100 Questions to Ask Your Cousin
Questions to ask a cousin at a family gathering or over a long call: childhood memories you share, family traditions, what they are working towards, and what neither of you has brought up.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is your favorite memory of us as kids?
Why ask it
Cousins usually hold different halves of the same memory. Expect to be corrected about whose idea it was or who broke the window, and that argument is normally the best part of the conversation.
What is the funniest thing that has happened to you lately?
Why ask it
A recent story is far easier to tell than a summary of a life, and it gets a cousin talking before anything personal arrives. It also tells you what their week looks like without asking how work is going.
What do you remember about family holidays that I probably remember differently?
Why ask it
The same gathering looked different from each household. What was a treat for one branch of the family was an obligation for another, and that gap explains a lot about how you each turned out.
What do you actually do all day at your job?
Why ask it
Families tend to know a cousin's job title and nothing else. The daily version is where you find out whether they like it, and it gives you something real to ask about next time you speak.
What are you saving up for or working towards at the moment?
Why ask it
More concrete than asking about dreams, and people answer it honestly. A deposit, a course, a van, or nothing in particular each tell you something about where they are in their life.
Which family tradition would you keep if you could only keep one?
Why ask it
Forcing a single choice cuts past polite agreement that all of it is lovely. What survives is usually small, who carves or which cousins sleep on the floor, rather than the official event.
What do you remember about our grandparents that I might not know?
Why ask it
You each got a different version of them depending on your age and which house you stayed in. Their memories fill in the years before you were paying attention.
Which family story do you think has grown in the telling?
Why ask it
Every family has one, and cousins are the only people who can compare notes without anyone taking offence. You often end up with the plain version for the first time.
What are you proud of that the family has never made a fuss about?
Why ask it
Families hand out credit early and then stop updating. Whoever was not cast as the achiever usually has the more interesting answer here, and no one has asked them for it.
How do you spend a Saturday when nobody needs anything from you?
Why ask it
Free time is where personality shows. It also tells you whether the next visit should be a long walk, a bar, or a kitchen table, which makes the invitation easier to get right.
What have you figured out about yourself in the last year or two?
Why ask it
This gets a real answer from a cousin where it would not from a stranger, because you share the starting point and they do not have to explain their background first.
What did you assume about me growing up that turned out to be wrong?
Why ask it
Cousins carry fixed impressions formed between about nine and fourteen and rarely revise them. Hearing what they got wrong is often the moment the relationship stops being a childhood one.
Who in the family are you closest to now, and how did that happen?
Why ask it
Closeness shifts after weddings, funerals, and moves. The answer maps who is currently in touch with whom, which is genuinely useful if you are ever trying to organize anything.
What have you always wanted to try and keep putting off?
Why ask it
Putting off is the operative phrase. Cousins are low-stakes company for the thing you would feel silly starting alone, and this question has a habit of turning into an actual plan.
What is the best advice anyone in our family ever gave you?
Why ask it
Advice from inside a family carries that family's assumptions about work, money, and duty. Whether they still follow it tells you which of those assumptions they kept and which they dropped.
What would you change about your life right now if you could?
Why ask it
Ask this after the lighter questions rather than before. The answer is usually mundane and specific, a commute, a lease, a course left unfinished, rather than the crisis you might be braced for.
Which part of the family reputation do you get tired of living up to?
Why ask it
Families assign roles early: the responsible one, the funny one, the one who left. Naming the role out loud is a relief, and it explains behavior at gatherings that has never quite made sense to you.
What do you wish we did more of together?
Why ask it
This is a request dressed as a question, and cousins usually answer with something achievable. It is also how sporadic contact turns into an arrangement with a date on it.
Is there anything you have wanted to say to me and never found the moment for?
Why ask it
Cousins accumulate unsaid things because they only meet at events where nobody talks properly. Give it room and expect a pause before the real answer arrives.
What do you hope is still true about the two of us in twenty years?
Why ask it
Once the grandparents who used to gather everyone are gone, cousin relationships continue only on purpose. Saying out loud what you both want it to be is most of how that happens.
Talking to a Cousin Properly
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting Past Small Talk
Get away from the gathering
A room full of relatives is the worst place for a real conversation, because everyone within earshot has an opinion and a history. Offer to drive them to the airport, do the dishes together, or take a walk before the meal.
Answer your own questions first
Cousins take turns rather than interviewing each other. Give your version of the memory or the year you have had, and you will get a much fuller answer than the question would produce on its own.
Use the shared history as a shortcut
You have context nobody else in their life has. Naming a specific summer, a car, or the back bedroom at your grandmother's house gets you a real story faster than any general question about childhood.
Decide in advance that it stays with you
The fastest way to end a candid cousin relationship is for something to reach an aunt. If you cannot promise yourself that, ask lighter questions.
If You Have Not Spoken in Years
- Start with ordinary information: where they live, what the job is, who is at home. People need a few minutes of that before anything else.
- Ask about their parents. It is the safest bridge between two branches of a family and it usually opens into their own news.
- Skip the accounting of who should have called. Explaining the gap turns into apology and neither of you needs it.
- Keep the first conversation short and end it while it is still going well. Twenty good minutes leads to a second call; a two hour catch-up rarely repeats.
- Follow up within a week with one specific thing: the photo you mentioned, the name you could not remember, the recipe. That is what turns a one-off into contact.
- If you are the one who wants to be closer, say so plainly rather than hinting. Cousins often assume the other side is not interested.
Subjects to Handle Carefully
Money, property and wills
Who inherited what, and who helped which parent, are live wires in most families. If it comes up, listen without taking a position, particularly when your parents are on opposite sides of it.
A conflict you only half know
You are probably carrying one parent's account of an old argument. Asking a cousin to confirm it puts them between their parents and yours, and they will remember being asked.
Anything that ranks you
Questions about who earns more, who has the bigger house, or who is further along reactivate the childhood league table that families are already prone to. Ask about the work, not the score.
Politics with an audience
If you genuinely want to know what a cousin thinks, ask when the two of you are alone. In a room full of relatives everybody is performing for somebody.