first love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful? 

    family. My parents and my brother keep me afloat when it seems like the rest of the world is doing its best to bring me down.

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? 

    I'd be less afraid of being rejected or abandoned. That's weird to me, since I was not rejected or abandoned by my parents. I didn't grow up with it—but I clearly grew up fearing it. I'm confident in all sorts of ways, but absolutely not that one. 

21. What roles do love and affection play in your life? 

    they look a whole lot different now than they did even a couple of years ago. Love is shown rather than spoken, and you have to choose to look for it in order to see it. Affection is revealed through kind words, attention, small kindness, gentle teasing and inside jokes.  

22. Share 5 positive characteristics of your first serious significant other.

    • quick wit

    • sweet and affectionate

    • generous

    • deeply intelligent on a wide variety of subjects

    • considerate and thoughtful

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?

    nope, I'm not living that life. There's nobody who's waited this long to discover my feelings, which are regrettably apparent—from one look at my face, one moment of real listening to what I'm saying (or not saying), one hug (or not hug). I've said all that needs to be said.

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? 

    wallet. It's the one thing that would require the most annoying work to recreate.  

 

[based on "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings" by Arthur Aron, et. al, and adapted from "The 36 Questions That Lead to Love: Modern Love" by Daniel Jones, published January 9, 2015, a 9-year-old article that remains behind a paywall here but is republished in plenty of other places; the title quotation is by George Bernard Shaw from John Bull’s Other Island, Act 4]