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 give priority to doing things that nurture you as an individual?

2. Are you willing to negotiate changes in plans to accommodate your partner?

3. Are your partner’s personal aspirations more important to you than your own aspirations for your partner?

4. Do you take the initiative to plan quality time with your partner?

5. Are you willing to find ways to change unloving behavior (a hot temper, blaming, being emotionally unavailable, etc.).

6. Do you share your dreams and fantasies with your partner?

7. Do you help your partner to see himself or herself with more clarity and without imposing your in-terpretations?

8. Do you support your partner in his or her ability to love others?

9. Are you willing to play the Nutty Treasure Hunt with your partner?

Are you willing to go along with spontaneous or even silly ideas that your partner might have? (Such as having a banana squished on your forehead.)

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.