Talking stage questions: what to ask, and what the answers tell you

The point of talking-stage questions is not to fill silence. It is to find out early whether you want the same life, while the information is still cheap to get and before you are too attached to act on it. The questions below are grouped by what they actually reveal, and each one comes with what a good answer and a bad answer sound like.

How to ask without it becoming an interview

Two or three of these per conversation, not twenty. Ask them the way you would ask a friend, and answer them yourself too. If a reasonable question makes him defensive, you have learned something more useful than the answer would have been.

Listen for specifics. Vague answers to specific questions are themselves the answer, especially after weeks of daily talking.

Questions about where this is going

• What are you looking for right now? A good answer is specific and mentions a timeline. A bad one is I am just going with the flow, repeated for three months.
• When last were you in a relationship, and what ended it? Listen for whether he can name a single thing that was his fault.
• What does the next two years look like for you? Marriage, city, work, children. If you are not in the picture by month three, notice it.
• Are you talking to anyone else? You are allowed to ask this. His reaction to being asked is half the information.

Questions about money

The most avoided topic and the one that ends the most marriages. You are not asking what he earns. You are asking how he thinks.

• How do you feel about a wife who earns more than you? Watch the face, not the sentence.
• Who do you support financially, and is that ongoing? Black tax is real and it is not a problem, but not knowing about it is.
• Do you save, and what for? How he answers tells you whether there is a plan or a vibe.
• How would we handle money if we married, separate or joint? There is no right answer, only whether he has thought about it.

Questions about family and faith

• How close are you to your family, and how much do they decide? In Nigerian marriages this is rarely a small question.
• What does your faith look like day to day? Not what denomination. What he actually does.
• Would your family have a problem with where I am from? Better asked in month two than year two.
• What did your parents' marriage teach you? Most people either copy it or react against it, and both are worth knowing.

Questions about children

• Do you want children, and roughly when? The when is the part that matters.
• What would you expect to change about my work if we had a baby? This one question resolves more than an hour of general talk.
• Who did the caring in your house growing up? It is usually the template he is working from without realising.

Questions about conflict

You are looking for how he behaves when things are not going his way, which is the single most predictive thing you can learn.

• What does an argument look like for you? Shouting, silence, walking out, or talking it through.
• When did you last apologise to someone and mean it? A man who cannot produce an example is telling you one.
• What do you do when you are stressed? And then notice whether it matches what you have actually seen.

The three that save you a year

If you only ask three, ask these.

• What are we? Asked once, plainly, around week eight to twelve.
• What would have to be true for you to be ready? This exposes whether not ready has any content in it.
• What is something about you that people find difficult? Self-awareness or the absence of it, in one answer.

Questions not worth asking

Most of the lists online are flirty questions designed to keep a conversation going. They are fine as entertainment and they tell you nothing. Would you rather, what is your love language, and twenty-one questions to make him blush are not assessments.

The test for a real question is whether a particular answer would change what you do next. If no answer would change anything, it is small talk.

What to do with the answers

Write them down. Not dramatically, just so that in month five you remember what he said in month one, because memory rewrites itself once you are attached.

Then check them against what you decided you would not accept. Our standards and non-negotiables worksheet is where that list lives, and how to set yours explains how to write ones that hold up. When it is time for the conversation itself, the Talk Planner walks you through it.

Common questions

Sources

• 5 Nigerian women on the things they refuse to do for love — Zikoko, 2026
• Stuck in a 'talking stage' or 'situationship'? How young people can get more out of modern love — The Conversation, academic analysis