Most would you rather relationship deal breakers quizzes are built for one person to play alone on a lunch break. You pick between two awful options, you get a result, nothing changes. Played with your actual partner, the same format does something far more useful: it surfaces what each of you genuinely cannot live with, before it shows up in an argument at eleven at night.

The trick is the forced choice. Ask someone "what are your deal breakers" and you get a rehearsed list borrowed from the internet. Make them choose between two flawed partners and they have to rank their values in real time, out loud, with no room to say "both are bad."

Below are 50 deal breaker would you rather questions, each annotated with what the pick tends to reveal. Before the list is the part the quizzes skip: how to tell a real deal breaker from a pet peeve, what the research actually says about deal breakers (it is not flattering to anyone's list), and what to do when the game turns up a live one.

If you want a lighter round first, the full would you rather questions for couples covers funny and romantic, the spicy edition handles heat, and the deep set goes into values without the deal breaker framing.

Would you rather relationship deal breakers are forced-choice questions where both options are things you would struggle to accept, so you have to rank your values instead of reciting a list. Play them in three steps: pick your side, guess your partner's pick, then flag whether either option is real for you rather than hypothetical. A real deal breaker is a pattern you would still refuse to live with in ten years if it never changed; anything else is a pet peeve with volume. Cap the round at ten questions and save the discussion for after the game.

How to play would you rather with deal breakers
What actually counts as a deal breaker
What the research says about deal breakers
50 would you rather relationship deal breakers
Long distance deal breakers
When the game turns up a real one
FAQ

How to play would you rather with deal breakers

Play it in three taps per question: pick your side, guess your partner's pick, then flag whether either option is real for you. That third step is what separates this from a BuzzFeed quiz, and it is the only part that produces information you can use.

Here are the rules that keep it from turning into a fight.

Both of you answer everything. A deal breaker round where one person asks and the other answers is not a game, it is an interview. Swap after every question or answer simultaneously.

Guess before they say it. Say your guess out loud first. The misses matter more than the hits, because a wrong guess means you are carrying an outdated map of the person in front of you.

Flag, do not litigate. After each pair, either of you can say "that one is real for me." Note it. Do not discuss it yet. Finish the round first.

Cap it at ten questions. Deal breaker questions get heavier as they go, and the eleventh answer is always shorter than the first.

Nothing from the game gets quoted in your next argument. This is the rule that makes honest answers possible. Break it once and you will get diplomatic answers forever.

The Would You Rather game inside FeelClose is built on exactly this loop. You pick, you guess your partner's pick, and the reveal shows who read who. When you land on different sides, it prompts you both to defend your pick instead of just moving to the next card, which is where the actual conversation lives.

What actually counts as a deal breaker

A real deal breaker is a pattern of behavior you would still refuse to live with in ten years if it never changed. A pet peeve is a preference with volume. Most of what couples call deal breakers is the second thing wearing the first thing's coat.

Three tests, in order.

Is it behavior or identity? Behavior can change. Wanting your partner to be a fundamentally different person cannot be negotiated, only mourned.

Would it still be unacceptable if it never improved? John Gottman's research found that 69% of relationship conflict is perpetual, rooted in stable differences in personality and needs rather than solvable disagreements. Perpetual does not mean fatal. What predicts damage is whether a couple can keep talking about the difference or whether it goes gridlocked and silent.

Can you enforce it without controlling anyone? "I will not stay in a relationship where I am lied to about money" is a deal breaker, because the only behavior it governs is your own. "You are not allowed to text her" is an ultimatum. They feel identical from the inside and they are not the same thing.

Run your list through this table before you announce it to anybody.

Sounds like a deal breaker	What it usually is	The question underneath
They take hours to reply	A pace mismatch, and a perpetual one	What does silence mean to you when you are on the other end of it?
They are messy	Two different thresholds for order	Who is doing the work neither of us counts?
They waste money on nonsense	Two different definitions of security	What does spending actually do for you?
They are still close with an ex	A boundary nobody ever said out loud	What agreement do we think we have?
They shut down mid-argument	Flooding, which is physiological, not strategic	What would help you come back to the conversation?
They mock you in front of other people	Contempt. This one is the real thing	Nothing. Contempt is not a preference to negotiate

That last row is deliberate. Gottman's lab found that contempt is the single strongest predictor of divorce, and it rarely appears on anyone's stated list of deal breakers. Eye-rolling and hostile humor do not sound as dramatic as infidelity, so they never make the list, and they do more of the killing.

One hard boundary before the questions: abuse, coercion, and threats are not game material. They are not deal breakers to be weighed against a partner's good qualities. If any answer in this round is describing something you are actually living with, the APA's relationships resources are a better starting point than a card game.

What the research says about deal breakers

Deal breakers carry more psychological weight than deal makers, and stated deal breakers do a poor job of predicting who people actually choose. Both findings should make you hold your own list loosely.

In a set of six studies with more than 6,500 participants published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Jonason and colleagues found that people weighed dealbreakers more negatively than they weighed dealmakers positively. Learning something bad about a candidate outweighed the good; learning something good about a bad candidate did not rescue them. The effect was stronger in women, stronger for long-term relationships than short-term ones, and stronger among people already in committed relationships. In other words, the longer you have been together, the more heavily a single negative lands.

The same research asked a nationally representative sample of 2,744 single American adults to name their deal breakers. The top of the list was poor hygiene, health risks, being untrustworthy, being abusive, being uncaring, living too far away, poor sexual compatibility, and a short temper. Women reported more deal breakers than men, though the gender difference was small.

More recent survey data from couples rather than singles tells a similar story. The Knot's 2024 Relationship and Intimacy Study, which surveyed over 1,000 singles and over 1,000 married people, found these top relationship deal breakers:

Deal breaker	Singles	Married
Lack of trust or honesty	63%	52%
Poor communication	59%	not reported
Infidelity	52%	46%
Lack of chemistry	32%	25%
Long distance	27%	not reported
Different views on children or marriage	17%	21%

Two things stand out. First, married respondents named fewer deal breakers across the board, which is what happens when abstractions meet a decade of actual life. Second, more than a quarter of single people list distance itself as disqualifying, which is worth knowing if you are the one currently making distance work.

And then the finding that undercuts the whole exercise, in a useful way. In a speed-dating study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Eastwick and Finkel found that participants' stated ideal preferences, measured before the event, failed to predict who they actually desired once they met people face to face. People lack reliable introspective access to what will move them in the room.

So treat your deal breaker list as a description of your fears, not a forecast of your behavior. It tells your partner what frightens you. That is genuinely valuable information, and it is a different thing from a verdict.

50 would you rather relationship deal breakers

Five sets, ordered from low-stakes friction to the questions that decide things. Each one names what the pick tends to reveal, so you know what you are looking at when the answer surprises you.

Everyday friction (1 to 10)

The warm-up. These are the small daily grinds that end more relationships than dramatic betrayals do.

Would you rather be with someone chronically 20 minutes late, or someone anxiously 30 minutes early to everything? Reveals: whether their nervous system runs on urgency or on slack.
Would you rather live with constant background noise, or with a partner who needs total silence? Reveals: how much sensory space they need to feel like themselves.
Would you rather your partner never cooks, or cooks every night and needs to be thanked for it? Reveals: how they feel about invisible labor versus performed effort.
Would you rather share a bed with a snorer, or with someone who takes all the blankets and denies it? Reveals: how they handle a nightly annoyance nobody is at fault for.
Would you rather be with someone whose phone is always in their hand, or someone who takes six hours to answer anything? Reveals: which kind of unavailability actually hurts them.
Would you rather your partner leaves every cupboard open, or reorganizes your things without asking? Reveals: whether mess or loss of control is the bigger threat.
Would you rather live in permanent clutter, or with someone who tidies while you are mid-sentence? Reveals: how they read distraction, which is usually as rejection.
Would you rather your partner is the loudest person at every party, or refuses to go to any? Reveals: how much social life they expect you to carry or curb.
Would you rather be with someone who plans nothing, or someone who schedules every hour of a holiday? Reveals: their tolerance for another person's structure.
Would you rather your partner tells the same story wrong forever, or corrects your stories in front of other people? Reveals: how sensitive they are to being made small in public. Watch this one. It is the entry point to the contempt conversation.

Honesty, trust, and loyalty (11 to 20)

The highest-ranked deal breaker category in every dataset, and the one where couples most often assume they agree.

Would you rather hear a hurtful truth immediately, or a kind lie you never discover? Reveals: whether comfort or accuracy is their baseline need.
Would you rather your partner hides their spending, or hides their feelings? Reveals: which kind of secrecy registers as betrayal for them.
Would you rather find out they lied about something small every week, or something big exactly once? Reveals: whether they measure trust by pattern or by magnitude.
Would you rather your partner stays close with an ex, or keeps one friendship completely private from you? Reveals: what they need in order to feel secure, which is usually information rather than restriction.
Would you rather they flirt openly in front of you, or never in front of you and occasionally behind your back? Reveals: whether they care more about the act or about being made a fool of.
Would you rather have a jealous partner who says it out loud, or one who feels it and goes quiet? Reveals: how much they prefer managed conflict to unspoken tension.
Would you rather check each other's phones openly, or never ask and sometimes wonder? Reveals: their model of privacy inside a couple. There is more on this in our guide to long distance relationship trust.
Would you rather they confess a mistake immediately and badly, or handle it alone and tell you a year later? Reveals: whether they want to be protected or included.
Would you rather be with someone who forgives too fast, or someone who holds it for months? Reveals: how repair works for them, and how long they need before it can start.
Would you rather your partner defends you when you are wrong, or corrects you when you are wrong? Reveals: whether loyalty or honesty is their first instinct under pressure.

Money, work, and ambition (21 to 30)

Money fights are rarely about money. These get underneath without becoming a budget meeting.

Would you rather your partner earns far more and expects a bigger say, or earns nothing and expects none? Reveals: whether income quietly carries status in your relationship.
Would you rather be with a workaholic who is fully present on weekends, or someone available all week but never really engaged? Reveals: whether they value quantity of time or quality of attention.
Would you rather merge every account, or split every single bill to the cent forever? Reveals: how separate or merged they expect a shared life to be.
Would you rather be with someone in debt who is honest about it, or someone with savings who refuses to discuss money? Reveals: whether financial safety or financial transparency is their priority.
Would you rather they take the risky job they love, or the stable job that slowly makes them bitter? Reveals: how much of your partner's ambition you are each willing to underwrite.
Would you rather they spend impulsively on you, or save relentlessly and cancel every trip? Reveals: whether generosity or security reads as love.
Would you rather move once for their career, or ask them to give up theirs once for you? Reveals: how they think about sacrifice, and whether they expect it to be even.
Would you rather be with someone with no ambition at all, or ambition that always comes first? Reveals: what they actually need to respect a partner.
Would you rather they lend money to family without telling you, or refuse family who genuinely need help? Reveals: where the boundary sits between your household and everyone else's.
Would you rather your partner is careless with money, or careless with time? Reveals: which resource they treat as irreplaceable.

Family, future, and non-negotiables (31 to 40)

These are the ones that quietly decide the next decade. Ask them earlier than feels comfortable.

Would you rather your partner's family adores you and never leaves you alone, or respects your privacy and never warms up? Reveals: how much family closeness they will expect you to perform.
Would you rather disagree about having children, or agree about having them and disagree about raising them? Reveals: whether they see the decision or the daily execution as the real work.
Would you rather be with someone who wants marriage soon, or someone who never wants it but will stay forever? Reveals: how much of commitment is about the label for them.
Would you rather they refuse therapy entirely, or go and never tell you anything about it? Reveals: their beliefs about what a partner is entitled to know.
Would you rather they hold a belief you find hard and discuss it openly, or hold it silently and never mention it? Reveals: whether they would rather have peace or have the truth.
Would you rather live next door to their family, or ten hours from everyone either of you knows? Reveals: where they think home is.
Would you rather be with someone who never changes their mind, or someone who changes it constantly? Reveals: how they will handle it when you change.
Would you rather they keep a friendship you dislike, or drop it resentfully because you asked? Reveals: whether they would rather carry the friction or hand it to you.
Would you rather your partner needs a lot of reassurance, or almost never says what they need? Reveals: which attachment style is harder for them to sit with.
Would you rather have a relationship that is calm and slightly distant, or close and occasionally volatile? Reveals: what they learned at home about what love is supposed to feel like.

If a pick here opens something bigger, the open-ended prompts in our relationship questions guide are a better format for the follow-up than another forced choice.

Long distance deal breakers

Distance creates its own category of deal breaker, and no generic quiz asks about them. Given that 27% of singles in The Knot's survey named long distance itself as disqualifying, the couples who are doing it anyway deserve questions built for the actual problem.

Would you rather questions for long distance couples (41 to 50)

Would you rather have a partner who never plans a visit but always answers your messages, or one who books every flight and disappears for days at a time? Reveals: whether presence or reliability is their anchor.
Would you rather be told they are struggling and worry from far away, or hear about it once it has passed? Reveals: the single biggest hidden decision in long distance, which is how much bad news travels.
Would you rather have no closing date, or a date that keeps getting pushed? Reveals: whether they cope better with uncertainty or with disappointment.
Would you rather always be the one who flies, or always be the one who waits? Reveals: how they think effort should be counted, and whether it currently is.
Would you rather they build a full social life without you, or keep their life small and blame the distance for it? Reveals: how they hold jealousy and independence at the same time.
Would you rather have five-minute daily calls that feel like admin, or one long weekly call you both dread scheduling? Reveals: whether they need continuity or depth. Worth knowing before you build a routine around the wrong one.
Would you rather your partner never posts about you, or posts constantly and tells the internet things before they tell you? Reveals: what public acknowledgment means to them.
Would you rather their family does not know you exist, or calls you weekly asking when you are moving? Reveals: how much external pressure they can absorb on your behalf.
Would you rather close the distance this year in a city you dislike, or wait three more years for the right one? Reveals: their real timeline, which is not always the one they have been saying out loud.
Would you rather they say "I miss you" daily until it means nothing, or once a month when it lands hard? Reveals: how they receive longing, which for some people arrives as pressure.

Question 42 is the one worth sitting with. Couples who are apart tend to ration bad news to protect a limited amount of shared time, and the habit hollows out the relationship quietly. That pattern, along with the others that do the real damage, is covered in what kills long distance relationships.

When the game turns up a real one

Wait until the round is over. A live deal breaker raised mid-game gets discussed badly, because one of you is still in game mode and the other is suddenly not.

Then, when you come back to it, run it in this order.

Separate the hypothetical from the actual. "I would rather be lied to about money than about feelings" is a preference. "You have been vague about money for two months" is a situation. Only the second one needs a conversation, and it deserves its own evening.

Open softly. Gottman's research found that the first three minutes of a conversation predict how the whole thing goes, which is why the soft start-up is worth practicing. Name the behavior, name the effect on you, make one request. "When plans move without warning, I stop trusting the timeline, and I need us to agree on a date we both actually mean" is workable. "You never commit to anything" is not.

Ask one follow-up, not five. Three in a row stops being curiosity and becomes cross-examination, and your partner will start giving you the safe answer instead of the true one.

Decide whether it is solvable or perpetual. If it is perpetual, and most are, the goal is not resolution. It is an ongoing dialogue that keeps the difference from going gridlocked. Couples who manage this well can name each other's position on a difference they have had for eight years, without contempt and without a winner.

Notice when the answer is good. A partner saying "I would rather you tell me the hard thing straight away" is an invitation. Turning toward those small offers, what Gottman calls bids for connection, is the boring mechanic that keeps couples close.

If the round leaves you genuinely unsure whether the relationship works, that is a bigger question than a game can settle, and it is worth reading is a long distance relationship worth it before deciding anything at eleven at night.

FAQ

What are the biggest deal breakers in a relationship?

Across surveys of both singles and couples, the consistent top four are dishonesty, poor communication, infidelity, and untrustworthy behavior. Research on married respondents shows they name fewer deal breakers than singles do, which suggests many stated deal breakers do not survive contact with a real long-term relationship.

What is the difference between a deal breaker and a red flag?

A red flag is a warning sign that something might become a problem. A deal breaker is a pattern you have already decided you will not live with. Red flags are worth raising and watching; deal breakers are worth stating plainly, once, as a boundary about your own choices rather than a demand about theirs.

Should you tell your partner your deal breakers?

Yes, but frame them as information rather than threats. "I cannot be with someone who lies to me about money" tells your partner something useful about your history and your fears. Delivering the same sentence as a warning shot invites performance instead of honesty. The forced-choice format helps because it surfaces the ranking without turning into an announcement.

Can you play deal breaker would you rather over text or long distance?

It works better over distance than most question games, because two options fit in one message and can be answered between meetings. Send the pair, add your guess of their pick in the same message, and save the reasons for your next call. FeelClose runs the same loop asynchronously so neither of you has to be free at the same minute.

Pick ten questions from one set tonight, guess each other's answers before hearing them, and flag anything that is real without arguing about it until tomorrow. You will learn more in fifteen minutes than in a month of "we should really talk about this."

If you want the format to keep coming back without either of you having to organize it, FeelClose is free on iOS and includes a Would You Rather round where you pick, guess your partner's pick, and get prompted to defend the ones where you land on different sides. That last prompt is where the useful part usually starts.

Would You Rather Relationship Deal Breakers: 50 Questions and What Each Pick Reveals

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