Is it love if the spark has faded but you would still choose each other? Robert Sternberg's answer is that love is not one quantity but three separate components — and the shape they make says more than any single "love score."
Here is how the triangle works and how to use our triangular love test without turning it into a report card for your relationship.
The Triangular Love Scale measures love as three separate components rather than one quantity: intimacy (warmth, emotional support, being understood), passion (romance and attraction), and commitment (the decision to maintain the relationship). Robert Sternberg's model names eight kinds of love by which components are present. This test administers the TLS-15, a 15-item short form validated across 37 languages, and reports the three components separately for one specific relationship.
The three components
Sternberg names eight kinds of love by which components are present — from consummate love (all three) to empty love (commitment alone) and infatuation (passion alone).
- ✦Intimacy: warmth, emotional support, feeling understood.
- ✦Passion: romance and attraction.
- ✦Commitment: the decision to maintain the relationship.
Don't take the labels personally
Several of Sternberg's terms — empty love, fatuous love, infatuation — sound like judgements, and they are not meant as them. "Empty love" just means commitment scored above intimacy and passion. That is what a hard year, a new baby, or a long illness looks like on a questionnaire, as well as what a finished relationship looks like. The scale cannot tell which.
Why there is no compatibility percentage
The scale measures one person's view of one relationship, and there is no validated way to turn two people's answers into a compatibility number. Our test uses the TLS-15, a 15-item short form validated across 37 languages, and reports the shape of your triangle — which component leads and which trails — rather than its height.
That is partly because scores run high: no item is reverse-worded, and people answering about a partner they chose tend to agree with warm statements.
The best way to use it: separately, then together
Have your partner take it too, without seeing each other's answers first. The interesting part is not whose scores are higher, but whether you agree about which corner of the triangle is trailing. Two people often read the same relationship as two different shapes.
One important limit: the scale has nothing to say about control, coercion, or abuse. A relationship can score high on all three components and still be unsafe. If that is your question, talk to someone qualified.