What to ask a psychic about love

There is a box on my order form where you tell me what's going on. It looks like the least important part of the process, and it is by a distance the most important. Most people are done with it in two minutes.

Nobody ever explains what to put there, so here is the inside view, after several thousand love readings. I can usually tell within a paragraph whether a question will produce anything useful, and what decides it is never the writing. Good spelling has never helped once. It's what the person is really asking.

This piece is only about wording. What a love reading can and can't see is a separate matter, and I put my limits on record in what a love psychic reading can tell you.

Two kinds of love question

Love questions arrive in two broad shapes. Some of them want an answer. Some of them want comfort. Both are completely human, and I have never judged anyone for the second, but they get very different readings.

"Will he come back?" wants comfort. So does "is he thinking about me right now?" Both put your whole outcome inside another person's head and ask me to bring back the version you were hoping for. Answered as carefully as I can manage, the most I can truthfully give you is the current condition of a connection, which is a smaller thing than the certainty you came for.

"What is actually happening between us?" wants an answer. So does "why does this keep stalling at the same point?" These ask about the dynamic instead of demanding a verdict, and the dynamic is precisely the thing a reading can see. Send me one of those and you'll get an answer with edges on it.

This could read as a telling-off, and you don't need one from me. People ask comfort questions when they are in pain and out of moves. If you've been awake since four in the morning running the same conversation for the ninth time, that is not laziness. It's an attempt to make it stop hurting for an hour. I'd ask it too.

And I won't leave that question sitting there as a bad example, because more people send me that exact sentence than any other. What a reading can genuinely say about whether he comes back is set out in detail elsewhere on this site, and if it's your question, start there.

Question templates by situation

These aren't magic words. Nothing breaks if you write your own. They exist because most people freeze at the box.

The new person

Three dates in, or three months in, and you still can't tell whether you're building something or entertaining yourself.

• "What am I actually dealing with here, underneath the charm?"
• "Is what I'm feeling coming from him, or from what I've decided he is?"
• "What in this has substance in it, and what is decoration?"

They work because a new connection has no history attached, so the honest material is the shape of the thing and how much of it is coming from you. The middle one gets more use than people expect, because at the start we are all a little in love with the version of him we assembled.

The ex

The hardest of these to write for, and the largest.

• "What actually broke this, from both sides?"
• "What would have to be different in me for this to work, and do I want that?"
• "Am I missing him, or missing the life I had while he was in it?"

All three are answerable. A finished relationship leaves a clear read, because the pattern is complete and both of you have already shown what you do under pressure. Compare that with asking whether he'll be back by Christmas, which needs me to know something nobody has decided.

The marriage that went quiet

Nothing dramatic happened. That's the difficulty. No affair, no shouting, and somewhere in the last few years the two of you turned into polite housemates.

• "Where did the distance start, and what has been feeding it since?"
• "Is this a marriage that's over, or one that's been neglected?"
• "What does he think is wrong, as opposed to what I think is wrong?"

These are hard to write down precisely because there's no incident to point at, so people arrive apologizing for wasting my time. You are not wasting my time. The second question matters most and is the one people are most frightened to type, and putting it in a form is often the first time it has been asked.

The situationship

Months of something that behaves like a relationship on Saturday and like nothing on Wednesday.

• "What does he think this is?"
• "What am I getting out of keeping it undefined?"

The first is obvious and it's a good one, because the gap between two people's private definitions is readable and it's usually where the whole problem lives. The second is the one nobody wants to send me. Ask it anyway. Sometimes the undefined version quietly suits a part of you that isn't ready either, which is worth knowing before you push for a label.

Why detail changes what comes back

One situation, written two ways.

Version one: "My boyfriend has been distant. Will things improve?"

Version two: "We moved in together in March. He started a new job in May, and since then he goes to bed an hour after I do. We haven't argued once, which is not normal for us. He's 34, I'm 31, his name is Dan. What's going on, and is it fixable?"

Version one gets you a reading about distance in relationships. Every line will be true and almost none of it will be about Dan. Version two hands me anchors: a timeline, a change in circumstances, a specific behavior, plus one detail (the absence of arguing) that tells me more than the rest combined. Now I can say something you didn't already know, which is the only good reason to pay anybody for this.

Detail is also quality control. If a reading comes back and every sentence in it would fit any distant boyfriend on earth, you've learned something about the reader.

There is a limit, though. Context helps; a two-thousand-word case for the prosecution does not. Spell out the answer you want in enough detail and all you've done is ask me to agree with you.

When the question is vague anyway

Plenty of people send me four words. "Should I stay with him." No punctuation, no context, sent at midnight.

I don't send those back. I go looking for the real question instead, because there nearly always is one and it's louder than the one on the form. "Should I stay" usually means something else. Sometimes you decided months ago and you want permission. Sometimes you are more frightened of being alone than you are unhappy with him, which is another problem entirely, with its own answer.

So I answer the real one, say plainly that that's what I've done, and then answer the one you wrote. If I've read you wrong, tell me.

One thing I'll say once and then leave alone. Every so often the real question isn't a love question. If you can't eat or sleep or hold a thought that isn't about this person, put a professional in the picture as well as me, or somebody close to you who has the whole story. Some of what reaches me needs more hours than any piece of writing has to give.

The questions I have to reword before I answer them

Some questions have no truthful version of the answer you want. I don't ignore those. I answer the nearest question I can stand behind and tell you I've made the swap. Here it is, so you can do it yourself.

• "Will he text me this week?" becomes "what would bring him back into contact, and what am I doing while I wait?" I can read the conditions. I cannot put another adult's choices in a calendar, and anyone who hands you a date has invented it.
• "Does he love me, yes or no?" becomes "what shape does his attachment to me take, and what does acting on it cost him?" That version can be answered, and it's worth more than a yes.
• "Will we get back together?" becomes "what are my real options from here, and what would each one take?" Nobody can hand you the first version, and the promise of it gets sold daily by people who know better.
• "How do I make him choose me?" becomes "why do I want somebody who needs persuading?" I don't do influence work on other people, and I'd be wary of anyone advertising it.
• "When will I meet the one?" becomes "what tends to happen when I get close to someone?" Dates are the least reliable thing in this field. Repetition is the most reliable.

The rule under all five is the same. Your behavior is readable and another person's position can be described honestly, while what they choose next week is nobody's to guarantee. A reader who puts that on a schedule has told you what their work is worth.

Writing yours

If you want a formula, here's mine, in four lines. Describe the situation as it stands today, with a sentence on how it got here. Say what shifted most recently, because recent change is the most readable material there is. Ask one question about the dynamic and keep it away from the outcome. Then tell me what you'd do with the answer, which is the line people leave out and the one that shows me what you are trying to decide.

Do that and you'll get a reading about you and him rather than a reading about relationships. When you're ready, a full-length love reading is where I work through one properly, with your name and his in it.

And if you reach the box and your hands stop, start typing and don't reread it before you send. I have yet to wish a client had sent me a calmer version of what was happening to her.