Questions to Ask Your Boyfriend About His Values
Twenty questions that get at what your boyfriend actually believes, asked through situations and decisions rather than by requesting a list of principles. Includes what to do when his answers differ from yours, and how to tell a real disagreement from a stated one.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is something you would never do, even if nobody would ever find out?
Why ask it
The clause about nobody finding out is what makes this worth asking, because it strips out reputation and leaves only conscience. A specific answer is far more informative than a general commitment to being a decent person.
Who do you admire, and for what exactly?
Why ask it
People describe their own aspirations most honestly when talking about somebody else. The specific quality he picks out, and whether it is achievement or character, is the actual answer to what he values.
What behaviour in other people do you find hardest to forgive?
Why ask it
What someone cannot tolerate maps directly onto what they hold sacred. Cruelty, disloyalty, and laziness are very different answers, and knowing which is his tells you what will end things with him.
What did you get told off for as a child that you now think you were right about?
Why ask it
This finds a value he arrived at himself rather than inherited. It also tends to be a good story, which makes it a gentle way into the harder questions further down.
If you found a wallet with three hundred pounds in it, talk me through what you would do.
Why ask it
Ask for the walk-through rather than the verdict, because everyone knows the correct answer and the reasoning is where the person shows up. Listen for whether the wallet's owner is imagined as a real person.
Is there something that would end a friendship for you?
Why ask it
This asks where loyalty stops, which is a limit most people have never articulated. If nothing at all would end a friendship, that is worth exploring too, because unconditional loyalty has costs of its own.
Would you take a job you thought was doing harm if it paid well?
Why ask it
A useful question because it forces a trade-off rather than allowing a principle to be stated for free. Ask what number would change his answer, since almost everyone has one and few people have named it.
What do you think you owe your family?
Why ask it
Obligation is where values get expensive. Money, time, proximity, keeping the peace: whatever he lists here will eventually be a claim on a life you share, so it is better heard now than assumed.
How much do you think you owe strangers?
Why ask it
The contrast with the previous answer is the point. Some people have enormous duties to family and almost none beyond it, others the reverse, and the shape of that boundary explains a great deal about how he behaves in public.
Is honesty always the right call?
Why ask it
Nearly everyone says yes and then produces exceptions when pushed. The exceptions are the real answer, and they tell you what kind of lie he considers permissible, which is worth knowing about in advance.
Have you ever changed your mind about something important? What changed it?
Why ask it
The mechanism matters more than the topic. Being moved by an argument, an experience, or a particular person tells you how any future disagreement between you is likely to get resolved, if it does.
If a child of yours could only turn out one way, what would you pick?
Why ask it
Forcing a single choice is what makes this useful, because kind, honest, and happy are not the same answer. What he picks is a fair statement of what he thinks a person is for.
Do you give money away? What to?
Why ask it
A behavioural question rather than an ideological one, and the two often diverge. It also quietly reveals how he thinks about money he has already earned, which is a subject you will return to as a couple.
What rule do you break without feeling bad about it?
Why ask it
Everybody has one, and how he justifies it shows how his reasoning works when it is inconvenient. The justification is more revealing than the offence, which is usually trivial.
Is there something you think is wrong that most people around you think is fine?
Why ask it
This asks whether he holds any position at social cost, which is the difference between a value and an opinion. If he cannot think of anything, that is worth noting without being unkind about it.
How do you decide when someone has had enough chances?
Why ask it
This is the practical shape of forgiveness, and it will apply to you eventually. Listen for whether the threshold is about repeated behaviour or about a single line, because those produce very different partners.
What would make you speak up in a room where nobody else was going to?
Why ask it
The answer distinguishes what he believes from what he is prepared to be uncomfortable for. Ask whether it has ever happened, because the hypothetical version is much easier to answer well.
Have you ever done something you knew was wrong? What made it possible?
Why ask it
The second half is the whole question. People act against their own values under pressure, exhaustion, or group cover, and knowing which conditions do it to him is more useful than the incident itself.
What do you think a good life requires? Is yours on track?
Why ask it
Two parts, and the gap between them is where the honest conversation is. Someone who can name the gap without either despair or excuses is telling you something worth having.
Which of your own values do you find hardest to actually live by?
Why ask it
The best closing question, because it asks for self-knowledge rather than a position. A serious answer here matters more than agreement on any single item above it.
Working out what he actually believes
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to ask about values usefully
Ask about situations, not principles
"What are your values" gets you a list anyone could produce: honesty, family, hard work. Situations force a choice and reveal an order of priority. Every question on this page is built that way on purpose, and the follow-up that does the most work is simply asking what he would do if the price were higher.
Ask about behaviour that already happened
Hypotheticals show what he believes he would do. Past events show what he did. Where you can, move from "would you" to "have you ever," and treat the second answer as the more reliable of the two.
Do not ask while either of you is annoyed
These questions look calm on paper and can get sharp quickly, particularly the ones about money and obligation. Asked during a disagreement about either subject, they stop being questions and become an argument with better manners.
Reading the answers
The gap between stated and lived
Everyone has one. The question is whether he knows about his. A man who says he values generosity and is careful with money is not necessarily a hypocrite, but a man who cannot see any distance at all between his principles and his behaviour is not looking. That blindness matters more than any single value on the list.
Where his obligations stop
Put his answer about family next to his answer about strangers. The boundary between them predicts a surprising amount: how he will behave toward neighbours, colleagues, and eventually your family, and how much of a shared income he will consider genuinely his to give away.
Disagreement versus contempt
You will not match on everything, and you do not need to. What matters is how he handles a value of yours he does not share. Curiosity is workable, even at length. Dismissal, mockery, or a lecture about how you will grow out of it is the response to take seriously, because it will recur on every subject you ever disagree about.
Which mismatches actually matter
Sort them before you worry about them. Differences of taste and emphasis are easy to live alongside. The ones that cause real trouble are those attached to recurring decisions: money and obligation, honesty, how much either of you owes to family. Those come up monthly for the rest of your lives together.
What goes wrong
- Grading his answers. The moment he can tell there is a correct response, you stop hearing his
- Treating a difference of opinion as a character flaw before you have asked how he arrived at it
- Asking these questions to build a case rather than to understand him. It is visible from across the table
- Skipping your own answers, which turns the conversation into an assessment
- Confusing politics with values. People with the same instincts vote differently, and people who vote alike often want quite different things
- Deciding a hypothetical answer is what he would really do. Only past behaviour tells you that
- Pressing on the answer that unsettled you rather than sitting with it and returning to it another day