The Climate for Love - Intimacy I.Q.

This Intimacy Quiz is designed to help you and your partner assess attitudes, behaviors, and skills necessary to sustain an intimate relationship. As you review and discuss these questions, you and your partner may discover strengths and weaknesses. These questions can stimulate dialogue and help you to uncover areas in which further growth may be needed.

Dialoguing — expressing thoughts and feelings while responsively listening to what the other thinks and feels — is an essential skill in creating and maintaining healthy loving relationships.

Rate yourself and your partner on a scale of 1 to 4 :

1 = very seldom
2 = occasionally
3 = often
4 = nearly always

1. Do you find ways to encourage, strengthen, and preserve the natural abilities of your inner child?

2. Do you recognize happiness as it is happening?

3. Do you initiate, encourage, and look for opportunities for fun and spontaneous play?

4. In looking back over the last week, do you find that you have experienced happy moments scattered among the practical aspects of living?

5. Do you value silliness and spontaneous behavior in yourself and in others?

6. Do you trust your lover’s reactions so that you can allow yourself to be spontaneous and playful?

7. How often do you allow yourself to have fun, act spontaneously, and try new things?

8. How often do you share your interests and curiosity with your lover?

9. Do you feel that your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are in harmony with living happily?

10. Do you take responsibility for your own happiness and acknowledge that your lover is responsible for his/her happiness?

Any score of 1 or 2 may be an indication of a breakdown in intimacy. Scores of 3 and 4 are signs of doing well at developing the Climate for Love. If you are sharing your scores with your partner and there is a discrepancy in the scores that you have given each other, use this as an opportunity to explore this area of intimate behavior. Dialoguing about your discrepancies sometimes can be helpful in seeing yourself more clearly.