10 Questions To Ask To Know If You’ve Met The Right One

You’ve met someone new. Things seem to be going well. You’re enjoying your dates, it’s all going in the right direction…but are they the right one?

It’s a common question asked of dating coaches, and with good reason. You don't want to waste your time on the wrong one. After all, not everyone is ready for a relationship and not everyone is compatible. 

You likely already know this. That’s why you’re wondering if there’s a way to know if they’re the right one! Movies, books, and TV shows have promised us that we’ll just know, that we’ll have fireworks and a musical number to make it obvious.

But real life doesn’t work like that. So read on to learn the 10 questions you should ask yourself to know if you’ve met the right one for you.

1) How Do You Feel Around Them?

Most people ignore their actual feelings in their life. For example, if I ask a client how they feel, they'll often tell me they're tired because they had a busy day at work. It's a logical answer, not an emotional one.

We skirt around the emotions we feel, and we never admit to feeling proud, happy, disappointed, frustrated, etc. Your mind can argue whichever position it thinks you want it to make. But your body cannot lie. Your feelings are your body's way of telling you the truth.

So ask yourself, how do you feel around this person? Calm? Safe? Happy? On edge? Nervous? These feelings are telling you the truth about them. Your body will tell you if it’s not safe, but your mind can overrule this. The person might be a great fit for you on paper, so your mind will argue in their favour. Listen to your body instead by paying attention to your feelings.

Next, ask if these feelings work for you. Even if the feelings are positive ones, they might not fit with your natural vibe. 

2) Do They Have Empathy and Compassion?

Empathy is vital for relationships as it shows the level of a person's emotional intelligence. Someone with empathy can connect with how someone else might feel. You'll know from previous blog posts that true narcissists are incapable of feeling empathy. This is also why narcissistic relationships are toxic because there's no care for the other person.

Compassion is likewise important because it gives people the wiggle room to be human. A compassionate person can hold space for someone else to make mistakes and have flaws. 

People often don't have compassion for themselves, which makes it difficult to have compassion for others. So someone who is judgmental of others is often judgmental of themselves. You can see a projection of how people treat themselves in how they treat others.

Remember, you're looking for someone who really cares about you and your well-being. Someone who doesn't have the right level of empathy and compassion for you won't be able to meet your emotional needs. 

This is doubly important if you're looking for someone to start a family with. Do you want to have children with someone who doesn't really care about your wellbeing?
 

4) Can You Both Openly Communicate Together?

Communication is a combination of being able to ask the right questions and listening to the answers. If one or both of you can’t listen to the other, you can’t build a relationship because you can’t connect.

Without listening, you won’t hear what’s really happening within the relationship. And without that, you can understand what’s going on. There’s no way you can overcome problems or grow together without that understanding.

A lack of communication also leads to feelings of isolation, loneliness, and even feeling unimportant in the relationship. 

Ask yourself how safe and understood you feel when communicating with your partner. Do they shut you down or dismiss your concerns? Or do they acknowledge what you’re saying and work with you to find a solution?

5) Do You Build Each Other Up or Criticise?

‘Negging’ is a good example here, often used by Pick Up Artists to make a target unsure of themselves. It’s a way of paying what sounds like a compliment but is really an insult. Healthline describes it as a form of emotional manipulation. 

Think of comments like “You’re attractive for a larger person” or “You really don’t care what other people think, do you?”. On one hand, it starts off with a compliment, but on the other hand, it highlights something perceived as negative.

This puts the recipient on the back foot and forces them to work harder to get the person’s approval, even if they don’t really want it. If your partner uses comments like this, then leave. It will not get better and you will never earn their approval.

John Gottman's 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse analogy is also excellent here. His research spans around forty years and he discovered four behaviours that can predict if a relationship will last or not.

If Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt, and Stonewalling are regularly present, the relationship is doomed to fail. They’re not healthy behaviours and they do not show that a partner can collaborate in a relationship.

6) Can They Stand on Their Own Two Feet as an Individual?

We sometimes see people who enter relationships to be saved. This can be emotionally, financially, and even financially. The problem with this is it forces their partner to play a rescuer or parent.

Yes, partners should work together and help each other if they want the relationship to last. But there’s only so long that one partner can handle being a crutch for the other.

So is your partner capable of being a whole person who can look after themselves? If not, and they expect you to look after them, then they’re looking for a caregiver, not a partner.

If you end up as a parent rather than a partner, this will impact all levels of the relationship, from chemistry to longevity. There’s a difference between being needed and being wanted. If you’re with someone who needs you rather than wants you, you’ll only end up resentful and frustrated.

7) Are They Curious About You?

Does your partner ask you how you are doing? Do they make an effort to learn what you like and understand you?

Are they taking the steps to find out what you stand for, or what you think about various topics and issues? Do they try to find out about your goals and dreams?

Or is their only question to you to ask what you’re wearing?

Remember, we only really ask questions when we care about someone and we want to know if they’ll fit into our lives. If they don’t work to be curious about you, then they’re not interested in understanding you as a person.

8) Do They Demonstrate Their Love/Care for You?

You may have come across the concept of love languages before. This comes from the work of Gary Chapman, who discovered people show love in one of five ways.

That’s Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Acts of Service, Gift-Giving, and Quality Time. People will show love in the way they prefer to receive love.

So you might receive love through Words of Affirmation, and you’ll show love by paying compliments and telling your partner what they mean to you. 

But this can cause a problem if your love language is Words of Affirmation, but your partner’s love language is Acts of Service.

In this scenario, they won’t tell you how amazing you are, or how much they love you. But they will make you cups of tea and do things to make your life easier as a way of showing their love. They think they’re showing love, but you don’t recognise it because it’s not your love language.

You can absolutely solve this though because you can both make a conscious effort to show love in your partner’s love language rather than your own.

9) Can You Rely on Them?

When you’re choosing a new partner, you’re choosing someone to build a life with. Think of everything that you’ve got in your life. That’s everything you’ve achieved and worked for, and what is important to you. You don’t want to gamble that away on someone you can’t rely on.

If you can’t rely on your partner, you’ll struggle to build a lasting relationship. 

Remember your strengths and weaknesses will also be the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship. So if you’re fantastic at giving affection, then that will always be a strong point. If you struggle with communication, then that will always be a weak point.

The same goes for your partner. They bring their own strengths and weaknesses which become the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship. If you end up with too many weak points, the relationship will collapse.

10) Are You Compatible?

Compatibility is one of the most fundamental indicators as to whether a relationship will last. If you’re not on the same page about the things that mean the most to you, you’ll struggle to feel happy. You’ll realise you’re trying to fit a mould if you compromise on things, instead of having a natural ease and flow.

Compatibility is about alignment and being aligned makes a relationship easier than if you try to start a relationship with someone you’re not compatible with. It also opens up a connection on a much deeper level.

Say your goals are to get married, build a business empire with your spouse, and live in the South of France. Then you meet someone who’s focused on their own career, who doesn’t want to leave their hometown, and doesn’t believe in marriage. If you try to build a relationship together, then one of you will have to compromise on their goals and values because you’re not compatible around the things that matter.

This is one of the reasons why some people ghost. They’ve realised that the two personality types won’t work together, but they lack the emotional intelligence and maturity to let the other person know. Remember, it’s nothing personal. If communication is their weak point, then it would also be the weak point in a relationship with them.

Finally, look for dealbreakers. Identify the things that you can’t accept, and don’t accept them. So if you don’t want children in your life, then don’t start dating someone who has children. If religion is really important to you, then don’t date someone for whom religion isn’t a big deal. Even if they don’t mind you being religious, it might be an issue to you that they aren’t.

Have You Met the Right One?

Already dating someone? Ask yourself these ten questions about your partner. You’ll soon get an answer as to whether you’ve met the right one. Sometimes, even just realising that they’re not putting in much effort is all we need to tell us if we’re wasting our time.

When you connect at the right level, they never leave you guessing. You don't have to ask where it's going, or if they're interested. You'll never get confusion with the right one. If someone is treating you a certain way at the start of a relationship, then that's a bad sign. No one puts their awful traits on display in the early days when they're trying to impress someone they like!

Remember, if something is important to someone, they will make it happen. Both partners need to put in the effort to make the relationship work.

Single? You’ve already seen how important compatibility is to finding the right one. Head over to our website and download our Meet the One guide. In it, you’ll find the compatibility matrix so you can figure out what’s important to you, and how to use that to meet someone who’s compatible.