A 34-item relationship reflection inspired by Caryl Rusbult's Investment Model of commitment, which holds that whether people stay is shaped by three forces — how satisfied they feel, how poor or rich their alternatives look, and how much they have already invested — plus a fourth dimension this version tracks closely: respect and emotional safety. Items are deliberately concrete and anchored to real moments rather than abstract feelings, so the result reflects how your relationship actually runs day to day, not how you wish it looked or fear it might be. The aim is to separate the reasons you want to be here from the reasons you feel you cannot leave. This is an educational tool for self-reflection, not a diagnosis, a verdict, or advice to stay or go — only you can make that decision, ideally with people who know your full situation. If any item raises concern about your safety, please reach out to a domestic violence hotline or a trusted professional.
Your result is broken down across 4 distinct dimensions rather than collapsing everything into a single number. Each dimension is scored from its own set of items, so you can see which specific pattern is driving your overall result.
Scores fall into one of 5 interpretive bands. Here is what each one means, what tends to sit underneath it, and what usually helps.
Held by Fear, Not Love
On the dimensions that matter most — satisfaction and respect — your relationship is running low, and what's holding you here reads as fear of loss more than genuine connection.
What it suggests
Your answers point to what researchers call a non-voluntary relationship: low satisfaction and concerning signals around respect and safety, held together mostly by what you'd lose rather than what you have. Walking on eggshells, shrinking to avoid a reaction, feeling more at ease when your partner is gone, or staying largely because leaving feels impossible — these are exactly the patterns the Investment Model warns can keep a person in a relationship that quietly wears them down. This result does not tell you to leave, and it cannot see the full picture of your life. What it does say is that the reasons you're staying deserve an honest, supported look.
What helps
If any answer touched fear, control, or being demeaned, treat that as the headline, not a footnote: reach out to a domestic violence hotline (in the US, the National DV Hotline at 1-800-799-7233) or a trusted professional who can help you think and plan safely. Tell at least one person outside the relationship the real details — isolation tends to make a harmful situation feel more normal than it is. You don't have to decide anything today; the only task right now is to get clear-eyed support around you.
Running on Sunk Costs
What keeps you here looks more like history, logistics, and dread of the unknown than present-day happiness.
What it suggests
Your profile suggests the threads tying you to this relationship — years invested, entangled lives, fear of starting over — are carrying more weight than satisfaction or respect. In Investment Model terms, your commitment is propped up by high barriers and thin alternatives rather than by feeling genuinely well-loved. That's a deeply human place to be, but it's worth naming plainly: 'I've put too much in to leave now' is the logic of a sunk cost, and the years already spent can't be recovered by spending more of them unhappily. The real question isn't what you'd lose by leaving — it's whether the relationship as it actually is can become one you'd choose on purpose.
What helps
Try pulling apart two questions you may be answering as one: 'Is this relationship good for me?' and 'Could I survive leaving it?' Notice if nearly all your reasons to stay are answers to the second. Consider individual or couples therapy as a real experiment with a deadline, not an open-ended holding pattern, so you can see whether anything genuinely shifts. Quietly rebuilding your own footing — finances, friendships, a sense of who you are alone — shrinks the fear that may be doing the deciding for you.
Genuinely Torn
You're sitting in real ambivalence — meaningful good and meaningful strain — with no clear verdict in either direction.
What it suggests
Your scores land in the middle because your relationship genuinely is mixed, not because you were indecisive answering. There's real connection and real investment here, alongside real friction or unmet needs, and the Investment Model would call your commitment contested rather than settled. This is the zone where the choice matters most, because it can tip either way depending on what you and your partner do next. Ambivalence isn't a personal failing; it's information. The quiet danger is staying frozen in it for years, letting indecision slowly become the decision.
What helps
Look at which subscale pulled your score down — satisfaction, respect and safety, or a heavy reliance on investment and barriers — because the lever is different for each. Name one or two concrete changes that would move you toward 'glad I stayed,' say them clearly to your partner, and give it a defined window to see real movement rather than promises. If you keep circling the same questions alone in your head, a couples therapist can turn the private loop into an actual conversation.
Solid With Soft Spots
The foundation reads as strong — real satisfaction and respect — with a few specific areas worth tending.
What it suggests
Across satisfaction, investment, and respect, your relationship sits in genuinely healthy territory: you'd probably tell a friend in your shoes that they have something good. What kept you out of the top band is usually one cluster — a thinner patch in affection, in being heard, or in feeling fully free to be yourself — rather than a structural problem. In the Investment Model, this is a relationship held together by attraction and mutual respect, not just by barriers, which is the kind most likely to last well. The soft spots aren't alarms so much as the ordinary maintenance every long relationship needs.
What helps
Find the one area that scored lowest for you and treat it as a shared project rather than an accusation — most soft spots respond to a direct, low-stakes conversation long before they harden. Keep investing in what clearly works: the rituals, the protected time, the small repairs after conflict that already seem to happen. A periodic check-in — even a yearly 'how are we really doing?' — keeps a relationship like this from drifting without anyone noticing.
Chosen, Not Just Kept
Across the board, you appear to stay because you actively want to — not out of fear, habit, or having nowhere else to go.
What it suggests
Your answers show the healthiest pattern in the Investment Model: high satisfaction and strong respect, with commitment driven by genuine pull rather than by feeling trapped by what you'd lose. Notably, even where you have real alternatives and could picture a full life on your own, you still choose this relationship — which is the most meaningful kind of staying there is. That doesn't mean it's effortless or conflict-free; it means a foundation of mutual respect, safety, and satisfaction is doing the heavy lifting. People in this band tend to feel like themselves inside the relationship, not a smaller, more careful version of themselves.
What helps
Keep doing the unglamorous things that got you here — repairing after fights, guarding time together, letting each other stay fully autonomous people. Don't read a strong result as permission to stop paying attention; relationships that stay this healthy are usually the ones that keep checking in rather than assuming they're finished. And when it fits, say out loud to your partner what specifically makes you choose them — that kind of named appreciation is part of what keeps a chosen relationship chosen.
Should I Stay or Leave? contains 34 items and takes about 9 minutes. Responses are combined using a subscale weighted method across the dimensions listed above, then mapped to the interpretive bands above. Your percentile is an interim estimate that sharpens as more people take the test, and is labelled as provisional in your result.
This assessment also includes hidden validity items that detect inattentive or socially-desirable answering. When they trigger, your result carries a lowered confidence rating and we tell you — rather than presenting a skewed score as fact.
The test ships in 10 parallel forms that rotate between takes, so repeat visitors do not simply memorise the same items.
This is an educational, self-reflective assessment — not a diagnosis. A questionnaire can describe a pattern and point you toward language for it, but it cannot account for your history, context, or circumstances, and it is not a substitute for evaluation by a qualified professional. If a result concerns you, treat it as a reason to talk to someone rather than as a verdict.
Your answers are scored on your device. Taking this test requires no account, no email address, and no payment, and your full result — every band, every dimension — is shown to you immediately and in full.