Dr. Hindy now practices part-time in the NH Seacoast area in his retirement (Exeter, NH). Please check his office Outgoing Voice Message for whether he is accepting new clients at this time: (603) 880-8773. Please direct all business and records inquiries to: Carl Hindy, Ph.D., PO Box 212, Newmarket, NH 03857. Requests should be signed and include contact information for verification and clarification purposes. Thank-you.

 

 

 

 

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Love Quiz: Take The Online Love Test!

While taking this online love quiz...

During this love quiz think of a romantic relationship that is or was, especially important to you. Better yet, think of three or four people to whom you have been strongly attracted or with whom you have felt emotionally involved. These can be people you dated for a long time or only briefly, or even just felt infatuated with -- as long as the person meant a lot to you at the time. For each of these relationships or romantic interests (called A to D), place a number from 0 to 8 in the space beside each statement in the love quiz to indicate how true that statement was for in that relationship. (Mentally fill in the blank in each sentence with the name of the particular partner you are thinking of.) The higher the number, the more true the statement. That is, 0 means "not at all true; it didn't happen that way," while 8 means "definitely true; that's just the way it was."

 

 

5. As a girlfriend/boyfriend, _____ was certainly temperamental.

______ ______ ______ ______

6. "Uncertain" is a word that well captures the nature of my relationship with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

7. I often felt that I was giving more that I was receiving in my relationship with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

8. _____ made me both very happy and very sad.

______ ______ ______ ______
9. It annoyed me when _____ seemed unsure of her/his feelings for me. ______ ______ ______ ______
10. I knew that _____ didn't care for me as much as I had hoped s/he would, but I couldn't accept it. ______ ______ ______ ______
11. Things might have worked out better if _____'s feelings were as strong as mine were. ______ ______ ______ ______
12. _____ Said or implied that s/he felt "suffocated" by the attention and affection I was giving him/her. ______ ______ ______ ______
13. I was unable really to believe in _____'s feelings for me. ______ ______ ______ ______

continued

The statements in this love quiz express one major component of the experience of insecure love, romantic anxiety. It consists of feelings of uncertainty and fear, and a sense that you are never on sure ground with your lover. A person who scores high on romantic anxiety will go through tumultuous feelings and sharp mood swings in the course of the relationship, often alternating between the heights of euphoria and the depths of despair. If you wrote in high numbers like 6, 7, or 8 for many of the love quiz questions concerning just one relationship, there may have been something about that person or that relationship that made you anxious. But if you have a lot of 6s, 7s, and 8s or several partners, then it seems likely that you regularly feel anxious about intimate relationships.

Now here is another set of love quiz statements that focus on a different aspect of the experience. Fill these out the same way for each of the same partners.

  PARTNER (WRITE IN NAMES)

STATEMENT

(For Example)

A

(Mary)

B

(Sam)

C

(Linda)

D

(Mike)

14. I felt that if _____ rejected me, I might never get over it.

______ ______ ______ ______

15. I spend much time analyzing my relationship with _____, weighing it in my mind.

______ ______ ______ ______

16. While I was dating _____, I had little desire to see other women/men.

______ ______ ______ ______

17. From the beginning, I was eager to see _____ almost every day.

______ ______ ______ ______

18. I would often lie awake at night thinking about being with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

19. After just a few dates, I felt that I might be in love with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

20. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about love, romance, and sex with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

21. The ending of my relationship with _____ was long and drawn out, rather than sudden.

______ ______ ______ ______
22. When my relationship with _____ was definitely over, I felt that I had "hung on" too long. ______ ______ ______ ______
23. During my relationship with _____, my friends and work (or schoolwork) got much less attention. ______ ______ ______ ______
24. "Exciting" is a word that captures the nature of my relationship with _____. ______ ______ ______ ______
25. I wanted to spend more and more time with _____, feeling that I just couldn't see her/him often enough. ______ ______ ______ ______
26. I felt preoccupied with feelings about _____. ______ ______ ______ ______
27. _____ and I talked very frequently about our relationship. ______ ______ ______ ______

continued

These love quiz statements fill in the other half of the picture of insecure love, the part that we call romantic obsession. This is a consuming preoccupation with the object of your love, even to the neglect of the other people, interests, and responsibilities that make up your life. As with the first group of love test statements, high scores (6,7,8) on many of these items for just one relationship may mean only that you lost your head in the grip of an unusually strong passion. But high scores on several relationships suggest that you may have a habit of losing yourself in passionate involvement's.

Romantic anxiety and obsession go together; each contributes to making the other what we observe it to be. In the presence of anxiety, attachment can turn into obsession, and with a passionate obsessive attachment, there is often the fear of losing or failing to gain a relationship. It can be useful to look at anxiety and obsession separately because some people feel one more strongly than the other. But most often it is the same people who experience both to some degree. If you are anxious in love, you are likely to be obsessed, and vice versa. Therefore, we will speak mainly of insecure love as a total experience consisting of both anxiety and obsession. Statements illustrating the general phenomenon of insecure love are listed below.

  PARTNER (WRITE IN NAMES)

STATEMENT

(For Example)

A

(Mary)

B

(Sam)

C

(Linda)

D

(Mike)

28. I made a bold attempt to win _____'s favor.

______ ______ ______ ______

29. My feelings for _____ seemed to grow stronger when s/he expressed uncertainty about our relationship.

______ ______ ______ ______

30. I am not usually as "moody" as I was during my relationship with _____.

______ ______ ______ ______

31. I was afraid that ____ would stop loving me.

______ ______ ______ ______

32. I saw "warning signs" of trouble in my relationship with _____ but tried to ignore them.

______ ______ ______ ______

33. I felt an aching of the "heart" (a region in the center front of the chest) when I wasn't sure how _____ felt about me.

______ ______ ______ ______

When we looked at how people answered them, we found that these six love test questions did not fit in specifically with either the anxiety statements or the obsession statements. Instead, they fit in about equally well with both groups, because they aren't about anxiety or obsession in isolation. Rather, they describe an experience of anxious attachment, or insecure love, that includes both components. So if you or your spouse or lover scores high on many of these six statements plus the twenty-seven that preceded them, you may be especially interested in what insecure love is, how it comes about, and what you can do about it.

Having answered these thirty-three items, you have taken the key portion of the Hindy Anxious Attachment Test, the same questionnaire that hundreds of experimental subjects have answered. We believe that this survey is the best test psychologists have yet devised for capturing what poets, playwrights, and novelists for thousands of years have called lovesickness and what in this book is called insecure romantic or anxious romantic attachment.

 

Dr. Hindy is co-author of

"If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure?"
Learn more about his approach to couples counseling in the book!
Fawcett Crest / Ballantine
448 pages

Paper: $7.99  |  Kindle: $5.99

Available at all major book sellers, including:


Buy It Online!

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Buy it Online!

Ask About: "If This Is Love, Why Do I Feel So Insecure?"

 

~ Carl G. Hindy, Ph.D. ~
Exeter, New Hampshire (603) 880-8773

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