Questions to Ask Your Girlfriend About Her Hopes
Twenty questions about what your girlfriend is hoping for rather than planning: the outcomes she cannot control, the wishes she has not stated, and what she is waiting on.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What's the smallest thing you're hoping for this week?
Why ask it
A deliberately low-stakes opener that gets a real answer. Small hopes are also the ones you can actually do something about, which is rarely true of the large ones.
What are you hoping this year turns into?
Why ask it
"Turns into" is doing the work, because it allows for something unplanned. A hope is not a goal, and the phrasing gives her room to say what she wants without committing to producing it.
Is there any news you're waiting on at the moment?
Why ask it
There often is: a result, a decision, a scan, a reply. People carry these quietly and are usually relieved to be asked directly rather than having to introduce it.
What are you hoping happens that you can't make happen yourself?
Why ask it
This is the exact line between a hope and a goal. Whatever she names is something she is powerless over, which means it needs company rather than a plan.
What do you hope you'll have stopped worrying about by this time next year?
Why ask it
Gets at the current weight without asking directly about anxiety. It also gives you a specific thing to notice the absence of a year from now.
What do you hope our home feels like?
Why ask it
Answers tend to be sensory and specific: quiet, full of people, tidy, warm. It is far more useful for daily life than any conversation about property or location.
What are you hoping I'll do without being asked?
Why ask it
A request that has been waiting for an opening, and asking removes the catch that having to ask spoils it. Expect something smaller and more practical than you assume.
What do you hope is still true about you in ten years?
Why ask it
About continuity rather than achievement, which most people find easier and answer more honestly. Whatever she wants preserved is what she is quietly afraid of losing.
What do you hope to still be doing when you're old?
Why ask it
Usually produces something concrete: swimming, cooking for people, working, gardening. It tells you what she treats as central to being herself rather than incidental.
What are you hoping for your parents in the years ahead?
Why ask it
Hopes about ageing parents are usually mixed and rarely voiced: health, reconciliation, an easier death, sometimes distance. Ask gently and let the answer be complicated.
What do you hope changes about your family?
Why ask it
Distinguishes what she has accepted from what she is still hoping for. A hope for change in someone else's behavior is often the most tiring thing a person carries.
Is there a relationship you hope repairs itself?
Why ask it
"Repairs itself" is the honest phrasing, because most people hoping for a reconciliation are not planning to initiate it. Ask what would have to happen for her to make the first move.
What do you hope people say about you when you're not in the room?
Why ask it
Reveals which reputation she is working to keep: kind, capable, difficult to fool, worth calling. It also shows where she feels she is currently falling short.
What do you hope a child of yours would get from you?
Why ask it
Works whether or not she wants children, because it asks what she thinks is best in her. The answer is usually a trait she inherited or one she built deliberately.
What are you quietly hoping we become?
Why ask it
The word "quietly" gives her permission to name something she has not raised. Expect either a small practical thing or something significant that has been waiting for an opening.
Is there something you hope you never have to do?
Why ask it
Points to a dreaded future task: a conversation, a decision about a parent, a return to a particular place. Naming it is the first step to preparing for it.
What do you hope you're wrong about?
Why ask it
An unusual question that produces unusual answers. People hope to be wrong about their own limits, about somebody's motives, or about how something is going to end.
Is there a hope you gave up on that you'd take back if you could?
Why ask it
Abandoned hopes are usually surrendered without a decision being made. Some of them turn out to be dormant rather than gone once she hears herself describe them.
What are you hoping to be forgiven for?
Why ask it
A heavy question that needs to come late and be asked once. If she answers, do not offer absolution on someone else's behalf; ask what she has done about it, if anything.
Is there something you're hoping I'd ask you about?
Why ask it
Ends by handing her the conversation. It is often the most productive question here, because it goes straight to whatever she has been waiting for an invitation to say.
Hearing a hope for what it is
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
A hope is not a plan
- Resist answering with steps. Responding to a hope with a to-do list is the most common way this conversation goes flat.
- Ask what it would mean to her if it happened before asking anything about how.
- Remember that most hopes concern things she does not control: other people, results, health, timing. Company is the appropriate response, not strategy.
- Let some of them stay unresolved. Not every hope needs to be converted into a project to have been worth saying.
When these land well
- Late, unhurried, and without an audience. Hopes are more exposing than goals because they admit to wanting something she cannot secure.
- Not while she is waiting on the specific news in question. Ask afterwards, whichever way it went.
- Offer one of your own in return, honestly. A trade keeps it a conversation instead of an interview.
- Come back to one of them weeks later. Being remembered is the part that matters, and it is what makes the next answer more forthcoming.
What to avoid
- Promising the outcome. You cannot guarantee a job, a pregnancy, a recovery or a reconciliation, and an early promise is remembered when it does not happen.
- Correcting a hope you think is unrealistic. She usually knows, and saying so only means she stops telling you.
- Turning her hope into a joke, even affectionately. It is the fastest way to close the subject for good.
- Repeating it to anyone else. Hopes are told in confidence more often than they are marked as confidential.