A Year of Us vs Questions for Couples Journal: Which One-Question Journal Is Better?

Glen and I have been married 31 years, and somewhere around year 24 we realized we mostly talked about logistics. Who was picking up the dry cleaning, when the gutters needed cleaning, whether we should rebook the cabin. The same argument about money and his long work weeks kept coming back, and I started to feel like we were roommates who happened to share a mortgage. So we started a Sunday-evening check-in at the kitchen table, and we worked through books and question decks together. Last year, we decided to try two one-question-a-day journals side by side: A Year of Us by Alicia Muñoz and the Questions for Couples Journal. I kept both on the table for twelve months, and this is the honest comparison.

The short answer: A Year of Us is the better daily companion for most couples. Its prompts are warmer, its layout gives you room to actually answer, and its tone assumes you are already on the same team. The Questions for Couples Journal is more direct and more practical, and it wins for couples who want structure, variety, and a nudge toward specific action. Here is how they actually differ after a year of using both.

Here is how we tested them. For the first two weeks of January we used both, one in the morning over coffee and one after dinner, and then we swapped which journal got which slot. After that we kept a simple tally on an index card tucked inside the back cover: which book we actually reached for on the nights we only had energy for one. That tally ended up being more honest than anything we said about the books out loud. By the end of March it was not close, but the nights the other journal won taught me as much as the nights it lost.

	A Year of Us (Alicia Muñoz)	Questions for Couples Journal
Daily prompt style	One open-ended question, warm and reflective, like 'What did you appreciate about me this week?'	One direct question, more practical and varied, often about routines, preferences, or a specific memory
Space to answer	A full page per day with a lined section and a small 'note to self' line	A smaller daily box, enough for a few sentences but not a long answer
Tone	Warm, tender, assumes you like each other and want to stay close	Neutral, sometimes clinical, reads a bit like a workbook
Variety of prompts	365 questions that cycle through appreciation, memory, dreams, and daily life	A wider mix including practical, playful, and occasional conflict-oriented questions
Best for	Couples who want a gentle daily ritual and room to write a real answer	Couples who want a faster, more structured check-in with more topic variety

Where A Year of Us Wins

A Year of Us wins on the daily experience. The prompts from Alicia Muñoz are written like someone who has been in a long marriage and knows that the small moments are the whole point. A question like 'What did you learn about me this year?' or 'What is something you are looking forward to doing together?' does not feel like homework. It feels like a hand reaching across the table. Glen, who is not a journal person and would never have bought this himself, actually started answering in full sentences instead of grunting and handing the book back.

The layout matters more than I expected. Each day gets a full page, so there is room to write more than a sentence. Some nights we wrote three or four lines each. On the nights when one of us was tired, we still wrote one honest line, and that was enough. The book also has a small 'note to self' line on each page, which sounds gimmicky but turned out to be the place where I wrote things like 'he remembered the good light for my reading chair' or 'ask him about the job site tomorrow.' Those tiny notes became a record of our year that neither of us expected to treasure.

The physical book matters too, more than I would have guessed. A Year of Us lies reasonably flat on the table once it has been opened a few dozen times, and the paper takes a regular ballpoint without bleeding through to the next day. That sounds like a small thing until you are trying to write an answer with a mug in one hand. Glen has big hands and terrible handwriting, and he never once complained that he ran out of room, which in our house counts as a strong review.

The first week was the hardest, and I want to be honest about that. On a Tuesday night in early January, Glen came home from a job site near Redmond, tired and quiet, and I had the journal open to a question about what we each wanted more of in the coming year. He stared at the page for a long time, then wrote one word: 'sleep.' I laughed, and he laughed, and then he wrote a second line about wanting us to take the canoe out more before the snow melted. That was the night I understood how the book works. It does not force a deep conversation. It just leaves the door open long enough for one to wander in.

The rhythm built slowly, and the small dates became the proof. By the end of February we had missed only four nights, and three of those were because Glen was camped out near Prineville on a job. On the nights we did it, the whole thing took about six minutes, which is less time than we used to spend scrolling our phones on the same couch. Around mid-March I noticed we were answering the question before either of us had even opened the book, because the prompt from the night before was still sitting in the room with us. That is when I stopped thinking of it as a product and started thinking of it as a place we go.

Where Questions for Couples Journal Wins

The Questions for Couples Journal wins on variety and directness. Its prompts are more practical and more varied. One day it asks about your favorite vacation, the next it asks about how you handle stress, and a few days later it asks something like 'What is one thing you would change about our routine?' That mix kept us on our toes, and it covered topics we would not have gotten to on our own, like how we each prefer to be comforted after a bad day. If you and your partner are the kind of people who like a clear question and a quick answer, this journal will feel more efficient.

It also wins for couples who want a faster check-in. The daily box is smaller, so you are not tempted to write an essay. Some nights we finished in three minutes. That is not a criticism. For a busy couple with young kids or demanding jobs, a three-minute question is more realistic than a full page. The journal also includes occasional prompts that nudge you toward action, like planning a date or talking about a recurring disagreement, which A Year of Us does less often. If you want your journal to push you toward change rather than just reflection, this one is the better tool.

Where it fell short for us was warmth. Some of its questions read like a form you fill out at a new doctor's office, and after 31 years of marriage a few of them landed with a thud. One evening the prompt asked something we had settled decades ago, and Glen read it out loud, looked at me over his glasses and said, "Well, that one's easy, it's still you." We laughed, which was nice, but we did not learn anything. Long-married couples may find more of those nights in the Questions journal than in A Year of Us.

The practical prompts earned their keep in a way I did not expect. In March, one of its questions asked us to describe a recent moment when we felt heard by the other person. Glen wrote about a Thursday when he came home from a long week of field work and I had dinner ready and the news turned off. I wrote about the morning he noticed I had been quiet for three days and asked, at the table, whether I was okay. We had both been carrying those small moments around without saying them out loud. The journal gave us a place to put them down. That is a real strength, and it is the reason I would not call either book the clear winner for every couple.

The directness also helped us on the nights when warm and reflective would have bounced off us. In May, after a stretch where Glen was working six days a week, the journal asked us to name one thing we each needed from the other over the next month. There was no room to be poetic about it. He wrote that he needed me to stop saving every disagreement for Sunday, and I wrote that I needed him to come home before dark at least twice a week. We hashed it out right there, and the conversation was uncomfortable for about ten minutes, then it was useful. A softer prompt might have let us dodge it. This one did not.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy A Year of Us if you want a gentle daily ritual with room to write a real answer. It is the better choice for couples who are already committed and just need a reason to talk about something other than logistics. It is also the better gift for a couple who are not naturally journal people, because the warm tone makes it easy to pick up. Buy the Questions for Couples Journal if you want more topic variety, a faster daily check-in, and prompts that occasionally push you toward action. Both are good journals. They just have different personalities, and after a year of using both, Glen and I know which one we reach for on a Sunday night.

Buy the Questions for Couples Journal if your evenings are short, if one of you dislikes writing more than a sentence, or if you are earlier in your relationship and still learning the basic facts about each other. It is also the safer pick if your partner tends to bristle at anything that feels like therapy homework, because its plainer questions feel lower stakes. If you are not sure which camp you are in, try a week of answering your partner's question out loud before either of you writes a word. If the conversation keeps going past the prompt, you want the warmer book. If it stops at the answer, the quicker one will probably get used more often.

For us, A Year of Us by Alicia Muñoz is the one that stayed on the kitchen table after the experiment ended. The Questions for Couples Journal went to the shelf, not because it is bad, but because its style suits a different season of a relationship. If you are in the season where you just need to hear each other again, start with A Year of Us. If you are in the season where you need to talk about something specific, the other journal will get you there faster.