Truth or Dare for Couples: 90 Truths and Dares for Married Couples

Truth or dare works better in a marriage than it has any right to, once you strip out the parts built for teenagers. No forfeits, no embarrassment, nobody else in the room. Just a structure that makes it easy to say something you have been sitting on, and easy to do something you would not have known how to ask for.

We have ninety of them below for you to browse, in three different heat levels.

I have said for years that play is not a break from intimacy, it is a way into it. The way I put it back on episode 89 is that children learn best when they are playing a game, and adults are not as different as we like to think. Play opens your mind and soul to connection.

Some of our best nights have come out of exactly that. I told the story on episode 311 of the evening Emily and I looked up a pile of minute-to-minute challenges and played them in the bedroom. I am not sure we have ever laughed harder.

Truth or dare is the version people ask me about most, and it comes with a fair objection. Keelie Reason raised it when she was on the show: sexy truth or dare is the game she likes least, because unless somebody has built the cards for you it does not build. It lurches around at random instead of climbing.

She is right, and that is the thing this list is designed to fix. Everything below is sorted into three levels so the game goes somewhere. The other half of the fix is the rules.

Why the version you remember does not work in a marriage

The party game runs on one engine: making somebody do something humiliating in front of people who will remember it. But, take away the audience and the humiliation, which is exactly what you should do here, and you have to rebuild the game around something else.

What replaces it is simpler and better. The truths trade on the fact that you already know each other well enough for a real answer to land. The dares trade on permission. Most of what a married couple wants is not exotic, it is just never quite asked for, and a card that says do this removes the asking.

I have written before about how hard it is to ask for what you want in bed. A game is the cheapest workaround I know for that problem. Nobody has to be the one who wanted it. The list wanted it.

The rules that make it work

This game has 5 rules and the first one is the most important one:

• A pass is free, unlimited, and costs nothing. No forfeit, no penalty, no substitute dare. A pass is information about where somebody is tonight, not a refusal of you.
• The pass applies mid-dare too. Stopping halfway through is allowed and does not need a reason.
• No questions about the past, and nobody outside this marriage. No exes, no comparisons, no gotchas. Every truth here is about the two of you now. This is the rule that separates a game that brings you closer from one that ends the evening badly.
• Nobody is scoring. There is no winner. You both win! If one of you takes eight dares and the other takes eight truths, that is just fine!
• Agree the exit before you start. Either of you can end it at any point. Knowing that in advance is what lets both of you relax into it.

The reasoning behind these rules is the same principle underneath the difference between grabbing and groping. What makes touch land well is not the technique. It is whether the person receiving it had a real choice.

Start colder than you think you need to

The most common way this goes wrong is opening on the hot list because you are both in a good mood. Five minutes later somebody gets a truth or dare they were not ready for yet, and the evening has a dent in it.

Work up to it. Level one is warm and safe and will still tell you something. Level three assumes you are already there.

Level one truths: warm

Nothing here is risky. That is deliberate. These are the ones that get you both talking honestly before anything is at stake, and several of them will go somewhere you did not expect.

1. What was the first thing you ever noticed about me?
2. When in the last month did you feel most wanted by me?
3. What is something I do that you have never told me you like?
4. What is your favorite memory of us that has nothing to do with sex?
5. When do I look best to you? Be specific.
6. What is a compliment you have thought about me and never said out loud?
7. What were you actually nervous about on our wedding night?
8. What is the most attractive thing about me that has nothing to do with how I look?
9. When did you last think about me in the middle of a workday?
10. What is a small thing I do that you find unreasonably attractive?
11. What is something you are proud of me for right now?
12. When in an ordinary week do you feel closest to me?
13. What do you miss about an earlier season of our marriage?
14. What is one thing you would like more of from me that has nothing to do with the bedroom?
15. What is something you have been carrying this week that you have not told me about?

Level one dares: warm

All of these can be done in a lit room with your clothes on. Several of them are the kind of ordinary affection that goes missing first in a busy marriage, which is why I would not skip this list even if you are tempted to.

1. Hold eye contact for one full minute without saying anything.
2. Give your spouse a two minute shoulder rub and do not talk through it.
3. Kiss your spouse somewhere you have not kissed them this week.
4. Name three specific things you find attractive about them right now.
5. Slow dance to one song in the living room.
6. Take their hand and describe what you were thinking the first time you held it.
7. Sit close enough that you are touching for the rest of the game.
8. Trace the outline of their face with one finger.
9. Say out loud the thing you were about to keep to yourself.
10. Put your forehead against theirs and breathe in time with them for thirty seconds.
11. Give one compliment about their body, then one about their character.
12. Kiss until one of you relaxes, and notice which one it is.
13. Take a badly lit, unposed photo of the two of you right now and keep it.
14. Whisper what you would like to happen later.
15. Text them something from across the room that you would rather not say out loud.

If a lot of these feel like a stretch rather than a warm-up, that is worth noticing rather than pushing through. It usually means touch in your marriage has narrowed to one meaning, which is its own thing to work on, and I wrote about it in the piece on non-sexual touch.

Level two truths: warmer

These assume a bit of nerve and give you a lot more back. Several are questions couples go decades without asking each other directly.

1. What is your favorite way I have ever started something?
2. Where on your body do you most want to be touched that I probably never think of?
3. What is something you have wanted to ask me for and have not?
4. What is the best kiss we have ever had, and what made it that one?
5. What do I do that most reliably turns you on?
6. What do I do that accidentally turns you off?
7. Is there a time of day you wish we did this more often?
8. What is something you expected not to enjoy and do?
9. What would you like me to say to you more often?
10. What is one thing about your own body you wish you could see the way I see it?
11. How long did you think about something you wanted before you mentioned it to me?
12. When was the last time you wanted to and did not say so? What stopped you?
13. What is a sound or a word from me that you like more than I realize?
14. Which would you rather have more of: slower, or more often?
15. What is something I used to do that I have quietly stopped doing?

Level two dares: warmer

1. Remove one item of their clothing, slowly, and stop there.
2. Five minute massage, anywhere they choose, with nothing expected after it.
3. Kiss their neck until they tell you to stop.
4. Let them move your hands wherever they want them for one minute.
5. Each describe what you would do with an uninterrupted hour. Do not act on it yet.
6. Have them close their eyes and let them guess what you are touching them with.
7. Give them a lap dance to one song.
8. Using their hand, show them exactly where you want to be touched.
9. Kiss for two minutes using no hands at all.
10. Take off one item of your own clothing and leave the room for two minutes.
11. Trade one wish each, and grant theirs.
12. Describe their body out loud, top to bottom, saying what you like about each part.
13. Do the thing they mentioned in an earlier truth.
14. Let them choose what you wear to bed tonight.
15. Ten minutes on a timer, no clothes, no agenda, talking the whole time.

Number seven is easier than it sounds, and both of you can do it. If you want the actual mechanics, here is the full how-to on the strip tease and lap dance.

Level three truths: hot

Save these for when you are both already there. Every one of them is answerable with a pass, and some nights that is the right answer.

1. Describe, in detail, something you have wanted to try with me.
2. What is a fantasy you have had about me this month?
3. If you could redo one evening from our marriage, which one, and what would you change?
4. What is something you would rather be asked for than offered?
5. Where else in this house have you thought about it?
6. What is your honest answer about how often you would like sex?
7. What is something you would like to watch me do?
8. What is a request you assume I would say no to?
9. What do you think about most when we have been apart a while?
10. What is the most turned on you have ever been with me, and what caused it?
11. Is there something you want that you worry would change how I see you?
12. What would you like me to do to you right now?
13. What is one thing on your list you have never said out loud to anybody?
14. What is something you want more of that you have only ever hinted at?
15. If we had three uninterrupted hours tonight, what would the order of events be?

Level three dares: hot

1. Take their hand and show them exactly how you want to be touched.
2. Undress them completely, slowly, naming one thing you like as each item comes off.
3. Do the thing from their answer to the last truth.
4. Ten minutes each where one of you is entirely in charge.
5. Let them loosely tie your hands and stay still for as long as you are comfortable while they tease you.
6. Three minutes of oral sex, then stop, whatever is happening.
7. Let them watch you for one minute.
8. Ask out loud for something you have only ever hinted at.
9. Move to a room in the house you have never done this in.
10. Take turns saying what you want next, one instruction at a time.
11. Hand over the whole evening. They choose everything, you give no input.
12. Each write down one thing you want to try this month, trade papers, and talk about it tomorrow.
13. Spend five minutes touching them everywhere except where they most want it.
14. Describe in detail what you are about to do, before you do it.
15. Let them pick any dare from the list above and do it.

Running low on truths

The truth half is the part couples burn through fastest, because a good answer tends to open three more questions. Two lists on the site will keep you going for a long time: 29 spicy questions to ask your spouse and 69 sexy interview questions, which is built as a date night of its own and includes a long run of would-you-rather.

For dares, the honest answer is that the best ones come from your own marriage. Keep a note on your phone for a week of anything either of you says you would like to try. That list will beat mine, because it is yours.

Three ways to play it

On cards

Write them out, truths on one color and dares on another, and draw blind. The randomness does something a list on a phone does not. Nobody chose the card, so nobody has to own it.

Over the course of a day

One truth in the morning, one dare at lunch, and see where the evening goes. Anticipation is doing most of the work in this version, and for a lot of people that is the version that actually lands.

As part of a longer game night

It sits well alongside the others. If you want to build a whole evening, our full list of bedroom games for couples has fourteen more, and the role-play ideas are a natural next step if the story-telling dares land well.

If it does not go well

Sometimes this falls flat, and it is usually one of three things.

One of you is passing on nearly everything. That is not a problem with the game. If saying what you want feels genuinely unsafe, the game will not fix it and may make it worse. Talking about sex when you were raised not to is the more useful place to start.

It turned into a negotiation. If a dare gets treated as a promise for later, the whole thing collapses back into the pattern it was supposed to interrupt. Nothing in the game is owed. That is the point of it.

Somebody said yes without meaning it. Worth catching early, because a marriage where yes has stopped being freely given has a bigger thing going on. I have written about what happens when yes becomes duty and it applies here as much as anywhere.

And if none of this is landing because desire itself is not showing up, that is a different conversation. Most people are responsive rather than spontaneous, which means the game is not supposed to find desire already there. It is supposed to be the warmth that starts it.

The short version

Take out the audience, make passing free, and truth or dare stops being a party game and becomes one of the more efficient ways I know for two married people to tell each other something true.

Start at level one even if you think you are past it. And keep the truths, because in ten years those are the part you will remember.

Truth or Dare for Couples: Common Questions

Keep going

• 15 fun and sexy bedroom games for couples · the wider list this belongs to
• 29 spicy questions to ask your spouse · more truths, ready to go
• 69 sexy interview questions · a full date night, heavy on would-you-rather
• 20 fun things to try in the bedroom · if the dares gave you ideas
• Make a sexy bucket list · turn the things you both said yes to into a plan
• Podcast 206: yes, no and maybe · the conversation that makes a list like this safe to play
• Intimacy without sex · for the nights the answer is not sex
• How to spice up your sex life · the wider guide

And if you would rather not write out ninety cards by hand, the Intimately Us app has truth or dare and a library of other games built in, sorted by comfort level so you can set the temperature before you start.

If the truths in this game keep surfacing things the two of you cannot quite work through on your own, that is exactly what our Next Level program is built for.