A healthy relationship quiz should leave you with a clearer view, not a grade. Take this one alone, about your own relationship, somewhere nobody is reading over your shoulder. Twelve everyday signs each hang a small cloth flag on a line, six harder questions sit apart from them, and what comes back is a reading of your own answers.

What healthy looks like on an ordinary Tuesday

The quiet markers slip past because they happen every day. The educators at love is respect describe a spectrum that runs from healthy to abusive: healthy relationships rest on equality and respect, unhealthy ones on attempts to control the other person, and abusive ones on an imbalance of power and control.

The twelve signs turn that spectrum into small moments across six areas. Respect is being heard when you disagree. Trust is feeling settled when you are apart. Honesty includes owning a mistake instead of handing it to you. Support is a partner who is glad when things go well for you. Space means your own friends and interests survive. Fair fights end with both of you finding your way back.

How the line works

Often dyes a sign's flag sage green, sometimes dyes it wheat gold, and hardly ever leaves it bare linen. Tap any flag to go back and change its answer.

Once all twelve flags are up, the page reads the line back. Areas where both signs came up often, or nearly so, hang green; areas split down the middle sit as half and half; areas where a sign rarely shows up hang bare, with the exact sentence you marked quoted back. With no warning sign on your list, you also get one small thing to try for the barest area. The reading is worked out fresh every time, so change an answer and it follows. Nothing is scored, and it says nothing final about your partner.

The six harder questions

Next come six questions drawn from the warning signs of abuse The Hotline publishes and from the list kept by love is respect: being put down or shamed in front of others, having your phone or accounts checked without permission, extreme jealousy or being kept from friends and family, control over your money or your choices about work or school, pressure about sex, and being hurt or frightened. The Hotline is plain that even one or two such behaviors can be a red flag.

You answer no, not sure or yes. A yes or a not sure never becomes a flag on the line. It opens a separate card that repeats what you marked and says what is true: you deserve to feel safe. The card gives the three ways to reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline: call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org, free and confidential at any hour. If you are in danger right now, call 911. If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988 (US) right now, or reach your local emergency number.

A counselor of your own can help you think things through. Couples counseling is another matter: The Hotline does not encourage anyone in an abusive relationship to seek counseling with their partner, since abuse is not a relationship problem and what is said in a session can be turned against you later. That is also why, once a warning sign is marked, the page stops offering tips for the bare areas. Trying harder is not the answer to a warning sign.

The Green Flag Line is not made or endorsed by The Hotline or by love is respect. It points to them because their advocates do this work every day.

What the evidence does and does not say

How a relationship is going does matter to health. A meta-analysis of 126 published articles covering more than 72,000 people found that better marital quality went with better health, including a lower risk of death. The effects were small, about the size of the links between diet and health, and the study designs could not show cause and effect.

This self-check has not been validated as a measure of anything. It cannot tell you whether a relationship is abusive, and a line full of green flags does not cancel out a single warning sign. What it can do is set your own answers where you can see them, often the step before a conversation.

Keeping it private

Your answers save to your HabitatZero account, so they appear on any device where you are signed in. If someone else can open your phone, your computer or that account, clear them when you finish; the clear button needs two taps. Quick exit blanks the screen at once, as does pressing Escape twice. The Hotline warns that internet use can be monitored and is impossible to erase completely.

When to use it, and where to go next

Take it when something feels off and you cannot name it, or when things feel fine and you want an honest look, and come back in a few months. If no warning sign came up and one area hangs bare, go to the page built for it: Our Fair Fighting Rules for arguments that keep going sideways, the Boundaries Worksheet when space is thin, and a weekly Couples Check-In to keep small frictions small.