Trusting a New Person

Click here for Part I and Part II

Do you feel happier and closer to someone after you’ve shared some deeper, emotional truths about yourselves?

I certainly do! Psychologists Arthur and Elaine Aron made a list of 36 questions for people to ask each other to grow closer. In the original research study where they made this questionnaire, strangers asked one another these 36 questions that become more and more personal as they moved down the list.

At the end, many participants felt closer to each other, and some even became friends.

Mary Ann Miranda thought of the fun idea of writing out her answers to this questionnaire. Here are her responses! “I Think I Love You” Part I, II, and III.

These are my answers to Parts I and II of the questionnaire.

Thank you also to my friend Kiki Lu Johnson for joining us in this activity! Here are her responses: “Do You Love Me Now?” Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI. (She divided up the questionnaire into 6 parts rather than 3 parts.)

And here my answers to the last 12 questions:

25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling … “

Throughout my posts, I saw my current crush as my “partner” for this questionnaire. So I’ll imagine how we would both feel if he were in this room with me.

• We’re worried, because of something that just happened to me. Let’s assume that he would worry for my sake too. My concern may seem trivial to outsiders, but my crush has been empathetic even when I told him about smaller-scale problems before.
• We wish to escape from this problem I encountered, either by solving it or breaking away to do happier things. He might ask me to go outside and walk his dog with him. It should cheer me up to see the cute puppy.

• We hope I can find help for my problem if I don’t manage to solve it myself. We feel stuck right now, because we still need to hear back from someone before I can make my next decision.

Gee, maybe I shouldn’t have picked this time to answer this question…

26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share … “

Feelings.

I do confide in trusted friends about my fears, worries, sorrows, joys, and the like. But just because I have people who are willing to listen and also to tell me their feelings, doesn’t mean I would take this sharing for granted.

In fact, I find that the least fulfilling relationships for me, are those where we share next to no feelings with each other.

This is not always because the other person is unwilling, however.

There are some people I simply don’t trust enough to confide in, just as there are those who probably don’t trust me enough to tell me about their feelings. And of course, there are people who don’t want to talk about their emotions at all.

Regardless, I think it would be lonely if we don’t share our feelings with anyone. I know some people only feel safe confiding in their therapist about their worries and fears, but I personally think life would be more satisfying if we get to share them with some friends or family too.

27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for [them] to know.

You could say that I’m closer than casual friends with my crush, though not “close” per se. If we were to be close, he’ll need to accept my preference for an emotionally-confiding relationship (see above). He doesn’t need to tell me everything about his life, as I can respect secrets.

But from past experience, a close friendship will end up feeling unequal and dissatisfying if I keep sharing things about my life, while my friend tells me very little about theirs. It’s a bit depressing if they’re so tight-lipped.

With my current crush, at least there’s more equality in the amount we share.

In fact, in the earlier stages of our friendship, I realized that he had shared some things about his life to me, while I had shared next to nothing about mine! (We mostly talked about Pokemon Go and the battle tournaments we were in.)

I hadn’t done this deliberately, but my crush might have thought that I was holding back from him.

Naturally, I wanted him to think well of me, so it took me a while to reveal more vulnerable things about myself. But I was glad I did, because it was so gratifying to hear him respond with empathy and compassion, rather than with judgment and dismissal.

Nowadays, I’m more long-winded in my self-disclosures, but he is still willing to tell me about himself, what he’s doing, and what he likes, from time to time. So I don’t feel too alone.

Even when he shares a little tidbit with me, I treasure it like a gem! Yes, I’m infatuated and I’m not ashamed about this.

28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.

Woah, did I answer this question before? Anyway. I like the way he uses words. He’s very eloquent, comforting, and persuasive.

But he also has a lot of self-deprecating humor and general humility, which I love.

Furthermore, I admire his good eye for photography, especially for landscape, animal, and Pokemon Go pictures.

And of course, I love that he prioritizes Jesse, his golden retriever, so much. I wouldn’t like a guy who disliked animals.

29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

Sometime in early primary school, I was standing up during a class activity. When I sat down, I fell on my butt because a classmate had pulled the chair out from under me.

Everyone laughed. Unfortunately, this was usual behavior from my classmates.

I have to wonder why I was such a popular bully victim. Did I look weak? Was it because I had few friends? (Many of these “friends” also joined in the many bullying incidents.)

Maybe I just had a big reaction to things and cried easily, so kids treated me like a loud squish toy to play with.

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

I cry pretty often but rarely in front of someone else, especially since the lockdown where I don’t meet with many people in the first place. And I live alone.

The last time I remember crying in front of people, was in 2017. I was doing my practicum, and my supervisor did some nasty things to me, all the while making herself look like a good person.

My classmates sympathized with me as I sobbed in their presence. But despite their sympathy, they still believed that my supervisor was a kind, sweet lady.

This is a relationship pattern, by the way. There have been important people in my life, who were exceptionally charming and likable to all.

When I started getting hurt by some of the things they did to me, they would make me feel ridiculous, stupid, and ungrateful. They would paint themselves as the warm and kind-hearted person, while I was either cold, inept, or too sensitive.

These individuals were such convincing actors too. If I dared to voice my doubts about them, I would get shut down by other people, because they thought the person “didn’t mean it in that way,” and a whole load of other excuses.

Yes, I know all of these disclosures are quite dark, and I’m sorry for making you read this. But it also feels cathartic for me to write this out.

And hopefully someone who had similar experiences, will read my account and feel less alone.

The second part to this question is easy: the last time I cried alone was just now! I felt sad to relive those awful memories that I just described.

31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

Is this just the same as question 28? Or should I think of something else I haven’t mentioned?

Well, I like that though he doesn’t always reply that fast (he used to take at least a week to reply, but recently this has shortened to a few days), he does try to respond to almost everything I said.

Not everyone does that. Some people would just choose one point to reply to and ignore everything else I wrote to them. I understand that I type a lot, but over time, this imbalance in communication does depress me, if it’s a closer relationship.

So I’m grateful that my crush does bother to give me a more thoughtful response. It makes me feel like he takes me seriously as a person!

32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

Injury, severe violence, killing, torture, and rape. I especially don’t understand why some people think it’s okay to joke about rape. Such “jokes” are disgusting and show an appalling lack of empathy on the speaker’s part.

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

Oh dear, it’s already 8 pm as I write this, so there’s not much of tonight left. Of course I would regret not confessing to my crush yet, due to reasons that I won’t divulge here. But that is too obvious of an answer.

Well, there are a few friends on Medium who have written some particularly vulnerable posts lately. I wanted to respond to and reassure them. The reason why I haven’t done that yet, was because I wanted to finish writing this post first!

34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

My flute. Partly because it’s the most portable expensive item I own, not including my laptop and cell phone. I didn’t want to choose the latter two because I wanted a more interesting answer.

Plus, I already feel guilty for almost never playing my flute anymore. I don’t need extra guilt for letting it burn down to ashes too.

Moreover, despite my neglect of my musical instrument, I still feel more emotionally attached to my flute than to my other electronic devices.

I have lots of good memories with my flute, such as performing the “Journey to the West” TV theme song in front of seniors at a volunteer event. I love the sound of this beautiful silver instrument, too.

Furthermore, the thought of knowing how to play a flute when most people don’t, is very appealing. Most of my high school classmates knew how to play the recorder or the piano, but only a few of them played the flute.

35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?

I’ll assume this means my chosen family. Maybe my best friend. She lives on the other side of the planet, and has disappeared for more than a year now. She didn’t answer any of my messages, either.

A mutual friend said my best friend had gone to China with her parents, so Facebook and WhatsApp would be blocked there. But I don’t see why she couldn’t email me or tell me her plan to go to China in the first place.

Despite my bewilderment at being left in the dark by my best friend, whom I had trusted more than anyone else in my life, it would disturb me deeply if I found out that she had died.

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how [they] might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

Gosh, I want to talk about the problem I alluded to at the beginning of this post. But due to reasons, I think it would be wiser to not reveal the problem here.

So I’ll ask him this general question instead:

Over this past year, I’ve done a lot of inner work and had a ton of big life experiences, so I have successfully raised my abysmal self-esteem to a medium level of self-esteem.

But today, that surprising and harsh incident, had knocked me back down.

I feel terrified and helpless, despite all my attempts to reassure myself that I will find a solution and everything will be okay. And that this incident says nothing about my worth as a person.

The suspense of not knowing certain things about this event, makes it even worse, because without the information, my mind is apt to imagine all sorts of scary scenarios, no matter how much I try to calm myself down and think more reasonable thoughts.

So my question to my crush would be: How would you handle unexpected events like this? How would you self-soothe and prove to yourself that you’re still a worthy and okay person?

I’m still flooded with apprehension and panic, because this questionnaire is drawing to a close and I’ll have to find something else to distract me from this fear.

If my crush reflects back how I seem to be feeling about this problem, he might say that I’m sad, scared, and angry, but mostly scared. He might advise me to get some rest.

But I really do need to occupy myself with something else (e.g. I can chat with friends). “Resting” only lets my mind drift and fixate on this thing that’s giving me so much anxiety.

At last, the 36 questions are done! I feel relieved but also sad that this questionnaire is over. It has been a roller coaster ride for sure, especially this last set of questions.

If you feel moved to do so, do consider answering these 36 questions as well, and comment here with a link to your post!  :)

P.S. I wrote up the reason for my panic and apprehension here.

Originally published on Motivate the Mind on May 15, 2022