How to ask a personal question without being offensive

Sometimes, you may want to ask someone a very personal question, but before that you want to make sure the other person is okay being asked about personal things. In situations like that, you may want to ask first: Can I ask you a personal question? So if the person says yes, which is probably what's going to happen since they'll be curious about the question, you can ask whatever you want.

I may also wanna say "you don't have to answer if you don't want to" just to assure the other person won't feel obliged to answer any question. If you're talking to a woman and you know how much of a stigma it is to ask women their age, you may wanna say first "If you don't mind my asking,... how old are you?". I know that might be very risky in the case you're flirting with the woman. So you might wanna apologize if she feels offended. So you say "Sorry If I seem too personal. I don't mean to be nosy". Those are things you can also say before you ask the personal question too. If it's a curiosity you have about the other person and you wanna ask them something, you can say: "just out of curiosity..." and then ask the personal question. As you can see it's very easy to be nosy. I hope this helped. Talk to you next time!