Energy Questions
Energy refers to the intensity and immediacy of emotional movement in the relationship. It's not about good or bad feelings—it's about how much feeling is in the room, how fast it moves, and how charged the system becomes when it's activated. Energy isn't emotion—it's the charge behind the emotion. It's not whether you're sad or angry. It's how fast it hits. How loud it lands. How quickly it pulls the system off-center—or propels it into connection.
Some people feel at home in steady water. Others feel alive in the rapids. The goal isn't to slow the river or stir it up. The goal is to know what kind of current you're in—and how to move through it together.
1. One or both of us tends to avoid strong emotional expression—whether out of habit, fear, or a desire to keep the peace.
To help you reflect: This includes more than just a preference for calm—it could be resignation, fear of conflict, or a habit of accommodating to avoid escalation. Does emotional expression feel unsafe, unnecessary, or like it won't make a difference?
2. When emotions run high, we often both become reactive or overwhelmed at the same time.
To help you reflect: Think about those moments when tension rises—do both of you tend to get emotionally swept up together, even if you express it differently?
3. Our emotional responses to each other tend to be immediate and visible—rather than delayed or held back.
To help you reflect: This gets at emotional reactivity and expression speed. Do feelings show up quickly and openly between you, or do they get processed internally first? This is about how quickly and openly emotions show up between you—not whether they're always verbalized. Emotions can be spoken, seen in facial expressions, felt in tone, or sensed through body language. If one of you tends to show emotions immediately while the other holds back, consider the overall pattern between you. If emotion tends to rise and be noticed quickly between you, even without words, that counts as immediate and visible.
4. We feel emotionally flat or distant a lot of the time.
To help you reflect: This isn't about the absence of conflict—it's about the absence of vitality. Does the emotional tone between you often feel muted, distant, or hard to reach—even during ordinary moments?
5. Our relationship often feels emotionally intense—whether in passion, conflict, or sensitivity.
To help you reflect: Think about how emotionally charged your connection feels overall—not just during conflict. This includes passion, tenderness, tension, or quick emotional shifts.
6. Even during emotionally important moments—like good news, stress, or milestones—we rarely shift how we respond to each other.
To help you reflect: This is about emotional movement. Do you tend to stay emotionally neutral or disconnected, even when something big or meaningful happens?
7. One or both of us tends to have strong emotional reactions to seemingly small events.
To help you reflect: This may show up as outsize reactions that surprise even you. Often, it points to deeper patterns, past hurts, or unspoken meaning attached to the moment—not just the moment itself.
8. After conflict arises, we tend to become less emotionally engaged with each other.
To help you reflect: Think about what happens in the hours or days following tension or conflict. Do you pull back, become more distant, or find it harder to connect emotionally?
9. We're often 'on edge' even when nothing is overtly wrong.
To help you reflect: Some relationships carry a background buzz of tension. Does that sound familiar?
10. When we have positive moments—like good news, affection, or celebration—the emotional intensity often feels as strong as our conflicts.
To help you reflect: This captures the "passionate" side of high energy. Some relationships are emotionally intense in all directions—joy, love, and excitement can feel as charged as tension or conflict.
11. One or both of us rarely expresses strong emotions outwardly—like anger, grief, or excitement.
To help you reflect: Think about how emotional intensity is expressed between you. Even if you both feel deeply, do those feelings usually stay inside or come out in visible ways?
12. Our relationship often swings quickly from feeling close to feeling tense, distant, or emotionally shut down.
To help you reflect: This is about emotional whiplash—how quickly you go from feeling warm and connected to feeling off-track, upset, or disconnected. This is about your relationship's emotional pace, not individual mood swings. Whether one or both of you drive these swings, focus on how quickly your connection as a couple shifts from warm to distant.
13. After conflict, one or both of us tends to move on quickly—even if things don't feel fully resolved.
To help you reflect: This is about how quickly things return to "normal" on the surface—whether or not there's real emotional resolution underneath. Do you shift gears quickly, even if things still feel unsettled?
14. One or both of us tend to internalize rather than express emotions outwardly.
To help you reflect: Answer based on what gets expressed in the relationship—not just what's happening inside. What's visible between you?
Complexity Questions
Complexity refers to how much the relationship is carrying—not just in terms of external responsibilities, but in emotional layers, past traumas, personal histories, unspoken dynamics, and the ways your individual adaptations collide or tangle. It shows up when each partner brings a lot—grief, trauma, parenting histories, cultural differences, roles they've had to play—and those layers begin to interact.
1. Our relationship feels full of tangles and weighed down by history, emotion, or unspoken stuff.
To help you reflect: This is about how your relationship feels in everyday moments. Some couples feel light and clear. Others feel dense, like there's always something else in the room—past history, emotional weight, roles, or old patterns.
2. We can usually work on one issue at a time without everything else getting pulled in.
To help you reflect: Some couples find that when they try to discuss one thing, five other issues come up. Others can focus clearly on one topic. Which feels more like your experience?
3. When we argue or feel tension, past experiences between us often come back into the conversation.
To help you reflect: This is about shared history. Do old arguments, mistakes, or unresolved moments from your relationship tend to resurface when things get hard?
4. Most of our conversations are straightforward and easy to follow—we don't get lost in layers of meaning.
To help you reflect: Think about whether your discussions tend to be clear and direct, or whether you often find yourselves confused about what you're really talking about underneath the surface topic. If one of you tends to speak directly while the other speaks in layers, consider your typical experience together. Do your conversations generally stay clear and on-topic, or do they often become confusing with multiple meanings underneath?
5. Small disagreements between us often feel bigger than they should—like there's more underneath them.
To help you reflect: This is about emotional weight. Do little things carry extra charge because they remind you of past patterns, old hurts, or deeper fears—not just the issue at hand?
6. We are managing a lot at once—kids, work, trauma, identity, finances, etc.
To help you reflect: Think about the number of external stressors or responsibilities you're carrying together, and how much emotional or practical complexity that adds to your relationship.
7. It's easy for us to put into words what's working and what isn't in our relationship.
To help you reflect: Some couples can clearly name their patterns and dynamics. Others feel like there's emotional fog—something's happening but it's hard to describe or track. Even if one of you is better at articulating relationship dynamics, consider whether you can typically name and discuss patterns together without getting lost in emotional fog.
8. During tense moments, it's often hard to tell what's really going on between us.
To help you reflect: This is about confusion in the relationship—especially during conflict. Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a familiar pattern, but can't quite name it or see how it started?
9. Our individual backgrounds and differences don't create much complication in how we relate day-to-day.
To help you reflect: Consider whether differences in family background, culture, life experience, or personality styles add layers of complexity to your interactions, or whether you navigate these differences easily. This isn't about whether you have different backgrounds—most couples do. It's about whether those differences regularly create friction, misunderstanding, or extra work in your daily interactions. If your different approaches to family, money, communication, or life generally blend easily without much negotiation, that suggests low complexity from this source.
10. One or both of us carry pain or past experiences that still shape how we show up in the relationship.
To help you reflect: This might include old wounds, trauma, or relational habits that haven't fully healed. Even if one of you carries more of that weight, it affects both of you. The question is: how does that shape how you relate now?
11. When something goes wrong, it usually stays contained to that one issue rather than affecting everything else.
To help you reflect: This is about ripple effects. For some couples, a fight stays a fight. For others, it leaks into everything—how you talk, how you touch, how you make decisions. Which feels more true for you?
12. We tend to repeat the same patterns in how we argue, disconnect, or try to reconnect—even when we notice it happening.
To help you reflect: This is about relational habits—not just the topic of the fight, but how it plays out. Do you fall into familiar cycles that are hard to change, even when you see them coming?
13. We don't carry much unspoken emotional weight between us—most things get talked through.
To help you reflect: Consider how much is left unsaid or remains outside your normal communication range. Do important things get discussed, or do they tend to stay under the surface?
14. Even when we're both trying to connect, we often end up missing each other or getting misunderstood.
To help you reflect: This is about emotional misattunement—not bad intentions. Do your efforts to connect often feel like they go sideways, like you're speaking different emotional languages even when you're both trying?
15. Our individual identities, backgrounds, or life circumstances create layers that regularly influence how we relate to each other.
To help you reflect: This addresses how different life experiences, family backgrounds, career pressures, parenting styles, or personal histories add complexity to your daily interactions and decision-making.
