Determine Your Level of Relationship Satisfaction

Take this quiz to determine how satisfied you are in your intimate relationship.  For each of the 16 relationship traits listed below, rate each trait from the following two scales.

SATISFACTION SCALE:  How satisfied are you with each of these aspects of your relationship?  5: Enthusiastic—it couldn’t be any better  4:  Quite satisfied  3:  It’s all right, I guess—I can’t complain   2:  A little disappointed—it could be better  1:  Really disappointed—not what I expected

IMPORTANCE SCALE:  How important to your relationship is each of these?

6:  Absolutely essential  5:  Extremely important  4:  Very important  3:  Moderately important  2:  Slightly important   1:  Not at all important 

RELATIONSHIP TRAITS:  

1. Opportunity to raise children
2. Enjoying sexual relations with mate
3. Understanding by partner of your problems and feelings
4. Standard of living
5. Finding sex with your partner to be exciting
6. Expressions of love and affection by your partner
7. Household tasks which are done by partner
8. Having sexual relations as often as desired
9. Companionship/doing things with partner
10. Having sexual relations bound up with love and affection
11. Having fun with partner
12. Romantic experiences with partner
13. Being respected by partner
14. Having similar interests with partner
15. Being in love with partner
16. Self-confidence or self-esteem enhanced by partner

SCORING AND EVALUATION:  To evaluate your relationship Satisfaction Scale, add together your scores.  This is a measure of how well your relationship measures up to your hopes and expectations.  The higher your score, the more satisfied you are with your relationship.  A score of 32 or lower may be a sign that you want to find ways to improve your relationship.

The Importance Scale will spotlight your satisfaction with the aspects of a relationship you value the most.  To determine your score, find the questions for which your individual Importance answers were was 4, 5 or 6, and add together the Satisfaction scores for those items.

(A)     Total Satisfaction score for high-importance responses:  _____

(B)      Count up how many of your Importance scores were a 4 or higher.  Total ____

Now divide the number in (A) by the number in (B).  The answer should be between one and five.  The higher the number, the happier and more satisfied you will feel with the areas of your relationship that are most important to you.

Compare your most important items with those of your partner.  Identifying the items of greatest importance can guide you both to those aspects of your relationship that need attention.

Source:  “The Love Test” by Rutter and Schwartz (Perigee).