Questions to Ask Your Girlfriend About Her Values
Twenty questions for finding out what your girlfriend actually values: money and giving, family obligation, honesty, faith, work, and the lines she will not cross. Written for couples getting serious who would rather find the differences early.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Who do you think of as a genuinely good person, and what makes them one?
Why ask it
Naming a real person forces her to describe values as behavior rather than adjectives. Notice whether the qualities she admires are ones she practices herself or ones she wishes she had.
What did your parents care about that you've kept, and what have you dropped?
Why ask it
Most people keep some of their parents' values and deliberately reject others. The rejected half is the more useful one: those positions were chosen rather than absorbed, and she will defend them hardest.
What's a rule you keep that most people around you don't?
Why ask it
A private rule, no texting after a certain hour, never lending money, no work at weekends, is a value she actually pays for. Stated values are cheap. Costly ones are the real inventory.
What kind of dishonesty do you think is fine?
Why ask it
Everyone tolerates some. Where she draws the line, a polite lie about a gift versus a lie about money, is a decent forecast of what she will keep from you and what she never would.
What do you want your work to be for, besides paying you?
Why ask it
Answers tend to fall into work as income, work as identity, or work as service, and each carries a different tolerance for long hours and low pay. Useful to know before you plan a decade together.
How much of what you earn do you think should go to other people?
Why ask it
Giving is one of the few values with a number attached, so it is hard to bluff. A gap between what she thinks is right and what she does is normal, and how she talks about that gap tells you more than the figure.
Do you think you owe strangers anything?
Why ask it
This surfaces her politics more honestly than asking about politics. The thing to listen for is whether her sense of obligation extends past people she can actually see.
What's the most recent thing you changed your mind about?
Why ask it
Someone who cannot remember changing their mind is either unusually settled or not really listening. Ask what moved her: an argument, a person, or something that happened to her.
When being kind and being honest collide, which one wins?
Why ask it
The example she reaches for matters more than the answer. Kindness-first people tend to withhold information to protect you. Honesty-first people deliver it and expect you to manage.
If a close friend told you they'd done something illegal, what would you do?
Why ask it
A hypothetical with real weight. Her answer marks where loyalty stops, and that line will sit in roughly the same place when the friend in question is you.
What do you owe your family that you can't opt out of?
Why ask it
Family obligation is where couples collide hardest: money sent home, which holidays are non-negotiable, whether a parent eventually moves in. Far easier as a principle now than as an emergency later.
What would make you turn down a job that paid very well?
Why ask it
This is her price, and everybody has one. Listen for what she names as not worth the money, the hours, the city, the person she would report to, because that is the value she would protect under pressure.
How do you decide someone has used up your patience?
Why ask it
How she treats people who have disappointed her is roughly how she will treat you during a bad stretch. Endless patience and instant cut-offs are both worth understanding before you need one of them.
Where does religion sit for you now compared with how you were raised?
Why ask it
The direction of travel matters more than the current position. If either of you wants children brought up in a tradition, this is the conversation that quietly decides it.
What's a value you hold that you don't really live up to?
Why ask it
The gap between claimed and lived values is where the honest part of this conversation happens. Someone who can name her own inconsistency without a speech about it is usually easier to live with than someone who reports none.
When we want opposite things and neither of us is wrong, how should we settle it?
Why ask it
She is describing a conflict method: one of you defers, you split the difference, you take turns, or you wait each other out. You are choosing a system, so pick one you can both actually operate.
If one of us started earning far more than the other, how would you want to handle it?
Why ask it
Asymmetry breaks more partnerships than shortage does. Answers usually reveal whether she thinks of income as shared or individually owned, and whether the imbalance would leave her feeling guilty or owed.
What are you not willing to compromise on in a long partnership?
Why ask it
The dealbreaker question, and it deserves an answer from you too. Vagueness here is itself a signal: people who have never named a limit tend to discover it mid-crisis, at the worst possible volume.
What would you refuse to do even if you knew nobody would ever find out?
Why ask it
Values with an audience are manners. Values without one are character. Most people have never been asked this and the pause before answering is part of the answer.
What do you want people to say about how you treated them?
Why ask it
Ending here keeps the set from finishing on a dealbreaker, and the answer doubles as a standard: she has just described what she would count as having failed.
Having this conversation without it turning into a debate
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting past stock answers
- "When did that last cost you something?" A value that has never been inconvenient is usually an opinion.
- "Can you give me an example from this year?" Recent examples are harder to invent and easier to discuss.
- "Who taught you that?" Values arrive from somewhere, and the source often explains why she holds it so firmly.
- Let her finish badly. People reason out loud about this stuff and the second half of the answer often contradicts the first, which is the interesting part.
The areas where couples actually diverge
- Money sent to relatives, and whether either of you gets a veto.
- Whether children are wanted, and if so, what they would be raised to believe.
- How much work is allowed to eat: evenings, weekends, relocation.
- Which family gets holidays, and what happens when a parent needs care.
- How much of your finances are joint, and who is allowed to make a large purchase alone.
When you disagree in the moment
- Say the disagreement out loud rather than moving on politely. Silence gets read as agreement and the difference resurfaces later as a betrayal.
- Distinguish between not sharing a value and not respecting hers. The first is survivable in almost every case. The second is what she will remember.
- Do not argue her out of a position the same night you learn about it. Ask questions, sit on it, come back.
- Watch for the urge to persuade. This conversation is for finding out what is true about her, not for adjusting it.
Telling a difference from a dealbreaker
- A difference is something you would each describe the same way and can both live with. A dealbreaker changes what your daily life would look like.
- The test is not how strongly you disagree but whether one of you would have to abandon something to stay. Faith, children and money are the usual suspects.
- If you find one, name it plainly and give it its own conversation. Folding it into a list of twenty questions is how it gets postponed for years.
- Note whether she can state your position back accurately. Being understood matters more to most people than being agreed with.
Timing
- Early on, stick to the first half of the list. Asking a two-month-old relationship about non-negotiables in marriage tends to read as pressure.
- Do this when nothing is being decided. Values discussed during a fight about her mother are really just the fight about her mother.
- Answer everything you ask. A one-way version of this conversation feels like an assessment, and she will start performing.
- Expect the answers to move. People revise this material after a death, a job loss or a birth, so treat it as a conversation you will repeat, not a form you filled in.