Questions to Ask Your Girlfriend About Her Family
Twenty questions about your girlfriend's family, covering who she is close to, the role she played growing up, what is never discussed, and what you need to know before you meet them.
20 questions · each with the reason to ask it · conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works
- 01
Who in your family do you talk to most, and how often?
Why ask it
Establishes the actual map rather than the official one. The person she speaks to weekly matters more to daily life than whoever holds the senior position in the family.
- 02
What's your mother like when it's just the two of you?
Why ask it
People behave differently one to one, and the private version is the one your girlfriend is dealing with. It also tells you how much of the public version is performance.
- 03
What's your father like to be around?
Why ask it
Deliberately about atmosphere rather than character. "Fine" followed by nothing is worth one more question, because the effect a parent has in a room is rarely nothing.
- 04
What role did you play growing up: the responsible one, the peacemaker, the difficult one?
Why ask it
Family roles are assigned early and stubbornly outlive their usefulness. The role she names often explains how she behaves in conflict with you, which is otherwise hard to trace.
- 05
Which of your siblings are you most like, and which least?
Why ask it
Easier and more revealing than asking her to describe each one. Comparison forces her to say what she thinks she is, not just what they are.
- 06
What happens in your family when somebody's upset?
Why ask it
Every family has a standard procedure: it gets talked about, it gets fixed with food, or it gets ignored until it passes. Yours is probably different, and that difference causes most in-law friction.
- 07
What did your parents get right that you'd want to copy?
Why ask it
Gives you the traditions and habits worth preserving in whatever you build together. It also tends to loosen her up before the harder questions.
- 08
What did they get wrong that you're careful about now?
Why ask it
Naming the correction is more useful than naming the fault. "I'm careful not to go silent" tells you something she is actively managing, and where the effort is going.
- 09
What isn't talked about in your family?
Why ask it
Every family has a subject. Knowing where it is stops you walking into it at a table of eight, and the size of the silence tells you how much weight it carries.
- 10
Which relative do I need to understand before I meet them?
Why ask it
Asks for a briefing, which she will usually give gladly. Expect one name, some history, and a suggestion about what not to raise.
- 11
What should I avoid bringing up at a family dinner?
Why ask it
Practical, immediate, and it saves an evening. Politics, money, someone's divorce and someone else's drinking are the usual candidates, but the specifics matter.
- 12
How are holidays organized, and how much say do you actually have?
Why ask it
Reveals whether attendance is a choice or an obligation with a fixed venue. This is the single most useful thing to know before your first year of holidays together.
- 13
Who in your family are you protective of?
Why ask it
Tells you who cannot be criticized in front of her, even mildly, even accurately. Getting this wrong once tends to be remembered for a long time.
- 14
Has anyone in the family fallen out, and where do you stand on it?
Why ask it
Long-running estrangements come with sides, and guests are assumed to have taken one. Her own position may be more complicated than the family's official line.
- 15
How do your parents show they're proud of you, if they do?
Why ask it
Some families say it and some indicate it obliquely through food, money or advice. If the answer is that they do not, you have learned something important about what praise means to her.
- 16
What do your parents believe that you don't?
Why ask it
Locates the fault lines she is managing at every visit. It also tells you whether she argues with them, avoids the subject, or keeps a separate self for family occasions.
- 17
How much do they know about us, and how much do you want them to?
Why ask it
The gap between those two answers is worth discussing. It is also the polite way to find out whether you are being kept at a distance and why.
- 18
What would your family expect from a partner of yours?
Why ask it
Expectations about religion, money, holidays and grandchildren usually arrive through her rather than directly. Better to hear them now than to be measured against them unaware.
- 19
What worries you about your family getting older?
Why ask it
Elder care lands early and unevenly, and eldest daughters in particular often assume it will be them. Her answer previews a responsibility you may end up sharing.
- 20
What would you want to do differently in a family of our own?
Why ask it
Turns the whole conversation forward. Answers here tend to be unusually specific because they are drawn from things she has watched go wrong at close range.
Learning a family you are marrying into or visiting
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you meet them
Before you meet them
- Get names, ages and relationships written down, including step-relations and who is no longer spoken to. Guessing at a dinner table is worse than asking beforehand.
- Ask what they usually do when someone visits: whether there is a formal meal, whether you should bring something, whether you are expected to stay over.
- Find out what she has already told them about you, so you do not contradict it by accident.
- Agree a signal for when you want to leave, and agree how long you are staying before you arrive.
What to listen for in her answers
What to listen for in her answers
- The relatives she describes in detail and the ones she skips. The skipped ones are usually skipped for a reason.
- Whether she uses "we" or "they" about her family. It shifts depending on how much she still belongs to it.
- Tense changes. A parent described in the past tense while alive often means a relationship that has ended without a funeral.
- How she reports her family's opinions: quoted with affection, quoted with an eye roll, or presented as facts about the world.
What to avoid
What to avoid
- Criticizing a relative before she has. Complaints about family are hers to make, and joining in early rarely goes the way you expect.
- Comparing her family to yours as a scale of normal. Every family thinks its own arrangements are obvious.
- Treating a difficult childhood as something to be solved in one conversation. Listen, then ask what she wants from you, if anything.
- Repeating anything she tells you back to the family, including in a well-meaning way. Assume it was told to you only.