Couples Science: The Six Assessments Behind Your True Self's Intimacy Tools

Your True Self runs six intimacy-focused assessments for couples, split across two tracks: four adapted from published, peer-reviewed instruments, and two adapted from clinical frameworks that were never formally validated as standalone measures. Here's what each one actually measures, where the evidence stops, and how to read your results without over-trusting them.

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The Short Answer

Couples who complete the assessment work through two distinct tracks, not one undifferentiated "sex quiz."

Couples Science (four instruments, each adapted from a published, peer-reviewed measure): Desire Profile, Intimacy Mix, Sexual Communication, and Sexual Satisfaction Snapshot.

Couples Exploratory (two instruments, adapted from clinical or practitioner frameworks with no published psychometric validation as standalone scales): Erotic Blueprint and the Four Horsemen Check.

Both tracks are useful. Neither substitutes for a sex therapist, and the exploratory track in particular should be read as a conversation prompt, not a diagnosis. The rest of this guide covers each instrument's source research, what it scores, and what it doesn't tell you.

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Track One: Couples Science

Desire Profile — Sexual Excitation and Inhibition (SIS/SES)

The Desire Profile is adapted from the Sexual Inhibition/Sexual Excitation Scales (SIS/SES), built on the Dual Control Model of sexual response developed at the Kinsey Institute (Bancroft & Janssen, 2000; scale construction in Janssen, Vorst, Finn, & Bancroft, 2002). The model's core claim, now widely replicated, is that arousal isn't a single dial running from "low libido" to "high libido." It's the output of two separate systems: one that accelerates arousal (sexual excitation), and one that brakes it (sexual inhibition). The two vary independently, and a person can have a strong accelerator and a strong brake at the same time.

Your True Self's version scores three scales that mirror the original factor structure: SES (excitation: how readily you're aroused by a broad range of cues), SIS1 (inhibition tied to fear of performance failure), and SIS2 (inhibition tied to fear of consequences: getting caught, pregnancy, judgment). From those three scores, the assessment derives a desire type: spontaneous (high accelerator, low brakes, desire that shows up before any context), responsive (desire that follows arousal rather than preceding it, or a strong brake that needs the right conditions to release), or mixed.

This matters for couples because desire-type mismatches, not desire-level mismatches, are a common source of "my partner doesn't want me as much as I want them" conflict. A spontaneous-desire partner interprets a responsive-desire partner's lack of unprompted interest as rejection. A responsive-desire partner interprets a spontaneous partner's frequent initiation as pressure. Neither read is accurate. They're running different operating systems, not different amounts of interest.

Intimacy Mix — Five Types of Closeness (PAIR)

Intimacy Mix is adapted from the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR), developed by Schaefer and Olson (1981) for use in marital therapy and enrichment settings. PAIR's contribution was showing that "intimacy" isn't one thing couples either have or lack. It splits into five measurable types: emotional (sharing feelings, being vulnerable), social (shared friends and belonging), sexual (physical closeness and affection), intellectual (sharing ideas), and recreational (shared fun and adventure).

The practical use case: a couple that feels "disconnected" often assumes the fix is more of everything. Intimacy Mix usually shows the gap is narrower and more specific than that. One partner scores their relationship as thin on intellectual intimacy while both partners rate emotional and sexual intimacy as strong. That's a very different conversation than "we've drifted apart," and it points to a specific fix: more idea-sharing, not more date nights in general.

Sexual Communication — Self-Disclosure, Positive Framing, Avoidance

This instrument draws on Mallory, Stanton, and Handy's (2019) meta-analysis of sexual communication research across 48 studies, which found that sexual communication quality predicts sexual function outcomes (desire, arousal, orgasm, and overall sexual satisfaction) more consistently than almost any other measured variable in the sexual health literature.

The assessment scores three components: self-disclosure (comfort naming your own preferences and needs out loud), positive communication (framing requests and feedback in ways that invite rather than shut down further conversation), and avoidance (deflecting, changing the subject, or going quiet when sexual topics come up, scored in reverse so a high score here means more avoidance). From those three, it derives an approach style: open, cautious, or avoidant.

Sexual communication is one of the more actionable results in the whole cluster, because unlike desire type or intimacy preference, communication style is a skill, not a fixed trait. Mallory et al.'s meta-analytic effect sizes were modest but consistent (r ≈ .12–.35 across outcomes). That's real, but not the kind of number that should be read as "fix your communication and every other problem resolves."

Sexual Satisfaction Snapshot (NSSS-S)

This is a short-form adaptation of the New Sexual Satisfaction Scale, developed and bi-culturally validated by Štulhofer, Buško, and Brouillard (2010) across more than 2,000 participants in Croatia and the United States. The original NSSS's finding, confirmed in the short form, is that satisfaction splits into two correlated but distinct components: self-centered satisfaction (your own arousal, pleasure, and physical experience) and partner-centered satisfaction (how responsive and engaged your partner is).

The assessment reports both subscales rather than collapsing them into one satisfaction score, and it's positioned in the product as a baseline check-in, a snapshot to revisit later rather than a one-time verdict. A couple with high self-centered but low partner-centered scores across both partners is looking at a specific, nameable gap (each partner is satisfied with their own experience but not convinced the other is fully present), which is a more useful starting point than "our sex life could be better."

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Track Two: Couples Exploratory

These two instruments are labeled differently in Your True Self's own scoring documentation, and worth quoting directly because the distinction matters for how you should weight the results: both are marked internally as not a clinical instrument and not published as a standalone validated psychometric measure.

Four Horsemen Check

Adapted from John Gottman's research on communication patterns that predict relationship breakdown: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling (Gottman, 1994). Gottman's original research came from decades of observational coding of couples in a lab setting ("the Love Lab"), not from a self-report questionnaire respondents fill out about themselves. The four patterns are well-established as predictive of relationship strain when observed directly by trained coders. What Your True Self offers is a self-report psychoeducational adaptation: 16 items across the four patterns, asking how often you recognize each behavior in your own conflict style.

The gap between "observed by a trained rater" and "self-reported" is real. People are inconsistent, and sometimes motivated, judges of their own contempt or defensiveness. The same blind spots that make these patterns damaging in the first place also make them harder to self-rate accurately. Treat a Four Horsemen result as a prompt for a specific conversation ("do you actually experience me as stonewalling when we argue?"), not as a lab-grade diagnosis.

Erotic Blueprint

Adapted from sexologist Jaiya's Erotic Blueprints framework (most recently published as Your Blueprint for Pleasure, 2023), which sorts erotic response into five types: energetic (aroused by anticipation and buildup), sensual (full sensory experience), sexual (direct physical arousal), kinky (taboo and psychological intensity), and shapeshifter (a mix that shifts by context).

This is the instrument furthest from peer-reviewed psychometrics in the entire cluster. It's a practitioner-developed typology with no published validation study establishing reliability or construct validity as of this writing. That doesn't make it useless: practitioner frameworks built from years of client-facing pattern recognition can surface real, useful language for something a couple has never had words for. But it means an Erotic Blueprint result should be treated the way you'd treat a good conversation-starter book, worth discussing, not worth treating as a diagnosis of what turns you on.

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What a Self-Assessment Can and Can't Tell You

Every instrument in this cluster is a self-report questionnaire completed in a few minutes. That format has known, well-documented limits, and they apply here as much as anywhere else in psychometrics:

• Self-report captures how you currently see yourself, not an objective measurement. Desire, satisfaction, and comfort with sexual disclosure all fluctuate with stress, relationship length, health, and context. A result taken during a hard month reads differently than the same person's result during an easy one.
• None of these six instruments diagnose a sexual dysfunction or relationship problem. They describe patterns and preferences. A low Sexual Satisfaction score is information, not a diagnosis of low libido, and a high Four Horsemen score is a prompt to look closer, not evidence of an abusive dynamic.
• The validated four (Desire Profile, Intimacy Mix, Sexual Communication, Sexual Satisfaction) are adaptations, not the original instruments. Your True Self uses shortened item sets (12–20 items versus the 36–45 items in the original published scales). Shorter forms trade some precision for completion rate. That's a standard, well-studied tradeoff in applied psychometrics, but it means these results are a reasonable estimate, not a research-grade score.
• Results default to private. Every one of the six instruments is opt-in to share with a partner inside a linked relationship. Nothing is disclosed automatically, because sexuality data is more sensitive than a Big Five trait score, and because seeing a partner's raw result without a conversation to contextualize it can do more harm than good.

If a pattern shows up that's causing real distress (persistent low desire, a communication shutdown that isn't improving, contempt that feels entrenched), a licensed sex therapist or couples therapist works with the same underlying research and can do what no online instrument can: ask follow-up questions, watch how you and your partner actually interact, and adjust in real time.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Erotic Blueprint quiz scientifically validated?

No. It's a practitioner-developed typology created by sexologist Jaiya, and as of this writing there's no published peer-reviewed study establishing its reliability or validity as a standalone psychometric instrument. That distinguishes it from the Desire Profile, Intimacy Mix, Sexual Communication, and Sexual Satisfaction instruments in the same product, which are each adapted from scales that have been through formal validation studies. Erotic Blueprint results are best used as a shared vocabulary for a conversation, not as an assessment result to optimize toward.

What's the difference between the Desire Profile and the Erotic Blueprint?

Desire Profile measures how your arousal responds to two independent systems (excitation and inhibition) using the Kinsey Institute's Dual Control Model, a research framework with decades of replication behind it. Erotic Blueprint sorts what kind of stimulus tends to arouse you into one of five categories, using a practitioner's typology that hasn't been formally validated. They answer different questions: "how does my arousal system work" versus "what type of stimulus am I drawn to." Only one of them is built on peer-reviewed research.

Is the Four Horsemen Check the same as Gottman's actual research?

Not exactly. Gottman's original findings on criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling came from trained observers coding real couples' conflict interactions in a lab, which is a different measurement method than a self-report questionnaire. Your True Self's Four Horsemen Check is a self-report adaptation inspired by that research, useful for noticing your own patterns, but not the same instrument or the same evidentiary weight as the original observational studies.

Do I need to be in a relationship to take these assessments?

The Desire Profile, Sexual Communication, and Sexual Satisfaction instruments are designed to be completed individually and reflect your own patterns regardless of relationship status. Intimacy Mix, Four Horsemen, and parts of the Erotic Blueprint discussion are more useful with a partner's results to compare against, since they're framed around a specific relationship.

Will my partner automatically see my results?

No. All six instruments default to private. Sharing with a linked partner inside the couples product is opt-in per instrument — you choose what to reveal, and nothing sensitive is shared by default.

Can a low score on any of these mean something is wrong with my relationship?

Not on its own. Every instrument here measures a pattern or preference at a point in time, not a verdict. A low Sexual Satisfaction score, a high Four Horsemen score, or a communication style flagged as avoidant are all starting points for a conversation, not conclusions about whether a relationship is healthy. Context (how long you've been together, what's happening in the rest of your life, whether the pattern is new or long-standing) matters more than any single number.

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Citations

Bancroft, J., & Janssen, E. (2000). The dual control model of male sexual response: A theoretical approach to centrally mediated erectile dysfunction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 24(5), 571–579.

Gottman, J. M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jaiya. (2023). Your Blueprint for Pleasure: Discover the 5 Erotic Types to Awaken — and Fulfill — Your Desires. Union Square & Co.

Janssen, E., Vorst, H., Finn, P., & Bancroft, J. (2002). The Sexual Inhibition (SIS) and Sexual Excitation (SES) Scales: I. Measuring sexual inhibition and excitation proneness in men. Journal of Sex Research, 39(2), 114–126.

Mallory, A. B., Stanton, A. M., & Handy, A. B. (2019). Couples' sexual communication and dimensions of sexual function: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sex Research, 56(7), 882–898.

Schaefer, M. T., & Olson, D. H. (1981). Assessing intimacy: The PAIR inventory. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 7(1), 47–60.

Štulhofer, A., Buško, V., & Brouillard, P. (2010). Development and bicultural validation of the New Sexual Satisfaction Scale. Journal of Sex Research, 47(4), 257–268.

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Part of the Personality Tests for Couples guide. For attachment-specific dynamics, see Attachment Style Compatibility. To take the assessments described here, see Couples Compatibility Assessment.

Your True Self is an informational and self-reflection tool. It is not a clinical assessment, sex therapy, or a substitute for professional mental health or medical care. If you're experiencing sexual dysfunction, relationship distress, or conflict that feels unsafe, a licensed sex therapist or couples therapist can help in ways a self-assessment cannot.