Dr. Sandra Langeslag is a biological and cognitive psychologist and an associate professor at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. For nearly two decades, she has studied the relationship between love and brain, hoping to learn how our brains react, and published her findings in "The Journal of Sex Research" in 2012. Below is a questionnaire by Dr. Langeslag that can help measure your level of infatuation with and attachment to a person in a given relationship.
How to tell how infatuated you are
First, add up your responses to questions 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 20, and divide that by 10. This is your score on the infatuation scale. The lowest possible score is 1 and the highest possible score is 7.
Infatuation, or passionate love, is usually most intense in the early stages of love and is characterized by butterflies in the stomach, euphoria and anxiety. It typically decreases over time and as romantic relationships progress.
The average score of people who are not in a romantic relationship with their beloved varied between 4.0 and 4.5. The average score of people who are in a romantic relationship but do not live with their beloved varied between 2.8 and 3.4. The average score of people who live together with their beloved varied between 2.5 and 3.0, and the average score of married individuals varied between 2.1 and 3.2. You can compare your score to those average scores to see if you are more or less infatuated with your beloved than people on average.
How to tell how attached you are
Add up your responses to questions 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, and 19, and divide that by 10. This is your score on the attachment scale. The lowest possible score is 1 and the highest possible score is 7.
Attachment, or companionate love, is usually not very intense in the early stages of love, but it increases over time and as romantic relationships progress (but then decreases again very slowly over the course of decades). It is a much calmer feeling of comfort and bonding.
In previous studies, the average score of people who are not in a romantic relationship with their beloved varied between 4.6 and 4.9. The average score of people who are in a romantic relationship but do not live with their beloved varied between 6.0 and 6.1. The average score of people who live together with their beloved varied between 6.3 and 6.5, and the average score of married individuals varied between 6.5 and 6.7. You can compare your score to those average scores to see if you are more or less attached to your beloved than people on average.
