12 Questions for Love: A Guide to Intimate Conversations and Deeper Relationships

by Topaz Adizes, Sonya Renee Taylor (Foreword by)

Overview

“Save yourself another round of heartbreak and breakups and read this first. Topaz condenses years of wisdom into 12 powerful questions that will give you the keys to unlock real, true, and profound love so you don’t have to keep searching (or suffering) in disconnected relationships.”
—Natalie Kuhn, spiritual teacher and co-CEO of The Class

Could one conversation improve your relationship forever?
 
We all crave connection. But sometimes we need help getting there. By having a conversation with your partner, guided by these thought-provoking questions, you’ll discover the strength in having mindful, meaningful conversations and unlock a deeper level of lasting intimacy.
 
Author Topaz Adizes invites you to bravely explore the heart of your relationship
through 12 carefully crafted questions drawn from thousands of candid conversations with real couples featured in his Emmy Award-winning documentary series {THE AND}.
 
In today’s fast-paced world, it is easier than ever to feel isolated, disconnected, and idling in surface-level relationships. Having observed a decade’s worth of extraordinary conversations unfold, Topaz explores the key to feeling closer, more secure, and more connected with your partner. 
 
This essential, inclusive guide includes:

• Powerful tools to create a safe, transformative space for connection
• 12 questions proven to nurture authentic intimacy, and examples from people who've been there
• Strategies for staying connected in the midst of conflict
• Confidence to craft better, stronger questions of your own (hint: you’ll get better answers)

Make every conversation count, and you’ll uncover the magic that awaits when you dare to be vulnerable, go deeper, and love like never before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632174918
Publisher:	Blue Star Press
Publication date:	01/02/2024
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	525,015
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

TOPAZ ADIZES is an Emmy award-winning writer, director, and experience design architect. He is an Edmund Hillary fellow and Sundance/ Skoll stories of change fellow. His works have been selected to Cannes, Sundance, IDFA, and SXSW; featured in New Yorker magazine, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times; and have garnered an Emmy for new approaches to documentary and two world press photo awards for immersive storytelling and interactive documentary. He is currently the founder and executive director of the experience design studio The Skin Deep. Topaz studied philosophy at UC Berkeley and Oxford University. He speaks four languages, and currently lives in Mexico with his wife and two children. 

Find The Skin Deep on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, where they have over 2 million followers, or by visiting TheSkinDeep.com. 

To learn more about Topaz Adizes and his work, visit TopazAdizes.com.

Read an Excerpt

Welcome

Have you ever found yourself in the presence of someone you love dearly and had nothing to say? The silence not indicative of your care for the other, nor of your desire to connect with them, and yet there were no words you could grasp to articulate the depth or quality of your connection to them? Or have you found yourself in the same looped pattern of conversation with someone you love? Feeling as though you were treading the same path repetitively and it was simply exhausting? Even worse, it was deteriorating your connection.

Have you found yourself so in love that you want to forge an even deeper connection but are unable to find the tools or the experiences to help you build the next, greater version of what you sense is possible?

Have you questioned the value of intimate relationships? Or what intimacy really means? What is it in essence? How does it affect one’s life? How do you build it? How do you maintain it? And on a more rudimentary level, what’s the payoff?

Welcome.

It is not a mistake you are reading these words. However you came to this book, there was something in you craving a new way to experience love, connection, and intimacy. I hope you’re ready to take a deep dive and be open to the transformational power of deeper connection, because you are in the right place.

***

For the last ten years through the Emmy Award winning project {THE AND}, I have been studying and watching humans of all types, and in all kinds of relationships, simply talk. But there is more to it. I’ve crafted the space for powerful, cathartic conversations to occur. I’ve created the questions that spark those experiences for the participants. I’ve trained others to hold the space, write the questions, and ultimately create these powerful moments for people across the gender, social, economic, and cultural spectrums to connect in new and profound ways.

I have spent thousands of hours watching the video recordings of those people in these exchanges. And I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about the human condition and it’s craving for raw and real connections with other humans. I’ve learned that we all yearn that connection whether we know it or not. I’ve learned how the power of questions can change your whole perspective and thus how you experience your life. I’ve learned how challenged we are as a culture to be vulnerable with one another and the payoff when we do. I’ve learned what listening, really listening, looks like. I’ve learned that the heart is built to love, and yet has to traverse through rugged terrain to find another loving heart. And I’ve learned that every relationship has its own unique space between that if accessed can provide rich nutrients to fuel growth and elevate a relationship to deeper levels reminding us of the beauty of what it means to be alive.

All these lessons have changed me. Through them, I’ve learned about my own life’s journey which has led me to this place.

I am going to share with you the learnings I’ve absorbed from witnessing over one thousand conversations and the lessons from my own first hand experiences. You will walk away with the awareness and the tools of how to deepen your connections with those most important to you. As couples therapist and author, Esther Perel famously put it, “The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our life.”

But what determines the quality of our relationships? I’d argue that it’s the conversations we share with our partners; the depth and connection we cultivate and discover as we speak to our loved ones within a shared space. So what determines the quality of those conversations? What allows them to offer us a space for exploration, discovery, and connectedness? The quality of the questions out of which they arise.

***

I am going to offer you 12 meaningful questions to ask and the tools to create the space in which to answer them in a powerful way.

Thank you. I am grateful you are here. With that, I invite you to explore the space between.

Editorial Reviews

I’ve known Topaz for over a decade, and 12 Questions for Love is a perfect example of the incredibly curious, open, and uniting person behind {THE AND}. These seemingly simple questions distill years of observations, encouraging us to discuss what matters most and allow our relationships to thrive. Empowering and insightful, with heartfelt solutions to real-life problems, this is the book I wish I could’ve given to my younger self.”
—Jodie Whittaker, actor

“In today’s info-saturated world, answers are easy to come by—but powerful, connective questions are what we need more than ever. In this game-changing book, inspired by his award-winning film series, Topaz Adizes shares a dozen questions that can deepen and enrich the most important relationships in your life. Buy this book not just for yourself, but for the people you truly care about.”
—Warren Berger, bestselling author of A More Beautiful Question

“Save yourself another round of heartbreak and breakups and read this first. Topaz condenses years of wisdom into 12 powerful questions that will give you the keys to unlock real, true, and profound love so you don’t have to keep searching (or suffering) in disconnected relationships.”
—Natalie Kuhn, spiritual teacher and co-CEO of The Class

“When we pose a question to someone we love and listen deeply to their reply, we not only learn, we deepen our human bond with them. In this moving book, Topaz Adizes gives us the profound gift of questions that will transform our relationships, and our lives, forever.”
—Jeff Wetzler, author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You

From the Publisher