Take it together: compare how you each handle emotions

What it is

Take it together is a way for two adults to compare how they each handle emotions, using the same free 36-item EQTiger assessment. You take it on your own, invite one other person with a private link, and they take it on their own. When both of you have finished, each of you gets a page that puts the two results next to each other.

It suits couples, and it works just as well for close friends, siblings, or roommates who keep circling the same conversation. Both people need to be adults and both need to actually want to do it. Nobody gets a combined score. The point is to give you the same vocabulary and a few specific questions, not to decide who is better at emotions.

How it works

1. Take the free assessment. Answer the 36 questions on the assessment page. You get a free result with your profile name, strongest area, and Tiger Print.
2. Create your invite. On your free result page, or in your full report if you unlock it, find the Take it together card. It creates a private invite link that you send through your phone’s share sheet or copy into any message.
3. Decide whether you want a heads-up. You can type your email to get one message when the other person finishes. That email has an unsubscribe link. Leave the box empty and nothing is sent.
4. They open the link. The other person sees a short note such as “The Steady Center invited you to compare how you both handle emotions,” using your profile name, with question 1 right there on the page.
5. They answer on their own. They get their own free result, exactly as you did. Their answers are not shown to you.
6. You both open the side-by-side page. Once both of you have finished, each of you can read it whenever you like, separately or sitting together.

What each of you sees

Everything on the side-by-side page is free except detail that comes from a paid report. This is the exact rule for each item.

The rule runs the same way in both directions. Your sharing switch starts off, it covers only your own bands, and you can turn it off again at any time. Neither of you can switch sharing on for the other person. Unlocking a full report costs $6.95, paid once, and it unlocks only the report of the person who pays. Buying your report never opens up the other person’s report.

Privacy, in plain words

• The invite link is long and random, so it cannot be guessed. Treat it like a private message and send it only to the person you mean to invite.
• A pair is exactly two people. After a second person joins, the link cannot add anyone else.
• Pair pages are private. They are not listed anywhere on EQTiger and are marked so search engines do not index them.
• Nothing about your pair is posted publicly or shown to anyone outside the two of you.
• Email is optional. If you add yours, you get at most one “they finished” email, and it includes an unsubscribe link.
• Each person controls only their own sharing switch, and it is off until that person turns it on.

For how results are stored and for how long, read the privacy policy.

Conversation starters you can borrow

The three prompts on your pair page come from fixed rules applied to your two profiles. No AI writes them and no scores feed into them. The examples below are separate. They show the kind of wording that keeps a comparison curious rather than competitive, so change the words until they sound like you.

How to listen to the answer

Before you respond, say back what you heard: “So it is less that you need space and more that you need to know I am not leaving?” In a study of short conversations between strangers, people who received this kind of active listening felt more understood than people who got advice or a simple acknowledgment (Weger and colleagues, 2014). The study used strangers, not couples, so treat it as a reason to try the habit, not proof that it repairs anything.

Match the request to the problem. Couples research suggests that direct requests for change help when a problem is serious and can actually change, while warmth and validation fit better for small irritations or things that cannot change (Overall and McNulty, 2017). “Can we agree that whoever cooks does not also wash the dishes?” is a direct request. “That sounds exhausting, and I get why you were short with me” is validation.

Plan the cool-down before you need it. In a long-running study, people whose partners recovered well after a conflict discussion reported more positive feelings about the relationship and more satisfaction (Salvatore and colleagues, 2011). A simple version: “I need twenty minutes. Can we pick this up at eight?” When you come back: “I am still a bit tense, but I am not angry with you.”

Ground rules that keep it fair

• Start with your own result. “My print says I lead with fixing things. Does that match what you see?” goes better than reading out the other person’s weak spots.
• Never use a result to rank, win an argument, or prove a point. “Your profile shows you have no empathy” is a misuse; one sitting of a self-report questionnaire cannot carry that weight.
• Either person can stop at any time, skip the prompts, or keep their result and their bands to themselves.

What a comparison cannot tell you

EQTiger results are descriptive 0 to 100 EQTiger scores built from your own answers. They are not a clinical measure, and they do not predict whether a relationship will last or whether two people are a good match.

The research link between emotional intelligence and relationships is real but modest. A meta-analysis of six studies with 603 participants found that people with higher trait emotional intelligence, and their partners, tended to report more relationship satisfaction (r = .32) (Malouff, Schutte, and Thorsteinsson, 2014). That is a correlation across groups that used other questionnaires. It says nothing certain about your relationship and it is not evidence about EQTiger.

Self-report has limits. When researchers compared people’s ratings of their own emotional abilities with a performance test of those abilities, the two did not line up strongly (Brackett and colleagues, 2006). Other people also see some things about us more clearly than we do: in one study, friends judged intellect-related traits better than people judged themselves, while people were the best judges of their own neuroticism-related traits (Vazire, 2010). So if the other person says, “That does not sound like you,” treat it as information rather than an attack, and remember it works both ways.

Popular relationship quizzes deserve the same caution. A review of the research on love languages found little support for the ideas that each person has one primary love language, that there are exactly five, or that couples who match are happier (Impett, Park, and Muise, 2024). EQTiger does not sort either of you into a love language, an attachment style, or a match.

When this is not the right tool

Take it together is for two people who both want to be there. If your relationship involves fear, threats, violence, control over your money or phone, monitoring, or pressure to take this test or share your results, a quiz is the wrong tool. Abuse is not a relationship problem that better communication can solve (The Hotline, on couples therapy). Reach out for help instead:

• National Domestic Violence Hotline (US): call 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. It is free, confidential, and open 24/7 (The Hotline).
• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US): call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org, any time of day (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).
• Immediate danger: call 911 or your local emergency number.

The Hotline does not recommend couples therapy with an abusive partner, because therapy cannot fix the unequal power in an abusive relationship and what is said in a session can be used against the person being harmed (The Hotline, on couples therapy). Individual support from an advocate or counselor is the safer route.

For ordinary but stubborn conflict, such as the same argument every week, a licensed couples therapist can help both of you in ways a self-report page cannot. EQTiger does not recommend or endorse any specific provider. This is not therapy. EQTiger does not diagnose you or the other person.

Start with your own result

Take the free assessment first, then look for the Take it together card on your result. To prepare, read about emotional intelligence in relationships or try the couples check-in questions, which need no test at all.