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TRIANGULAR LOVE SCALE · TLS-15

Free Love Triangle Test

Sternberg's three components of love — intimacy, passion, and commitment — measured for one relationship. No love score, no compatibility percentage: you get the shape of your triangle and the type it maps to.

What the Triangular Love Scale measures

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 useful move in Sternberg's model is treating love as three things rather than one. "Do you love them?" is a question with one answer and very little information in it. "Which of closeness, romance, and commitment is currently carrying this relationship?" is a question two people can actually discuss, and they will often give different answers.

The three components

Intimacy

· Closeness

Warmth, emotional support, and the sense of being understood — the part of love that feels like being known.

Passion

· Spark

Romance, physical attraction, and the pull toward the other person — the part of love that feels like wanting.

Commitment

· Staying

The decision that you love this person and the intention to keep the relationship — the part of love that is a choice rather than a feeling.

The eight kinds of love

Sternberg names eight kinds of love by which of the three components are present. Seven of them can come out of this test; the eighth, nonlove, describes the absence of all three and cannot be produced here for a reason explained below.

Liking

INTIMACY

Closeness leads, clearly ahead of romance and of the decision to stay. Sternberg's term for this corner is liking — not a lesser love, but friendship's shape: warmth and understanding without much pull or much permanence.

Infatuated love

PASSION

Romance and attraction lead, ahead of both closeness and commitment. Sternberg calls this infatuation: intense, and not yet built on much knowing or much deciding.

Empty love

COMMITMENT

The decision to stay leads, ahead of both closeness and romance. Sternberg's name for this corner is empty love — a relationship held by commitment more than by feeling.

Romantic love

INTIMACY + PASSION

Closeness and romance both lead, ahead of the decision to stay. Sternberg calls this romantic love: knowing each other and wanting each other, without permanence being settled.

Companionate love

INTIMACY + COMMITMENT

Closeness and the decision to stay both lead, ahead of romance. Sternberg calls this companionate love — the shape long marriages and the deepest friendships tend to take.

Fatuous love

PASSION + COMMITMENT

Romance and the decision to stay both lead, ahead of closeness. Sternberg calls this fatuous love: a commitment made on the strength of feeling, before much knowing.

Consummate love

INTIMACY + PASSION + COMMITMENT

All three corners are within a few points of each other — closeness, romance, and the decision to stay, in balance. Sternberg calls this consummate love, and describes it as easier to reach than to hold.

Why there is no compatibility score

Most love tests online end in a percentage. This one does not, and the reason is not modesty. The scale asks one person about one relationship on one day. Turning that into a compatibility figure would need norms this instrument does not have, and a validated model for combining two people's answers that does not exist in the literature at all. A number produced without those is a number somebody made up.

What you get instead is the shape of your own triangle: which corner leads, which trails, and how far apart they sit. If your partner takes it separately, comparing the two shapes is far more informative than any match percentage — particularly when you disagree about which corner is trailing, which happens often and is usually the most useful thing either of you learns.

How the type is derived, and why it matters

Sternberg defines the eight types by which components are present, but he never published a number for where present begins, and the TLS-15 has no norms. Rather than invent a threshold and present it as the instrument's, this test derives the type from your three scores relative to each other: a corner defines your triangle when it sits within 10 points of your own highest corner.

Two consequences follow, and both are stated on the result page rather than buried. A balanced triangle comes out as consummate love whether it is a high balanced triangle or a low one — the label describes shape, not height. And nonlove cannot appear, because with a within-person rule there is always a leading corner.

Why the 15-item version

Sternberg's original scale has 45 items, and those items are not openly published — implementing them would mean assembling a scale from secondary sources that nobody could check against the original. The TLS-15 is a validated short form whose items appear verbatim in an open-access paper under a Creative Commons licence, validated across 37 languages on a sample of 60,311 people, with subscale reliabilities between .87 and .91. A shorter scale you can verify beats a longer one you cannot.

The limits worth knowing before you start

None of the fifteen items is reverse-worded, so agreeing strongly with all of them produces the maximum on every component, and nothing in the scale detects that. Scores also run high in ordinary samples: people answering questions about a partner they chose tend to agree with warm statements about them. Both are reasons to read the shape rather than the height.

It also cannot tell you whether a relationship is healthy or safe. Fifteen warm questions about how you feel toward a partner have nothing to say about coercion or control, and a relationship can score highly on all three components and still be one to leave. If that is the question you are bringing, this is the wrong instrument and a questionnaire is the wrong medium — talk to someone qualified.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Love triangle questions, answered

Is there a compatibility score or a match percentage?

No. This 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. What it gives you is the shape of your own triangle — which of the three components leads and which trails — which is a far better basis for a conversation than a percentage would be.

How is my love type worked out?

Sternberg names eight kinds of love by which of the three components are present, but he never published a cut-off for where 'present' begins, and this scale has no norms. So the type here is derived from your three scores relative to each other: a component defines your triangle when it sits within 10 points of your own highest component. It describes the shape of your answers, not your standing against other people — which also means a low balanced triangle and a high balanced one both come out as consummate love.

Why does my type have an unflattering name?

Several of Sternberg's terms — empty love, fatuous love, infatuation — sound like judgements and are not meant as them. They are shorthand for which components lead. 'Empty love' means commitment scored above intimacy and passion, which 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 you which, and neither can the label.

Why only 15 questions instead of Sternberg's 45?

Because the 15-item version is the one that can be implemented honestly. The TLS-15 is published open access under a Creative Commons licence, so its items can be reproduced verbatim and checked against the source; the full 45 items are not openly available, and reconstructing them from secondary sources would mean shipping a scale nobody could verify. The short form was validated in 37 languages on more than sixty thousand people, with subscale reliabilities between .87 and .91.

Can I get a high score just by agreeing with everything?

Yes. None of the fifteen items is reverse-worded, so agreeing strongly with all of them maxes out all three components, and nothing in the scale detects that. Scores also run high in ordinary samples — people answering questions about a partner they chose tend to agree with warm statements about them. That is one of the reasons this test reports the shape of your triangle rather than its height.

Can this tell me whether my relationship is healthy?

No, and it is important to be clear about that. The scale asks fifteen warm questions about how you feel toward a partner. It has nothing to say about coercion, control, or abuse, and a relationship can score highly on all three components and still be unsafe. If that is the question you are bringing to it, a questionnaire is the wrong instrument — talk to someone qualified.

Should my partner take it too?

That is the most useful way to use it, with one condition: take it separately, without seeing each other's answers first. The interesting output is not whose scores are higher — it is whether you agree about which corner of the triangle is trailing. Two people frequently read the same relationship as two different shapes, and that disagreement is more informative than either result.

SOURCES

Where this test comes from

  1. [1]
    Kowal, M., Sorokowski, P., Dinić, B. M., et al. (2024). Validation of the Short Version (TLS-15) of the Triangular Love Scale (TLS-45) across 37 Languages. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 53(2), 839–857. ↗

    The source of the 15 items used here, reproduced verbatim, and of the 5-point response format. Published open access under CC BY 4.0, which is why this short form was implemented rather than the original 45-item scale — the items can be checked against the source. Subscale reliabilities in the validation sample (N = 60,311) were .88 for intimacy, .87 for passion, and .91 for commitment.

  2. [2]
    Sternberg, R. J. (1997). Construct validation of a triangular love scale. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27(3), 313–335. ↗

    The original 45-item scale the TLS-15 is drawn from, and the source of the three-component structure. The full 45 items are not openly published, which is why this site administers the validated short form instead of reconstructing the long one from secondary sources.

  3. [3]
    Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135. ↗

    The theory behind the scale, and the source of the eight kinds of love — liking, infatuation, empty, romantic, companionate, fatuous, consummate, and nonlove — named on the result page. Sternberg defines the eight by which components are present, without specifying a numerical threshold; how this test derives the type from your own three scores is stated on the result page.