Strong and Connected · The Discernment Assessment
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A Discernment Tool · For You Alone

Should I stay or should I go?

A long-form reflection built on the questions that actually predict whether relationships last — and what to do about what you find.

From Koby Smutylo · Strong & Connected coaching · Trained in Relational Life Therapy by Terry Real

Before you begin.

This is a tool for you — not a couple's exercise. You'll be asked about three things: yourself inside this relationship, your partner as they actually are, and the us the two of you have built.

This assessment will be kinder to your clarity than to your comfort. It's built on the empirical research — Gottman, Hanson, Real, Sexton — and designed to get past the stories you tell yourself and toward what you already know. Answer from how things are — not how they were at their best, not how they could be if only, not how you hope they'll become.

About twenty-five minutes. You'll be alone with yourself. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere unless you choose to share it at the end.

Early on, you'll be asked about physical and emotional safety. Those questions come first because they matter most — and because the rest of this tool adjusts based on your answers.

Drawing on the work of

Dr. Rick Hanson on values-aligned decision-making and the three core needs. Terry Real on "us consciousness" and relational life work. John & Julie Gottman on the empirical predictors of relationship success. James Sexton on what actually ends marriages — the slippage, the stories, the things we stop paying attention to.

I.
Where you're standing

Context, before the deeper questions. These shape how your results are interpreted.

01. How long have you been together?
02. Do you have children together, or in your household?
03. Have you worked on this relationship before? (Therapy, coaching, retreats, serious conversations about change.)
04. In the last six months, have there been major life stressors? (Job loss, death, illness, birth, move, financial crisis.)

Relationships under acute stress look worse than they are. Chronic strain is a different question than a hard season.

05. Is what you're experiencing a bad patch, or a bad pattern?

One of the most important questions for someone at a crossroads. A bad patch is acute and has a cause. A bad pattern has been the shape of things for as long as you can remember.

06. What brought you here today? — optional, just for you
II.
Physical and emotional safety

These two questions come early because they matter most. Your answers here shape how the rest of the assessment reads — and whether this is the right tool for your situation at all.

Please read before answering

There's no wrong answer here, only a true one.

Many people minimize these experiences — sometimes for years. Phrases like "it wasn't that bad" or "I probably provoked it" or "they didn't mean it" are how survival narratives protect us, but they also obscure what's actually happening.

Please answer honestly. If your experience is severe, the assessment will stop asking the other questions and focus on what you actually need.

Safety · Physical
07. Which of these most honestly describes your physical safety in this relationship?

Include pushing, grabbing, blocking a door, throwing objects near you, or any unwanted physical contact — not only hitting. Include past incidents, even if they haven't recurred.

Safety · Emotional
08. Which of these most honestly describes your emotional safety in this relationship?

Emotional abuse includes patterns of contempt, humiliation, gaslighting (denying your experience), isolation from friends/family, financial control, severe unpredictability, or punishing silence used as a weapon. Every couple has bad moments — this is about patterns.

III.
The three needs, inside this relationship

Hanson's three core needs — safety, satisfaction, connection — are the spine of this assessment. Every relationship answers them, well or poorly.

The Frame · Dr. Rick Hanson Safety is the felt sense that you can be yourself here without harm. Satisfaction is the sense that something real is flowing to you — pleasure, reward, nourishment — not just depletion. Connection is the sense of being seen, known, and held. When one is persistently unmet, the body knows before the mind admits.
Me · At Rest
09. Inside this relationship, my nervous system is at rest more often than on guard.

Not "nothing ever goes wrong" — but whether your baseline is ease, or bracing.

Me · Satisfaction
10. I receive real nourishment from this relationship — not just the memory of it, not just the potential of it.
Me · Connection
11. I feel genuinely known by my partner — the real me, not a performed version.
IV.
Your partner, seen clearly

Not who they could be. Not who they are on their best day. Who they are, consistently, now.

A Useful Distinction Hope and reality are different rooms. Describe the partner you actually have — the one who has shown up over time — not the one you keep waiting to arrive.
Them · Character
12. At their core, my partner is someone I admire — and when I describe them to friends or family, the words that come out are warm, not cold.

Gottman: the fondness and admiration system predicts longevity

Notice your default. Not the polite version — the one that slips out when you're tired.

Them · Honesty
13. My partner is honest with me — I don't catch them in meaningful lies, and I don't feel I have to go looking.
Them · Capacity
14. When I've told my partner something isn't working for me, they can hear it without crumbling, raging, or stonewalling — and something actually shifts.
Them · Willingness
15. My partner is actively willing to work on this relationship — not in words, but in observable action that I can point to.

Terry Real: empathy without action is empty. Saying "I hear you" without any behavior changing isn't willingness — it's placation. Count only what you can see.

V.
Us, or you and me?

The distinction Terry Real treats as the heart of everything: do you operate as a team, or as adversaries keeping score?

The Core Frame · Terry Real Real distinguishes "us consciousness" from "you-and-me consciousness." In us consciousness, when one partner loses, both lose — because the hurt partner carries the loss back into the relationship. In you-and-me consciousness, there are winners and losers, and the scoreboard never gets put away. Every couple has moments of each. The question is which one is home base.
Us · Teamwork
16. When things are hard between us, it feels like we're on the same team trying to solve a problem — not opponents trying to win.
Us · Wise Adult
17. When one of us gets triggered, at least one of us can usually find our way back to the adult in the room.

Real describes the "adaptive child" — the part that takes over when we feel unsafe, using strategies we learned as kids. Healthy relationships aren't ones without triggers. They're ones where someone gets back to the wise adult.

Me · Acceptance
18. I've made peace with the parts of my partner that won't change — I'm not still waiting for them to become someone else.

Real calls this "digesting each other's imperfections" — grieving what your partner won't be, so you can actually receive who they are. Staying well requires it. Staying while still waiting does not.

VI.
How love moves between you

Love has to be not just given, but received. Desire, not just felt, but met.

Us · Felt Love
19. When my partner expresses love, I can usually feel it — it lands the way they meant it.
Us · Learnability
20. When I've told my partner what I need to feel loved, they've learned it — the ways they love me have moved toward me over time.
Us · Desire
21. Our physical and sexual desires are compatible — or where they differ, we can talk about it openly, without shame or punishment.
Me · Being Wanted
22. I feel genuinely wanted — emotionally, physically, in the ordinary everydayness of being chosen again.
VII.
The things you haven't said

James Sexton has watched more than a thousand marriages end. The pattern he sees: the big ending comes from the small unspoken — what he calls slippage.

The Diagnostic · James Sexton Sexton's observation: most divorces don't come from one earthquake. They come from a thousand things nobody wanted to fight about, said nothing about, and let accumulate. The affair, the money, the big blow-up — those are usually symptoms, not causes. The cause is usually a communication problem that predates them. He advises: hit send now. The fight you've been swallowing is cheaper than the silence that ends things.
Me · Swallowing
23. When something bothers me, I bring it up — I don't swallow it to keep the peace.

Not every little thing. But the things that actually bother you.

Us · Attention
24. We still pay attention to each other — curious about each other's inner lives, aware of what's changing in one another.

Gottman: turning toward small bids predicts longevity better than big events

Sexton: "Did you stop paying attention because the relationship wasn't making you happy, or did the relationship stop making you happy because you stopped paying attention?"

Me · Resentment
25. I'm not carrying a quiet inventory of grievances I've never named.
VIII.
How you move under pressure

Every couple has a dance they do when things get hard. The question is whether it's one you can both live inside.

Us · Repair
26. When we rupture, we find our way back — not instantly, not neatly, but we actually repair.

Gottman: the strongest distinguisher of "masters" vs "disasters"

Us · Contempt
27. In our worst moments, contempt is absent — no eye-rolling, no mockery, no "what's wrong with you," no cold shoulder used as a weapon.

Gottman: the #1 statistical predictor of dissolution

Terry Real calls this "full-respect living." Research confirms: contempt is the single strongest predictor of separation.

Me · Bringing Things Up
28. I can bring up something hard without bracing for punishment, withdrawal, or explosion.
IX.
Values and the road ahead

You don't need identical values. But the ones that shape daily life — and the direction you're both walking — have to coexist.

Us · Daily Values
29. On the things that shape daily life — money, family, time, faith, how we treat others — we're compatible, or our differences cause real growth rather than constant friction.
Us · Direction
30. On the non-negotiables — children, where we live, marriage, major life direction — we're aligned, or we've found a real path through our differences.
Me · Future Self
31. When I picture the version of myself I want to become — five, ten, twenty years out — my partner fits inside that picture.
X.
Who you are becoming

Hanson asks: who am I becoming in the environments I put myself in? A relationship is an environment. It shapes you, slowly, over years.

The Hanson Question "Who am I becoming in the environments I put myself in?" The question isn't only whether you love them. It's whether the you this relationship is producing is someone your future self will thank you for — or someone your deeper self already doesn't recognize.
Me · Becoming
32. The person I'm becoming in this relationship is someone I respect.
Me · Aliveness
33. In this relationship, I feel more like myself — my aliveness, my voice, my edges — not less.
Me · Witnesses
34. The people who love me haven't expressed worry about me in this relationship.

The people who know you well see you from outside the fog. Their concern — or lack of it — is data.

XI.
The quieter signals

These are the oblique ones. Not what your partner does or what happens between you — but the smaller signals underneath. Some may be uncomfortable to notice. Honesty here is worth more than speed.

A note before you answer Noticing a pattern here doesn't mean the relationship is doomed. It means there's information worth sitting with. The body, the imagination, the small moments when no one is watching — these often speak earlier and more honestly than the direct questions can.
Me · Self-contraction
35. When I'm with my partner, I notice I'm not quite the version of myself I am elsewhere — with friends, strangers, at work.

Not performing. Not pretending. Just — the natural self contracts a little. Notice whether this is true without judging it yet.

Me · Relief Alone
36. When my partner travels, or I have unexpected time alone, I feel more relief than I feel their absence.

Missing someone and being relieved by their absence aren't opposites — they can coexist. The question is which one is louder.

Me · Fantasy
37. I catch myself imagining my life without my partner — not angrily, just picturing it.

There's a difference between angry divorce fantasies (common, not meaningful on their own) and the quieter, almost wistful rehearsal of a different life. This question is about the second one.

Us · Performance
38. When we're with other people, I work harder than I want to — to present us as fine, to cover for tension, to keep things smooth.

The energy of the performance is itself data. If you're tired after socializing as a couple in a way you're not after socializing alone, that's what this question is asking.

Me · The Body's Answer
39. When I hear my partner's car pull in, or their footsteps, or see their name on my phone — what does my body do?

Somatic data: faster than cognition, harder to fake

Pure somatic read. No reasoning. No "shoulds." The body often tells the truth before the mind has a chance to reframe it.

XII.
Other things that can't be unseen

Answer honestly — these surface separately in your results, regardless of anything else.

40. Does any of the following describe your relationship right now? (Select all that apply, or none.)
XIII.
The analysis and the intuition

Good decisions require both — the clear-eyed analysis and the quiet knowing underneath.

Analysis Meets Intuition Answer these quickly. Overthinking them defeats the point. Hanson would say the deeper part of you often already knows. Sexton would say it more bluntly: the most dangerous lies are the ones you tell yourself.
41. Knowing everything you know now — would you choose this person again today?
42. If nothing changed — if this is how it will be for the next five years — could you stay?
43. When you imagine yourself a year from now, still in this relationship exactly as it is — what does your body do?
44. When you imagine yourself a year from now, having left — what does your body do?

Grief is not a reason to stay; relief is not a reason to leave. But the body has information.

45. Do you find yourself telling a story about this relationship — to friends, to yourself — that doesn't quite match what you actually feel?

Sexton: self-deception is the strongest barrier to clarity

Sexton's sharpest observation: we all tell stories about our relationships. The question is whether the story matches what you see when you're not performing it.

XIV.
What you already know

These two are for you. No one else will read them. Write what comes.

46. Finish this sentence: "What I really need in a relationship, that I don't have here, is…"
47. If a friend described a relationship back to you exactly as you've described yours here — what would you say to them?

We often see clearly for others what fogs for ourselves.

When you're ready.

A few questions are still unanswered. Please scroll up to complete them.

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Your reflection is ready

A first look at what came through.

Below is a preview of your profile and the three needs. Your full report — including the directive reading, the thirty-day plan, the decision framework, and three teachers' lenses — is one step away.

The Shape of Things
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Safety
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Satisfaction
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Connection
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One step before the full report
Where should I send your full reflection?

Your full report is detailed and personal — most people want to revisit it later. Enter your email to unlock it. I'll also email you a copy you can return to. Nothing else, no list, no follow-ups unless you ask.

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Privacy: your individual answers and reflections are sent to koby@strongandconnected.com only if you choose to share them. They are not stored on any server connected to this page. You can email koby@strongandconnected.com any time to have your data removed.

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Your Reflection

What the answers show

A directive reading, a tailored action plan, a decision framework — and a read of the quieter signals underneath.

Here's what I see
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Hanson's three needs — are they being met?

Need 01
Safety
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Need 02
Satisfaction
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Need 03
Connection
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The Shape of Things
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Across the dimensions

The next thirty days
What to do, not just see

The decision framework

What needs to be true for each path — so you're not choosing in fog.

If you stay
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If you leave
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Three teachers, three lenses

The same answers, viewed through three different frameworks.

Dr. Rick Hanson
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Terry Real
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James Sexton
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Watch for these

Common ways we fog the decision at exactly this stage.

    Questions to sit with

    Take one or two, not all

      A final honest note. This is a self-administered tool based on what you could see and say in about twenty minutes. It cannot replace a therapist, a discernment counselor, or a trusted person who knows you. It can show you the shape of your own answers — which is more than most people give themselves. The rest is courage, and time.

      Take this with you: Sent — check your inbox.
      Strong and Connected

      Want to talk this through?

      This assessment is a starting point, not an ending. If what came up would be useful to talk through — or you're ready to do something about it — I'd be glad to hear from you. Free first conversation. No pressure. Practical, RLT-grounded coaching for couples and individuals.

      koby@strongandconnected.com

      "The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves."

      — James Sexton