Answer These 15 Yes or No Questions to Help Assess the State of Your Relationship
It’s really easy to judge other people’s relationships. In fact, we may not even be aware when we do this. But when you spend time with a couple, their dynamics usually becomes apparent relatively quickly, to the point where you might think you can pinpoint their specific concerns.
But do it in our own relationship? Not so much. It is difficult to assess the state of a relationship when you are part of it for many reasons, including the fact that you do not have enough distance to notice both the good and the bad. So, based on existing research, psychologist Dr. Gary Lewandowski Jr. compiled a set of 15 questions to help people evaluate and understand their relationships, which he published as part of an article for Psychology Today . Here’s what you need to know.
Research questions
In addition to his own discoveries about the science behind romance, Lewandowski based his set of 15 yes-or-no questions on the Keltner List , developed by baseball statistician Bill James, as a way of judging which baseball players are the most viable players. Glory candidates.
This may not sound like the most appropriate starting material for a romantic relationship assessment tool, but here’s how Lewandowski explains it in an article in Psychology Today :
Although James is a statistician, his Keltner list is deliberately unscientific. This is a collection of 15 questions that anyone can quickly answer to help in the overall assessment of a player’s worth for the Hall. (Example: “ Was he the best player on his team? ”). The answers are not intended to be definitive, but rather to force a close look at the most important information.
Likewise, Lewandowski’s list of 15 questions, each based on existing research on romantic relationships, was designed to highlight what is most important to serious, long-term, and enduring love.
Keltner’s list for relationships
To use the Lewandowski tool, he says, it is important to answer yes or no questions correctly, such as, “Does your partner make you better, and are you doing the same for them?” and “Are you and your partner comfortable sharing feelings, relying on each other, being close, and not worrying about the other person leaving?” Some are simpler, like whether you and your partner are best friends, while others might make you stop for a moment, like whether you and your partner really accept each other without trying to change the other person. You can find a complete list of questions in his article here .
Assessing answers to relationship questions
This is not the case when you get the final results by counting the number of yes and no answers. Instead, Lewandowski says that the purpose of the exercise is to gain insight into not only what is not working in your relationship, but what is working as well. In his article for Psychology Today, he explains :
These questions are a self-guided tour of what relationship science knows what matters in relationships are the green flags of relationships. In other words, the best answer to every question is a quick, definite and unconditional yes. If any question got you thinking, or lead you to an explicit “no,” this is an area that needs attention and improvement.
Of course, it’s impossible to predict the future of a relationship – there are too many other potential variables, some of which are unexpected. But the goal here is to better understand how and why your relationship works (or doesn’t work).
This story was originally published on July 18, 2021 and updated on July 19, 2021 to summarize the list of questions.