Questions versus questos

Hear me out, I've got relationship advice.

A couple of weeks I complained to my boyfriend that I didn’t think he’d asked me any questions for the last four days.

This was quite a prompt reaction to a perceived issue, but if I’ve learned anything about relationships it’s that you have to complain about things straight away when they feel true, otherwise you say nothing and silently seethe about them for years.

Anyway, that night in bed he had clearly been musing on my complaint. ‘I’m sad you think I don’t ask you any questions’. I pointed out that this has been the status quo for less than a week and he accepted that it probably wasn’t curtains yet.

‘But’ he went on. ‘I do ask you lots of questions’, citing questions about what we were going to do that weekend and whether I needed various things sorted out.

‘Ah’ I said, seizing upon something I’d literally just come up with but knew I was about to decide was a universal and objective truth. ‘But those aren’t questions. Those are questos.’

He took a deep breath, probably thinking how nice it would be to share a bed with a woman who doesn’t develop her theories of human behaviour when he’s trying to fall asleep, and then asked the unavoidable question ‘What is a questo?’

A questo, I explained to him, is technically a question. It’s a request for information. Questos include: what would you like for dinner? Did you get the laundry out? Have you got an address for the people we’re going to stay with? When is Ocado coming? Did you see that thing Martin Lewis sent out about insurance?

They sometimes prompt discussion, but it’s a fact based exchange of data, usually aimed at improving the running of the house. Questos are not bad. They’re essential. Men who don’t ask questos have no stake in the running of their home and that’s also a problem. But man cannot live by questo alone.

Questions are things like: How soon would you move on after I died? Is it cheating if you have sex with a robot who looks exactly like a human? Who of our friends do you think will get divorced first? When did you stop being nervous about messaging me when we first met? Do you think your parents love you as much as your siblings? Which of your teachers did you fancy most? Do you wish I held you longer when we’re falling asleep?

It’s very easy to replace questions with questos and not notice because you’re still talking to each other, still planning and laughing and having fun. But you’re not talking to each other the same delicious way you did when you were first getting together and that’s a loss. It’s perfectly possible to talk to each other like you’re on a fifth date every time you have dinner. So you might as well.

I’m as guilty of it as anyone else - I love a diary planning session followed by a menu planning session followed by a supermarket order and a weekend itinerary. But ever since I noticed the balance slipping, the delicate salad of questions and questos falling just ever so slightly out of ratio, I’ve been determined that it should be restored. And thankfully my type-A failure is not an option boyfriend ran with it too.

Anyway ever since I’ve pointed this out we’ve had more questions and fewer questos, which is unfortunate because it proves that a) my theory that you must complain very quickly about any irritation is vindicated and b) my theory about questos versus questions is solid genius and I am therefore a relationship oracle.

It’s possible that neither of those things are true, but I would encourage you to consider how often you are asking your friends, partners, children etc a questo rather than a question. I am now trying to do the same with my friends, to not ask for bullet points about their promotion but rather about the way they feel when they arrive into the office, and I feel moderately sure I might be right about it in this forum too.

NB: this is how we ended up asking each other what various people we know would be called were they horses while we were in bed last night. So it’s not a totally foolproof system.

NNB: I would be a bay mare called Clarissa and he would be a cart horse called Stubbins.