The Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS): How Satisfied Am I in My Relationship?

A free, confidential 7-question self-assessment that takes two to three minutes. The RAS is a brief, widely used measure of overall relationship satisfaction, and it is the quickest honest reading you can take of where things currently stand.

What it measures

Overall satisfaction, as a single score. Seven questions covering how well your partner meets your needs, how satisfied you are with the relationship, how it compares to what you expected, how often you wish you had not got into it, how far it has met your original hopes, how much you love your partner, and how many problems there are.

Scores on the RAS correlate closely with feelings of love, with commitment, and with the quality of communication between partners — which is why seven questions can tell you as much as they do.

Where the RAS comes from

The Relationship Assessment Scale was developed by Susan Hendrick and published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in 1988. It was designed as a generic measure that works across dating and married couples alike, and it has been one of the most widely used satisfaction measures in relationship research ever since.

Who it is for

Anyone in a relationship who wants a quick, honest reading. Dating, engaged, married, together forty years — the scale was built to work across all of them.

It is deliberately short, which makes it the easiest of our three couples assessments to actually complete on an ordinary evening. It is also the one people most often take twice, months apart, to see whether something has moved.

How it works

Seven questions, each on a scale of 1 to 5. The meaning of the two endpoints is shown under each question, because they change from one question to the next. Two to three minutes, answered privately, nothing timed.

Answer for how things generally are rather than for the last argument or the last good weekend. At the end you see your total out of 35 and a plain explanation of what it suggests. You can have a copy emailed to you, or sent to your therapist.

If you are doing this as a couple, take it separately. A gap between two partners' scores is one of the most useful things this assessment produces, and it disappears if you fill it in together.

What your score means

Scores run from 7 to 35, and a higher score means greater satisfaction.

A total of 7 to 14: low satisfaction

Significant dissatisfaction, with needs going unmet. A score here usually reflects something that has been building for a while rather than a bad fortnight, and it is the range where counselling most often makes a material difference.

It does not mean the relationship is finished. If you are unsure whether you want to work on it, discernment counselling is designed for precisely that position — to help you decide, rather than to talk you into staying.

A total of 15 to 21: average satisfaction

A mixed picture, with real satisfactions alongside real frustrations. This is where a great many couples sit, and it is easy to read as fine.

It is worth reading instead as the range where preventive work pays best. Couples who do something at this point rarely end up in the low range later; couples who wait until they are in the low range have considerably more to undo.

A total of 22 to 35: high satisfaction

Strong feelings of love and commitment, and communication that is working. That is worth noticing rather than assuming — a high score usually reflects things you are both actively doing, not luck, and knowing what they are makes them easier to keep doing.

How this fits with our other two assessments

We offer three, and they answer different questions.

The RAS gives you how satisfied — one number, two minutes. The Positive-Negative Relationship Quality Scale gives you the shape of it, by measuring the good and the difficult separately, which distinguishes a relationship that is passionate and volatile from one that is quiet and empty. The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale goes underneath both, at your attachment patterns, which is usually where the answer to why does this keep happening lives.

Start with this one. It takes two minutes and it will tell you whether the other two are worth your time.

What this assessment is not

This assessment is for informational and self-reflection purposes only. It is not a diagnostic tool and it does not replace professional advice.

Seven questions cannot see your history, your circumstances, or anything they did not ask about. A score is a starting point for a conversation — with your partner, or with someone else — and nothing more than that.

What to do next

If your score gives you pause, reach out and we will arrange a consultation, or meet our team first.

We work on communication, anger, sex and intimacy, affair recovery, grief, depression in a relationship, neurodiverse couples and premarital preparation. Where children are involved there is parenting, co-parenting, blended families and parallel parenting.

If weekly sessions feel too slow, there are couples intensives. You can also read the basics of couples therapy, browse all our self-discovery screeners, or look through our frequently asked questions.