Building Better Connection By Asking Better Questions

It’s important to prioritize your marriage and make your wife feel appreciated and valued. It’s easy to get caught in “the drift” with your relationship. Things might be okay, but you shouldn’t settle for just okay. It’s time to either start building or rebuild that connection. You can’t just expect it to be great. It doesn’t just happen. It requires effort. It demands practice. You have to put in the work to have an amazing connection between you and your wife.

Don’t Ask Her To Do the Work

Okay, so what does it look like to “put in the work?” It’s more than just reading books, listening to podcasts, meeting with mentors or getting advice from friends and family. Sure, that is part of it, but all of these practices do nothing if you don’t act on them. That is the key. Show, don’t tell.

For years I did all of these things except take action. A friend of mine, Larry Hagner of the Dad Edge Podcast, dubbed this type of person a content zombie. Mindlessly engaging with self-help advice after self-help advice without putting anything into action. No real growth. To be a better man, husband and father requires constant growth and growth requires action.

Let me give you an example. One of my love languages is quality time. For me, that looks like a face-to-face conversation. Now, I love my kids dearly, but after they’re in bed, that time I have to wind down and relax is one of my favorite parts of the day. My wife and I would finally be able to enjoy some uninterrupted 🤞adult time. Except, just as my wife sits down to relax and shut off her mind for a while I’d interrupt by asking, “Do you want to talk?” It took some time, but eventually, I realized this was the wrong question to ask. She would typically respond to me by saying “Okay talk.” I’d get upset and the child in me would rear its ugly head. See I thought she didn’t want to talk to me. The story I was telling myself was that I’m boring and not worth her time. This wasn’t true. It wasn’t even close to true. What was happening was that I was asking her, without actually asking her, to do the work herself. Instead, I should have taken the initiative myself. I wasn’t asking the right questions to build connection with my wife. I wasn’t putting in the work.

You see my wife has one of the toughest and most important jobs that there is. She is a stay-at-home mom of three young toddlers. What does this look like? Pretty much as you’d expect. It’s constant screaming, chasing, playing, cooking and maybe even a bit of crying too (actually maybe more than a bit). Much of her identity is wrapped up in being mommy. There is rarely a time when she isn’t being asked for something. Then on top of all that I was making it clear that I “needed” her attention too. To make matters worse, as I said before I was basically asking her to do the work. I was doing her a disservice. I was hurting our relationship.

Ask Better Questions

Our connection only started to change when I began asking better questions. What I started doing was investing a little bit of time developing questions that I could ask her and we could then talk about. I started very simple. One question. My Aim was to ask her one question at night after the kids went to bed. My expectations were that it would lead to maybe ten to fifteen minutes of conversation each time, but that’s not what happened. It generated so much more. There were times I’d ask a question and we’d talk for an hour or more. What was happening here?

Learn to use generative questions

I learned about something called generative questions. See what most of us usually do and what I was doing was asking very boring, process-based questions. These are basic questions like, “How was your day?” Or “What did you do today?” Sometimes this would lead to a longer discussion, but most times it wouldn’t. In fact, typically the response I got lasted only five minutes or less. What a generative question does is it requires the person responding to give some thought and reflection. It helps you to reach into and know their heart.

Its Okay To start small

One simple way of implementing this technique would be instead of asking “How was your day?” ask “What brought you the most joy today?” Maybe you prefer asking something like “What was something that you laughed about today?” You get the idea. These types of questions are more focused and allow you to hear about and experience the highlights of the day through your wife’s eyes. These are the things you want to remember. Doing this will allow you the opportunity to uncover your wife’s heart.

Once you develop some consistency with this you are ready for the next step. Build on your ability to ask better questions by getting a bit more creative. This doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult. You could develop one from a book you’re reading, a podcast you’re listening to or a conversation that you had with a friend. When you think of one write it down.

What I like to do is keep a bank of questions ready so when my wife and I have some to chat I’m prepared. Life can be chaotic so you want to make sure you are ready when the moment presents itself. It could be while you’re in the car, after you put the kids to bed, or maybe during a quick break while the kids are playing outside. For me, with three toddlers, the time that I have to be able to do this can be extremely limited, so I want to be ready to take advantage. All I need to do is pull out my phone, reference my list and we are ready to go.

dream together with future based generative questions

Something else you can do, that I really enjoy, is asking a future-based generative question. Simply put, this is a question that gives you and your wife some space to dream about what could be. It gives permission to think big. Allow this. We all need to dream. You could ask your wife something like this, “If we were to sit here one year from now celebrating the best year of marriage we’ve ever had what would have to happen? Let your wife dream about that and enjoy getting to see inside her heart.

don’t be afraid of Speedbumps

Starting this habit has been the springboard to a better connection with my wife, but it didn’t come without obstacles. Many times our wives aren’t used to this and it catches them by surprise. Who are you and what have you done with my husband? For me, it was about building consistency. Showing my wife that I’m going to make this a priority, not just telling her that it was important. Accept the challenge. Commit to it! Start small. Try one of the simpler generative questions I referenced earlier. Plan it out and then ask her when you get home from work. Don’t let the speedbumps deter you or stop you from trying.

Here’s a headstart. This is a short list consisting of five questions that I’ve asked my wife. Please feel free to steal them, change them or ignore them and create you’re own.

What was our greatest victory as a couple over the last 12 months?
What will be our greatest victory as a couple over the next 12 months?
If I were to die tommorow what’s one thing that you would forever treasure about me?
What one word best describes our marriage right now?
Who is the single most influential person in your life?

It’s not complicated to start building a connection with your wife, but it isn’t easy either. Taking that first step, committing to change and building a consistent habit takes effort. You have to put in the work to build this connection. Start small, or go big. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that you start. Make some time in your day to do it. Then let me know how it went and share the question you asked. I love to add new ones to my list. Leave a comment below, on Facebook, or on Instagram. You can also get in touch with me by sending an email.

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Building Better Connection With Your Wife by Asking Better Questions