 06How often do you talk to your parents, and how much say do they have in your decisions?
3. 07If your family and your partner disagreed about something important, how would you handle being in the middle?
4. 08Would you move cities for a relationship? Would you expect someone to move for you?

Daily life

Most of a relationship is Tuesday. Matching Tuesdays matter more than matching bucket lists.

1. 09What does your ordinary weekday evening look like — and how much of it do you want company for?
2. 10How clean does a home need to be before you can relax in it?
3. 11Are you an early riser or a night person, and how negotiable is that?
4. 12How social are you, honestly — how many evenings a week do you want to be around other people?

Conflict

The predictor isn't whether you'll fight — you will. It's whether your repair styles are compatible: how fast, how direct, and how finished a disagreement gets.

1. 13After a disagreement, do you need to resolve it before bed, or do you need a day to cool off first?
2. 14Do you say the hard thing directly, or do you hint and hope it gets picked up?
3. 15What does being listened to look like for you, specifically?
4. 16When someone criticizes you fairly, what do you do with it?

Intent

Everything above is negotiable between two people who want the same thing. Nothing above survives two people who don't.

1. 17What are you looking for right now — and what would make you stop looking?
2. 18How long did your longest relationship last, and what did you learn from how it ended?
3. 19Where does a relationship rank against your career, your friends, and your own plans right now?
4. 20What would need to be true after three months for you to call this working?

Fair questions