Being Curious as a Love Language

We often seek people in our lives who make us feel like we belong, we are understood, we are safe, and supported. When we cultivate such relationships, we feel like we can finally be ourselves, express our thoughts and feelings openly, and engage in meaningful dialogue without fear. When our relationships are supportive and fulfilling, we also experience greater well-being, more joy, and a stronger sense of authenticity. These connections help us find meaning and support our healing and growth. On the contrary, if we struggle to form secure and fulfilling relationships, we may feel lonely or disconnected. When our need for closeness and belonging goes unmet, we may notice increased stress, anxiety, or low mood. Relationships are complex, and there probably isn’t a single solution that would make all problems go away. But there are things we can try to do more of to engage others more deeply and meaningfully. In this mini-sketch, we will explore one such process that can help you form and maintain deeper and more authentic relationships: interpersonal curiosity.

What is Interpersonal Curiosity?

When we talk about curiosity, you may think of it as an inner intellectual force, a strong desire to learn or understand something about yourself or the world. Most often, you might feel curious when you notice an “informational gap” in your knowledge, prompting you to learn, discover, or explore. Or, you might find pursuing information joyful in its own right, making you curious about things related to your worldview, interests, values, and needs.

Eventhough curiosity is often described as an intellectual process and a drive that leads us to abstracted knowledge, it can also become relational and directed toward someone else. This way of being curious toward people we meet, connect with, or love is called “interpersonal curiosity,” and research in this area is increasingly showing its importance for our social and emotional learning, relationship formation, and maintenance (Jauniaux & Lawford, 2024; Way & Taffe, 2024).

You can experience interpersonal curiosity at almost every stage of a relationship for different reasons, and its intensity can fluctuate. Sometimes your curiosity can feel strong when someone new piques your interest, and it may change as you spend a great deal of time with them and grow closer. When you feel curious, you may express it in your relationships by initiating conversations, asking questions, and following up. You may notice that you listen more closely to others when you are in a curious state. You may find that it is making you feel more enthusiastic and engaged in interacting with others, helping to nurture and strengthen your bonds. However, curiosity can also manifest in less helpful ways, such as stalking and snooping, which can harm relationships rather than nurture them, prompting us to be more reflective and mindful when expressing our curiosity.

How can interpersonal curiosity support relationships?

Learning more about others can increase closeness and build trust: Being curious about the other person can, intentionally or unintentionally, help you learn more about them. It can make you more inclined to ask questions, listen more carefully, and allow the other person to share stories and personal details that otherwise couldn’t be shared. This can help reduce the uncertainty you may be experiencing in the relationship and help you build more trust. Curiosity, therefore, helps you learn more about the other person, bringing you closer and creating more opportunities to build trust.
Curiosity helps us cope with unhelpful social thinking patterns: Social interactions are not always easy, and any of us can struggle with our relationships at times. But it can also be additionally distressful for those of us who experience social anxiety or identify with being neurodivergent. For example, it is common for those of us who experience social anxiety to become extremely occupied with assumptions about how others may be perceiving us, leaving us constantly monitoring whether we are doing the “right thing”. These thoughts can spiral, making it difficult to enjoy social interactions and turning them into chores. Since being in a state of anxiety is often maintained by our attention becoming increasingly internal, interrupting this process can relieve us immensely. Being curious about others can help us interrupt spiraling thoughts and ease our discomfort by turning our attention outward, creating more space for us to contain social interactions and not get too overwhelmed by them.

Ways to cultivate Interpersonal Curiosity

Become aware of your own curiosity-related habits: You can start by understanding how you already interact with your own curiosity. What do you often find yourself thinking when conversing with others? What do you wish to learn about them, and how do you typically learn them? What do you wish others would ask you and know more about you? Can these also be learned about others? You can ask yourself questions like these to start reflecting on how you already experience and express interpersonal curiosity. Getting reflective about your own habits can help you identify the barriers that may be blocked by.
Deliberately cultivate curious moments: It is perfectly fine if being curious about another person doesn’t come easily to you. Just like many things in life, becoming curious can be practiced intentionally and deliberately, and you can become more comfortable with it over time. Even reading this article and taking a few minutes to reflect on your own ways of being curious can make the opportunities to be curious more salient next time. You can also plan ahead and devise a set of “go-to” questions to ask next time you meet someone new. Or try deliberately adding a few more minutes of silence when you are listening to someone you love to see if it creates a little space for them to share something new.
Bring mindfulness to cope with the discomfort of “not knowing”: Eventhough becoming curious can bring about a great deal of opportunity for closeness and growth, our desire to know others may not always be welcomed. For example, the person we are interacting with may have their own barriers to sharing something personal, or the time and context may limit the conversation from becoming as meaningful as we wish. And at other times, we may simply have asked something we cannot and should not know, which is a natural part of communicating with others. What can help us in moments like this to cope with the uncomfortable feeling of not being reciprocated in our attempts to connect could be allowing ourselves not to know. Just like we give ourselves permission to become curious, we can also give ourselves permission to “not know”. This way, being curious can become a joyful and stimulating experience on its own, without being dependent on it bringing clarity and knowledge every single time.
Remember to practice boundaries and empathy: If we lead only with our curiosity, without acknowledging other people’s and our own boundaries and a companioning sense of compassion and empathy, our curiosity can take less helpful forms. We need to establish a level of reciprocity in our curiosity so it can nurture and grow rather than become aggressive or destructive. For example, stalking, gossiping, or snooping around can also provide us with information about the other person, but these forms of interacting often violate another person’s boundaries. Eventhough it may provide us with temporary satisfaction, they most often don’t bring the deeper level of closeness and joy of being curious in a more affiliative and reciprocal way.

Takeaways:

Interpersonal curiosity is a relational form of drive to learn about or understand other people, which strengthens social and emotional connections.
It builds trust and closeness when respectful, but can harm relationships when intrusive or boundary-crossing, inviting us to stay affiliative and reciprocal when expressing curiosity toward others.
It can be naturally expressed through initiating conversations, asking questions, listening attentively, and showing genuine interest, all of which can also be deliberately introduced into a relationship to cultivate curiosity.
It can also be cultivated further by reflecting on your habits, practicing intentional curiosity, and allowing yourself to be comfortable with not always being rewarded with new knowledge after getting curious.

References:

Jauniaux, M. L., & Lawford, H. L. (2024). Interpersonal curiosity as a tool to foster safe relational spaces: a narrative literature review. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1379330. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1379330

Way, N., & Taffe, R. (2024). Interpersonal curiosity: a missing construct in the field of human development. Human Development, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1159/000542162

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