My partner has a habit of asking questions that catch me completely off guard. She loves getting underneath the surface of things. She wants to know what makes me tick, how I really think, and how I really feel.

Questions like:

“Why do you love me?”

“How do you know you love me?”

“What are the things you love about me?”

And then there’s the question that seems to keep returning.

“What don’t you like about me?”

It usually happens in those quiet, ordinary moments when my guard is down. Sometimes I’m writing. Sometimes we’re watching television. Sometimes we’re simply sitting together. Then, almost out of nowhere, she’ll ask something that changes the direction of the evening.

Even though these questions are familiar now, I never used to feel prepared for them. My body would respond before my mind had even caught up.

Looking back, I realise this same question has taught me three different lessons. Not all at once. Each time it appeared, I understood something new.

The First Time Something Changed

We were just sitting together talking about nothing in particular when, somewhere in the middle of the conversation, she asked,

“What don’t you like about me?”

The question itself didn’t surprise me. By now I’d become quite used to these sorts of questions. I wouldn’t say I’d become accepting of them, though. They all seemed to affect me in exactly the same way.

What caught my attention wasn’t the question. It was what happened inside me. The shift was immediate.

Only a few moments earlier we’d been chatting comfortably. Then, almost instantly, my body tightened. I found myself holding my breath and bracing. Looking back, the closest comparison I can think of is a rabbit caught in headlights. I didn’t know what to do, so I froze.

The silence only made things worse. The longer I searched for an answer, the more anxious I became. I’d had this reaction many times before. But this time something was slightly different.

Earlier that week I’d been helping a couple notice and slow down a very similar automatic response. Perhaps because of that work, I wasn’t completely swallowed up by my own anxiety. Somehow, I was also aware of it.

That small amount of awareness created just enough space for me to do something different. Instead of pretending I was fine, I simply said,

“I’m finding myself getting really anxious right now.”

I could see it didn’t quite land. She looked confused, perhaps even a little hurt. So I added,

“There’s nothing wrong with you asking me this question. I’m just noticing that it’s making me really tense.”

She paused for a moment. Then quietly said,

“Okay.”

She looked disappointed. And we left it there. If I’m honest, I didn’t walk away feeling particularly good. I knew I’d done something important. But it didn’t feel like success. It felt unfinished. There hadn’t been a good conversation. There simply hadn’t been another bad one.

Looking back now, I don’t think the biggest change was that I stayed calmer. The biggest change was that I stopped treating her question as the problem. Instead, I began noticing what the question was doing inside me. For the first time I could say,

“You’re not doing anything wrong. I’m having an anxious response.”

That small shift reduced blame. She no longer had to defend her question. And I no longer had to defend my reaction. It wasn’t a perfect conversation. But it was the first time the conversation wasn’t our enemy.

The Second Time Something Changed

A few days later the question appeared again. This time we were sitting quietly watching a film. And out of the silence, and without even turning towards me, she asked,

“What don’t you like about me?”

Before she’d even finished speaking, my body responded. The familiar tension. Not gradually. Instantly. It felt as though I’d been put on the spot.

Previously, I wouldn’t even have noticed any of that. I’d have been too busy trying to find the perfect answer. Usually, I’d try convincing her there wasn’t anything I disliked about her. She never accepted it.

“That’s impossible,” she’d say. “Everybody annoys each other sometimes.”

And before long we’d be debating whose version of reality was right. But this time something unexpected happened. Still feeling anxious… Still convinced that whatever I said would somehow be wrong… I found myself turning to her and asking a question instead.

“Can you help me understand why this question is so important to you?”

It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t something I’d planned. It wasn’t a challenge. I was genuinely curious.

She thought for a moment before answering.

“Because… if you can tell me the difficult truths about me, then I know I can trust you to tell me the difficult truths about other things.”

And almost immediately something shifted. My body relaxed. Only seconds earlier I’d been trying to survive the question. Now I found myself wanting to understand the answer.

After talking I realised there was something really important underneath her asking what I disliked about her. She was trying to discover whether honesty would still exist between us when things became uncomfortable. Whether difficult conversations were safe. Whether she could trust me not to hide from them. That suddenly made complete sense.

Only afterwards did another question occur to me.

“What experiences have made being able to trust someone’s honesty feel so important to you?”

I didn’t think to ask it in the moment. Mostly because I was quietly congratulating myself for remembering to ask about something deeper. Maybe next time.

Looking back, this was probably the first time I realised I didn’t actually need to answer her question straight away. I needed to understand it. The moment I became curious about why the question mattered to her, the whole conversation changed. We stopped debating the answer. We started talking about trust. And that was the conversation she’d been trying to have all along.

The Third Time Something Changed

As expected, the question came back. This time I was sitting quietly thinking about some changes I wanted to make to my website.

“What don’t you like about me?”

By now we’d already learned something together. I knew how to notice my reaction. She knew how to give me space. We’d explored why the question mattered so much to her.

And yet…

The same response still appeared inside me.

“I’m having that same feeling again,” I said. “I’m getting anxious.”

She looked at me gently.

“How come?”

There was no criticism in her voice. No frustration. No challenge. Just curiosity. And somehow her curiosity invited my own.

“You’re right,” I said. “There is something happening inside me.”

As I turned my attention inwards, I could feel the anxiety beginning to soften. I simply started describing it.

“It feels threatening.”

“It feels like there’s a right answer and a wrong answer.”

Then another thought arrived. If I had been the therapist sitting with someone else, I know exactly what I would have asked.

“What’s the fear?”

The answer came surprisingly quickly.

“The fear is getting it wrong.”

“That you’ll be angry with me.”

“That you’ll pull away from me.”

“That nothing I say will make things better.”

As I spoke, she quietly reached over and placed her hand on me. She didn’t try to fix it. She didn’t tell me I was being silly. She simply stayed with me. I could feel that she understood. And I realised something.

Even though we hadn’t answered her original question… We were more connected than if I ever had. She wanted to know what was happening inside me. And for the first time, I was letting her see it.

She smiled softly.

“There isn’t a right answer,” she said. “And I’m not going to be angry with you.”

I believed her. Or at least… I believed her a little more than I had before.

What strikes me now is that I’d spent time becoming curious about her experience. Eventually it occurred to me that my own reaction deserved exactly the same curiosity.

• Why did this question frighten me so much?
• What had taught my body that there was a right answer and a wrong answer?
• What was it trying to protect me from?

The anxiety didn’t disappear. But it did stop feeling mysterious. And somehow that made it much easier to stay with.

Closing Thoughts

I’m fairly sure she’ll ask me this question again, and very likely soon. A few years ago I would have dreaded it. Now, strangely, I find myself looking forward to it. Not because I’m excited to list the things I don’t like about my partner. But because I’ve realised the question is rarely about the question.

Each time it appears, it gives us another opportunity. Not to finally answer the question, but to understand each other a little more deeply than we did the last time. An opportunity for me to notice what is happening inside me. An opportunity to understand something important about her. An opportunity to become curious about my own reactions. And, perhaps most importantly, another opportunity to meet each other’s needs a little more deeply than we did before.

I don’t think I’ve finished learning from this question. In fact, I hope I haven’t. Some conversations aren’t problems to solve. They’re companions. They return throughout a relationship, each time revealing something we couldn’t yet see.

I’m beginning to think that’s one of the quiet gifts of a healthy relationship. The conversations don’t stop. We simply become better at listening to what they’re trying to teach us.