사랑하기 위해 물어야 할 36 가지 질문
2015 년 1 월 14 일 | By: heesangju 문화 No Comment
뉴욕타임스에서 큰 반향을 얻은 맨디 랜의 ‘ 사랑에 빠지려면 , 이걸 하세요 ’ 글에는 심리학자 아더 아론 등이 개발한 36 개의 질문 목록이 나옵니다 . 서로 다른 두 사람이 만나 사적인 질문을 하면서 서로를 이해하고 가까워질 수 있도록 개발된 질문들이죠 . 무너지기 쉬운 나의 가장 약한 부분을 파트너에게 밝히는 건 굉장히 어려운 일이지만 단단한 관계를 지어나가는 데 가장 도움이 되는 단계이기도 합니다 . 여기 , 그 시작이 되는 36 개 질문을 공개합니다 .
1.
이 세상의 누구와도 저녁을 함께할 수 있다면 누구를 만나고 싶습니까 ?
2.
유명해지고 싶나요 ? 어떻게요 ?
3.
전화를 하기 전에 하고 싶은 말을 연습해본 적 있나요 ? 왜요 ?
4.
당신에게 “ 완벽한 ” 하루란 무엇인가요 ?
5.
마지막으로 자신에게 노래를 불러준 게 언제인가요 ? 다른 사람에게는요 ?
6.
90 세까지 사는데 마지막 60 년 동안 당신의 몸과 마음 중에서 하나만 30 세로 유지할 수 있다고 가정해보죠 . 무얼 택하겠습니까 ?
7.
당신이 어떻게 죽을 거란 상상을 해본 적 있나요 ? 어떤 상상이었죠 ?
8.
당신과 애인이 같은 점 세 가지를 나열해보세요 .
9.
살면서 가장 감사하게 느껴지는 것이 무엇입니까 ?
10.
당신이 자라온 방식 중에 무엇 하나를 바꾸려면 무얼 바꾸겠습니까 ?
11.
4 분 동안 당신이 살아온 삶을 애인에게 가능한 자세하게 설명해보세요 .
12.
내일 침대에서 일어났을 때 한가지 능력을 갖출 수 있다면 무얼 택하겠습니까 ?
13.
당신 , 당신의 삶 , 미래 등 아무거나 한가지 사실을 말해주는 크리스탈 볼이 있다고 가정해보죠 . 무얼 알고 싶습니까 ?
14.
오랫동안 꿈꿔온 꿈이 있습니까 ? 왜 아직 하지 않았죠 ?
15.
당신 삶에서 이룬 가장 큰 업적은 무엇이라고 생각합니까 ?
16.
친구 관계에서 가장 중시하는 건 무엇입니까 ?
17.
당신에게 가장 소중한 기억이나 추억은 무엇입니까 ?
18.
당신에게 가장 끔찍했던 기억이나 추억은 무엇입니까 ?
19.
일 년 내로 어느 날 갑자기 죽게 된다면 , 당신 삶에서 무얼 바꾸겠습니까 ? 왜죠 ?
20.
우정은 당신에게 무얼 의미합니까 ?
21.
사랑과 애정은 당신의 삶에서 어떤 구실을 합합니까 ?
22.
누군가에게 당신 애인의 다섯 가지 좋은 점을 이야기한다면 , 무얼 말하겠습니까 ?
23.
당신 가족은 서로 얼마나 친합니까 ? 어린 시절에 남들보다 행복하게 컸다고 생각하나요 ?
24.
당신 어머니와의 관계는 어떻습니까 ?
25.
“ 우리 ” 로 시작하는 문장을 세 개 만들어 보세요 . 예시 : “ 우리는 같이 이 방에서 이런 걸 느끼고 있다 ….”
26.
“ 나는 xxx 를 공유할 수 있는 누군가가 있었으면 좋겠다 .” 이 문장을 메꿔보세요 .
27.
당신 애인과 아주 가까운 친구가 된다면 그 사람이 알아야 할 것이 무엇인지 말해보세요 .
28.
당신의 애인에 대해 좋아하는 것을 말해보세요 . 이번에는 아주 솔직해집시다 . 방금 알게 된 사람에게라면 말하지 않을 점을 말해보세요 .
29.
당신 삶에서 가장 당황했던 경험을 공유해주세요 .
30.
남들 앞에서 마지막으로 울었던 게 언제인가요 ? 혼자 운 적은요 ?
31.
당신 애인에 대해 이미 좋아하는 것을 말해주세요 .
32.
농담해서 안될 심각한 무언가가 있다면 그건 무엇입니까 ?
33.
오늘 저녁에 아무와도 연락하지 못하고 죽게 된다면 말할 걸 하고 후회하는 게 무엇입니까 ? 왜 그걸 이야기하지 못했죠 ?
34.
당신 집이 불탄다면 사람이나 애완동물을 구한 후 꼭 하나 집어 나오고 싶은 게 무엇입니까 ? 왜죠 ?
35.
당신 가족 중에 누군가가 죽는다면 가장 괴로울 사람이 누구입니까 ? 왜죠 ?
36.
당신이 가지고 있는 개인적인 문제를 하나 말하고 그라면 어떻게 해결할지 물어보세요 . 그리고 내가 그 문제에 대해 어떻게 느끼고 있는 것 같은지도 물어보세요 . ( 뉴욕타임스 )
To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This JAN. 9, 2015
Photo
Modern Love
By MANDY LEN CATRON
More than 20 years ago, the psychologist
Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory.
Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found
myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly
four minutes.
Let me explain. Earlier in the evening, that man had said: “I
suspect, given a few commonalities, you could fall in love with anyone. If so,
how do you choose someone?”
He was a university acquaintance I occasionally ran into at the
climbing gym and had thought, “What if?” I had gotten a glimpse into his days
on Instagram. But this was the first time we had hung out one-on-one.
“Actually, psychologists have tried making people fall in love,”
I said, remembering Dr. Aron’s study
I first read about the study when I was in the midst of a
breakup. Each time I thought of leaving, my heart overruled my brain. I felt
stuck. So, like a good academic, I turned to science, hoping there was a way to
love smarter.
I explained the study to my university acquaintance. A
heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face
to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare
silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail:
Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to
the ceremony.
“Let’s try it,” he said.
Let me acknowledge the ways our experiment already fails to line
up with the study. First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we weren’t
strangers. Not only that, but I see now that one neither suggests nor agrees to
try an experiment designed to create romantic love if one isn’t open to this
happening.
I Googled Dr. Aron’s questions; there are 36
They began innocuously: “Would you like to be famous? In what
way?” And “When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?”
But they quickly became probing.
In response to the prompt, “Name three things you and your
partner appear to have in common,” he looked at me and said, “I think we’re
both interested in each other.”
I
grinned and gulped my beer as he listed two more commonalities I then promptly
forgot. We exchanged stories about the last time we each cried, and confessed
the one thing we’d like to ask a fortuneteller. We explained our relationships
with our mothers.
The questions reminded me of the infamous boiling frog
experiment in which the frog doesn’t feel the water getting hotter until it’s
too late. With us, because the level of vulnerability increased gradually, I
didn’t notice we had entered intimate territory until we were already there, a
process that can typically take weeks or months.
I liked learning about myself through my answers, but I liked
learning things about him even more. The bar, which was empty when we arrived,
had filled up by the time we paused for a bathroom break.
I sat alone at our table, aware of my
surroundings for the first time in an hour, and wondered if anyone had been
listening to our conversation. If they had, I hadn’t noticed. And I didn’t
notice as the crowd thinned and the night got late.
We all have a narrative of ourselves that we offer up to
strangers and acquaintances, but Dr. Aron’s questions make it impossible to
rely on that narrative. Ours was the kind of accelerated intimacy I remembered
from summer camp, staying up all night with a new friend, exchanging the
details of our short lives. At 13, away from home for the first time, it felt
natural to get to know someone quickly. But rarely does adult life present us
with such circumstances.
The moments I found most uncomfortable were not when I had to
make confessions about myself, but had to venture opinions about my partner.
For example: “Alternate sharing something you consider a positive
characteristic of your partner, a total of five items” (Question 22), and “Tell
your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time saying things
you might not say to someone you’ve just met” (Question 28).
Much
of Dr. Aron’s research focuses on creating interpersonal closeness. In
particular, several studies investigate the ways we incorporate others into our
sense of self. It’s easy to see how the questions encourage what they call
“self-expansion.” Saying things like, “I like your voice, your taste in beer,
the way all your friends seem to admire you,” makes certain positive qualities
belonging to one person explicitly valuable to the other.
It’s astounding, really, to hear what someone admires in you. I
don’t know why we don’t go around thoughtfully complimenting one another all
the time.
We finished at midnight, taking far longer than the 90 minutes
for the original study. Looking around the bar, I felt as if I had just woken
up. “That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Definitely less uncomfortable than the
staring into each other’s eyes part would be.”
He hesitated and asked. “Do you think we should do that, too?”
“Here?” I looked around the bar. It seemed too weird, too
public.
“We could stand on the bridge,” he said, turning toward the
window.
The night was warm and I was wide-awake. We
walked to the highest point, then turned to face each other. I fumbled with my
phone as I set the timer.
“O.K.,” I said, inhaling sharply.
“O.K.,” he said, smiling.
I’ve skied steep slopes and hung from a rock face by a short
length of rope, but staring into someone’s eyes for four silent minutes was one
of the more thrilling and terrifying experiences of my life. I spent the first
couple of minutes just trying to breathe properly. There was a lot of nervous
smiling until, eventually, we settled in.
I know the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever, but the
real crux of the moment was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that
I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this
realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected.
I felt brave, and in a state of wonder. Part
of that wonder was at my own vulnerability and part was the weird kind of
wonder you get from saying a word over and over until it loses its meaning and
becomes what it actually is: an assemblage of sounds.
So it was with the eye, which is not a window
to anything but a rather clump of very useful cells. The sentiment associated
with the eye fell away and I was struck by its astounding biological reality:
the spherical nature of the eyeball, the visible musculature of the iris and
the smooth wet glass of the cornea. It was strange and exquisite.
When the timer buzzed, I was surprised — and a little relieved.
But I also felt a sense of loss. Already I was beginning to see our evening
through the surreal and unreliable lens of retrospect.
Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We
fall. We get crushed.
But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is
an action. It assumes that what matters to my partner matters to me because we
have at least three things in common, because we have close relationships with
our mothers, and because he let me look at him.
I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else,
I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about
us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story
about what it means to be known.
It’s true you can’t choose who loves you, although I’ve spent
years hoping otherwise, and you can’t create romantic feelings based on
convenience alone. Science tells us biology matters; our pheromones and
hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes.
But despite all this, I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable
thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s
possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love
needs to thrive.
You’re probably wondering if he and I fell in love. Well, we
did. Although it’s hard to credit the study entirely (it may have happened
anyway), the study did give us a way into a relationship that feels deliberate.
We spent weeks in the intimate space we created that night, waiting to see what
it could become.
Love didn’t happen to us. We’re in love because we each made the
choice to be.
Big Wedding or Small? By DANIEL
JONES JAN. 9, 2015
Photo
In Mandy Len Catron’s Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” she refers to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron (and others) that explores whether
intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them ask each other
a specific series of personal questions. The 36 questions in the study are
broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the
previous one.
The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To
quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of
a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal
self-disclosure.” Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be
exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.
The final task Ms. Catron and her friend try — staring into each
other’s eyes for four minutes — is less well documented, with the suggested
duration ranging from two minutes to four. But Ms. Catron was unequivocal in
her recommendation. “Two minutes is just enough to be terrified,” she told me.
“Four really goes somewhere.”
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want
as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you
are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either
the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which
would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in
common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised,
what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in
as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality
or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself,
your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long
time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19.
If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything
about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive
characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you
feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship
with your mother?
Set III
25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are
both in this room feeling ... “
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had
someone with whom I could share ... “
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your
partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about
them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone
you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By
yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them
already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to
communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone?
Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire.
After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final
dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find
most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on
how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you
how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
출처 : http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html?action=click&contentCollection=Fashion%20%26%20Style&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
