Frequently Asked Questions

Is this quiz really free?

Yes. The 20-question quiz, all ten revival exercises, and the content guides are free with no email required. The only thing that costs you an account is the dashboard — tracking your score over time and using couples mode. We mention this directly because most "free quiz" sites turn out to be lead-capture engines that drip-email you for weeks. We don't do that. The free tier is the actual product.

Will my answers be private?

Anonymous quiz attempts attach to your browser session, not to a profile. If you sign up later, your attempts move to your account. If you never sign up, they're not associated with anyone. We do not sell data to third parties. We do not share your individual answers with any partner, advertiser, or research group. If you've used a free mental-health screening tool before and felt unsure where the data went, it is reasonable to apply the same skepticism here — and it is also reasonable to keep your account or stay anonymous, depending on what you want.

Is this a substitute for therapy?

No, and we say this without qualification. The quiz is a self-administered diagnostic, not a clinical instrument. If your score is in the Critical or Struggling band, working with a licensed therapist is the next step. The Psychology Today directory is the fastest way to find a clinician in most regions of the United States; the equivalent local directory in your country is the right starting point elsewhere. If cost is an issue, Open Path Collective is a U.S. nonprofit network of licensed therapists who see clients at substantially reduced fees, often forty to seventy dollars per session.

How is the score calculated?

Four sub-scores — communication, intimacy, shared goals, conflict patterns — drawn from items derived from published relationship-science instruments. The Gottman-derived items reflect his research on the Four Horsemen and repair attempts. The Relationship Assessment Scale items provide a satisfaction baseline. Attachment-style items reflect the adult-attachment research literature that Sue Johnson, Phillip Shaver, and others have developed since the late 1980s. Each item is rated 1-5; sub-scores combine into a single 0-100 figure mapped to one of five bands.

The scoring is not a clinical instrument and should not be used as one. It is a useful self-assessment tool that surfaces patterns worth attending to. The score points you toward exercises and reading; it does not diagnose anything.

Can my partner take it too?

Yes. Sign in and use Couples mode under your dashboard — it produces a one-time invite code your partner uses to link accounts, after which both scores show side-by-side. Neither of you can see the other's individual answers. This design is deliberate. The point of comparison is the score and the pattern, not the specific answers. Partners sometimes use granular answers as ammunition; the design removes that option and keeps the comparison productive.

A practical note: most couples find it more useful to take the quiz at a similar time, in similar conditions, with similar honesty. Taking the quiz right after a fight produces different scores than taking it on a calm Sunday morning. Two attempts a few days apart, ideally during a neutral period, tend to give a more representative reading than a single charged attempt.

Why no ads while I'm taking the quiz?

The diagnostic flow is the product. Ads appear on articles and reading pages, and only after you've accepted cookies — never on the quiz form itself or the results screen. This is partly an editorial choice and partly a practical one. Ads during the quiz would compete for the attention the quiz requires to be useful, and would interfere with honest answering. We would rather have a smaller revenue surface that preserves the quality of the diagnostic than a larger one that degrades it.

What if my score keeps coming out worse than I expect?

A consistent low score that does not match your subjective sense of the relationship is information worth examining. Several common explanations: you are in a difficult life period and the relationship is absorbing the strain rather than being the source of it; your subjective sense of the relationship is more optimistic than the underlying patterns warrant; the items are measuring something the relationship has actually changed away from over time.

In any of these cases, the right next step is usually a conversation with a partner who has also taken the quiz, ideally in couples mode, and then a conversation about what each of you sees in the comparison. Sometimes the quiz produces the entry point for a conversation that has been deferred for a long time. That is one of its more valuable functions.

What if my partner refuses to take the quiz?

This happens often enough that it deserves a direct answer. A partner who refuses to engage with even a casual self-assessment is, often, a partner whose engagement with the relationship's difficulties is broader than the refusal of the quiz suggests. Pressing them on the quiz specifically is rarely productive. The more useful conversation is about the broader pattern — what their engagement with the relationship's harder questions looks like in general, what they are willing to do, what they are not.

If you do this conversation honestly and discover that the answer is "not very much," that is a real piece of information about your situation. Many people in long relationships have not directly tested their partner's willingness to do the work. The test is sobering when it produces a clear answer. It is also useful, because it lets you make decisions based on accurate data rather than on the hope that willingness exists when it does not.

How accurate is the band labeling?

The bands are descriptive groupings, not clinical diagnoses. A Critical band means the score is in the lower range and the patterns it measures are likely producing substantial distress. It does not mean your relationship is doomed. A Thriving band means the score is in the upper range and the patterns are healthy. It does not mean you should stop attending to the relationship.

Treat the bands as orientation rather than as verdict. Both critically scored relationships that improved into healthy ranges and thriving-scored relationships that drifted into struggling ranges exist. The trajectory matters more than any single reading. This is one of the reasons we recommend taking the quiz periodically — every several months — rather than once. Trends are more informative than single data points.

Where does the content on the site come from?

The exercises, articles, and reading list are written by editorial staff drawing on published clinical work. The research-cited articles name specific researchers and studies; the named references — Sue Johnson, John Gottman, Esther Perel, Arthur Aron, Wendy Troxel, and others — point to real published work that interested readers can locate. We do not invent research citations. When we describe a finding, the finding exists in the literature; we may simplify the nuance for accessibility, but we do not fabricate.

The reading list links to Bookshop.org under our affiliate ID. We earn a small commission if you purchase through those links. Bookshop.org itself supports independent bookstores rather than amazon, which is why we use it rather than other options.

I have feedback or noticed an error. Who do I tell?

We have a contact form linked from the footer and a feedback email addressed to feedback@stale.love. Real responses come from a real person, usually within a few business days. We particularly want to hear about content errors, broken pages, accessibility issues, or suggestions for exercises or articles. We do not provide individual relationship advice over email — the right resource for that is a licensed therapist, not a quiz site — but we read every message that arrives.