Is My Partner Controlling? Quiz: Score Five Patterns of Control in One Relationship
This quiz asks 20 plain questions about one current relationship, with any partner of any gender in mind: checking your phone, controlling money, making it costly to see your friends, rules about what you wear, and what happens when you say no. You get an instant educational result, a breakdown of which patterns are strongest, and support resources. It describes what you report, and it never makes a judgment about your partner as a person.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWIs My Partner Controlling? Quiz is a free, confidential 20-question self-assessment, original items · informed by coercive-control research · not a clinical measure. It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 3 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Control is a pattern, and a pattern can be named
Controlling behavior rarely arrives as one big moment. It shows up as a hundred small rules about where you go, who you see, what you spend and how quickly you answer, until the shape of your own life has quietly changed. Researchers call that pattern coercive control. This quiz asks you to rate how often five kinds of it happen in one relationship, and it reports what you tell it. It cannot determine whether a relationship is abusive, and it cannot say anything about what your partner intends.
Five patterns, scored separately
Monitoring and checking, money and freedom of movement, being cut off from people, rules and decisions, and pressure and consequences. Most quizzes report a single number, which hides the relationship that scores high on money and low on jealousy, or the reverse.
Behavior, not a verdict on a person
Every question asks how often something happens, not what kind of person your partner is. That is deliberate. A frequency count is something you can describe to an advocate or a therapist; a label is something to argue about, and arguments about labels are what tend to keep people stuck.
A safety answer that outranks the total
One question asks whether you have been threatened or frightened into doing something. If you answer anything other than never to that, the result shows the highest band with the National Domestic Violence Hotline, whatever everything else adds up to, because a single frightening incident is not canceled out by a low score.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Informed by published coercive-control research | Rarely | Yes, Stark (2007), Dutton and Goodman (2005), Hamberger et al. (2017) |
| Written for any gender, any partner | Usually assumes a man and a woman | Yes, every item is gender-neutral |
| Tells you what to do about your relationship | Often | Never. The choices stay yours |
| Breakdown by pattern, not one number | No | Five patterns, scored separately |
| Real support resources in the result | Rarely | Hotline, safety planning, therapy |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
Therapists Who Work With Trauma
If your result points to something you want help with, these licensed therapists work with it. Every member is matched to the federal NPI Registry; board checks are dated on the profile.
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Toby BransLPC, MA
License verified, checked Nov 4, 2026
The Woodlands, Texas Telehealth and in person $150 per session
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Tracey KiernanMA, LMFT
License verified, checked Nov 4, 2026
“Self-aware but still stuck? I help women & couples ditch old patterns, quiet anxiety & move beyond just coping. Because insight isn't the same as change.”
Santa Monica, California Telehealth $190 to $250 per session, sliding scale
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Will ZarilloEdD, LCSW
License verified, checked Oct 26, 2026
“Therapy that makes room for your whole story. Online therapy in New Jersey for anxiety, trauma, life transitions, and the pressures of everyday life.”
Iselin, New Jersey Telehealth $150 to $175 per session, sliding scale
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–80 in total. Your result falls into one of 3 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–15 | Few controlling patterns | Your answers show few of the patterns this quiz asks about. Something brought you here, though, and that deserves a hearing of its own. |
| 16–35 | Controlling patterns worth taking seriously | Your answers show controlling patterns happening often enough to matter. Whatever the explanation for them, being managed this way is not something you caused. |
| 36–80 | Strong signs of a controlling relationship | Your answers show frequent, wide-ranging control, or you reported being threatened or frightened into doing something. Either one is serious, and none of it is your fault. |
How this quiz is scored
The 20 statements split evenly into five patterns, four statements each. You rate how often each one happens, from never (0) to very often (4), so every pattern totals 0 to 16 and the whole quiz totals 0 to 80. The three bands are 0 to 15, 16 to 35, and 36 to 80. These are educational guides, not validated cutoffs from a published instrument, because the items are our own writing and informed by several strands of research rather than taken from one scale. The five patterns are our grouping too, chosen to match the categories advocates and researchers tend to use, so read the breakdown as a map of your own answers.
Two features of the scoring are worth knowing. First, the breakdown usually tells you more than the total does. A relationship can score high on money and movement while scoring low on jealousy, or be heavy on rules and decisions with no phone-checking at all, and those look nothing alike from inside even when the totals match. Second, the final question, about being threatened or frightened into doing something, is treated as a safety item: answering anything other than never raises your result to the highest band and adds the hotline, regardless of the total. Frequency counts are bad at weighing a threat, and a threat does not need to be frequent to matter.
What the number cannot do is decide what this relationship is, or whether your partner means any of it. A low total does not rule out harm, and it is not a reason to wait before talking to someone. Only you know your relationship, and a trained advocate can help you make sense of it in a way that no score can.
What counts as controlling, and what is just a difference
Plenty of ordinary relationship habits look superficially like the items on this page. Couples share money, ask where the other one is, dislike some of each other's friends, and get irritated when a message goes unanswered for hours. None of that is control on its own. The things that separate the two are direction, cost and freedom: whether the rules run both ways, what it costs you to say no, and whether you could change the arrangement if you wanted to. A joint account you both decided on is not the same as having to ask for money while your spending is examined and theirs is not.
Evan Stark's work describes coercive control as an ongoing pattern of domination rather than a series of incidents: isolating someone, monitoring them, and micro-regulating the small details of daily life until their world narrows to one relationship. Dutton and Goodman (2005) added the mechanism that makes it work, which is a credible threat of consequences, so that the demand only has to be made once and compliance does the rest afterward. That is why the harm so often looks invisible from outside. Any single moment can be explained away, and nothing in the pattern needs to be loud.
Hamberger and colleagues (2017) reviewed how researchers define and measure this and found three recurring parts: the intention behind the behavior, the way the person on the receiving end experiences it, and the credible threat that backs it up. You can only report two of those three. That is a real limit on any quiz, including this one, and it is the reason the result keeps pointing you toward a person rather than a number.
What to do with a result you did not want
You do not need to decide anything today. That is the single most useful thing to know, because deciding is where people get stuck, and nothing on this page is going to tell you to stay or to go. What does help is one conversation with someone outside the relationship. Advocates at the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788) are free, confidential and available around the clock; they will not push you toward leaving and they will not ask you to use the word abuse before they help you.
If anything about your partner's reaction worries you, plan before you act. Changing a rule, asking for your own account, or saying you took a quiz can all raise the temperature, and an advocate can help you think that through first. A safety plan built with an advocate is a practical place to start. The usual cautions still apply while you look into any of this: keep notes somewhere your partner cannot see them, use a private browser window, and close the tab when you are done.
Three sibling pages look at different parts of this. Emotional Abuse Test covers put-downs, blame-shifting and fear alongside control. Relationship Red Flags Test is about early warning behaviors, which is often the more useful page for a newer relationship.
Toxic Relationship Test looks at the overall dynamic rather than one partner's behavior. And if the question underneath all of this is whether to stay, Should We Break Up Quiz maps that decision without answering it for you. One thing experts do advise against while control is active: joint couples counseling, because what you say in the room can be used later and honesty can raise the risk at home. Support for you comes first.
Methodology & sources
The 20 items here are our own writing. They are informed by three strands of published work rather than taken from any one instrument: Evan Stark's coercive control framework, which describes abuse as ongoing domination through isolation, monitoring and the micro-regulation of daily life; Dutton and Goodman's (2005) conceptualization of coercion in intimate partner violence, which identifies the credible threat of consequences as the mechanism that makes a single demand hold; and the review by Hamberger, Larsen and Lehrner (2017) of how coercive control has been defined and measured, which is also the source of this page's honesty about what a self-report quiz can and cannot see. The coercive-control literature grew largely out of studies of men controlling women, which is why the items here are written for any gender. The Duluth power and control wheel, published by Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, is named here because its categories shaped the five groupings; the wheel itself is not reproduced. Because the items are original and have not been validated, the test object is marked as not validated, the five patterns are labeled as our own grouping, and the three bands are educational guides rather than published thresholds.
The interpretation is written to the same rules the rest of our relationship screenings follow. It describes behavior that you report and never characterizes your partner, because a quiz cannot establish anyone's intentions and a label is not what helps. It never tells you what to do about the relationship. It does not blame you: controlling behavior is a choice made by the person doing it. And it treats one answer as outranking the total, because a frequency score handles a threat badly. Answering anything other than never on the item about being threatened or frightened raises the result to the highest band and attaches the National Domestic Violence Hotline, on top of whatever the rest of your answers add up to. Nothing is ever sold on that result. This is an educational screening for adults, not a diagnosis, and it cannot determine whether a relationship is abusive.
References
- Stark E. Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. New York: Oxford University Press; 2007 (paperback ed. 2009). global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-9780195384048
- Dutton MA, Goodman LA. Coercion in intimate partner violence: toward a new conceptualization. Sex Roles. 2005;52(11-12):743-756. doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-4196-6
- Hamberger LK, Larsen SE, Lehrner A. Coercive control in intimate partner violence. Aggress Violent Behav. 2017;37:1-11. doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2017.08.003
- Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs. Wheel Information Center: the Power and Control Wheel. theduluthmodel.org/wheels/
- National Domestic Violence Hotline. Power and Control. thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). Is My Partner Controlling? Quiz. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/controlling-partner
Is My Partner Controlling? Quiz FAQ
Where is the line between caring and controlling?
Three questions separate them. Do the rules run both ways, or only toward you? What does it cost you to say no, in silence, anger, or a long argument? And could you change the arrangement if you wanted to? Caring is checking in because they were worried. Control is needing to know where you are, expecting proof, and making it expensive when you do not provide it. The behavior can look identical from outside; the cost of refusing is what tells them apart.
Can this quiz tell me whether my partner is abusive?
No, and it will not try. It describes patterns you report, in frequencies, so you have something concrete to take to a person who can help you make sense of it. It cannot establish what your partner intends, and it cannot determine whether a relationship is abusive. That judgment belongs to you, with help from a trained advocate or a licensed professional if you want it.
What if my score is low but something still feels wrong?
Trust that. People rarely look up a quiz like this for no reason, and a 20-question frequency count is not built to catch everything, especially a serious threat that happens rarely or one particular arrangement that has reshaped your life. A low total is not a reason to wait. Talking it through with a hotline advocate or a therapist is reasonable at any score, and you never have to use the word abuse to be taken seriously.
Is it still controlling if my partner is not a man?
Yes. Controlling behavior happens in relationships of every combination, and so does the fear that comes with it. Every item on this page is written neutrally for that reason. Research on coercive control grew largely out of studies of men controlling women, which is noted honestly in the methodology, but the patterns themselves are not limited to that, and neither is the support. The National Domestic Violence Hotline helps people of any gender.
Should we go to couples counseling about this?
While controlling behavior is active, experts generally advise against it. Joint sessions can hand a controlling partner new information and new openings, and being honest in the room can raise the pressure at home afterward. Individual support for you comes first: a therapist of your own, or an advocate. If the relationship is strained rather than controlling, that is a different situation, and our toxic relationship test looks at the dynamic as a whole.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.
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