Early Relationship Toxicity Quiz: A Practical Guide to Using the ERTQ
- Ashley Sophia
- Mar 7
- 12 min read
Updated: Mar 9
Designed for women with a history of abusive or deceptive relationships
A Note Before You Begin
This questionnaire is new. Only a small number of people have used it so far, and it is far too early to make any claims about its reliability or clinical validity. It has not been formally studied or validated.
What it is: a structured thinking tool built from patterns that show up repeatedly in abusive and deceptive relationship dynamics.
What it is not: a diagnostic instrument, a replacement for therapy, or a verdict on your relationship.
If you try it, I would genuinely love to hear how it went for you. Did the questions feel accurate? Did your score reflect what you were experiencing? Did anything surprise you? Reach out and let me know. |
What Is the ERTQ?
The Early Relationship Toxicity Questionnaire — or ERTQ — is a structured self-assessment tool designed to help women identify early warning patterns in new relationships, especially women who have a history of abusive, manipulative, or deceptive partnerships.
It was built around a simple premise: toxic relationships rarely appear dangerous at the start. What they do is accumulate. Small inconsistencies. Convenient excuses. A creeping sense that something is off but nothing you could point to. By the time the pattern becomes undeniable, many women have already invested months — sometimes years — and rebuilt a sense of self around a person who was never fully honest with them.
The ERTQ attempts to surface those patterns early, before emotional investment makes them harder to see clearly.
Who Is This For?
This tool was specifically designed with one group in mind: women who have been in abusive or deceptive relationships before and who are now navigating something new.
If you have a history of:
• Relationships where you later discovered a hidden partner, secret life, or ongoing deception
• Dynamics where you were gaslit into doubting your own perception
• Partners who love-bombed early and gradually isolated you
• Situations where you knew something was wrong but couldn't name it
...then this questionnaire was built for you.
It may also be useful for anyone who feels a persistent low-grade unease about a new person in their life and wants a more structured way to examine what they are observing.
How It Works
The ERTQ has eight sections. Each section targets a different behavioral domain that research and lived experience have consistently identified as predictive of manipulation, deception, or abuse:
Section | What It Measures |
1. Access & Transparency | Whether you have meaningful access to their real, daily life |
2. Excuse Pattern Detection | How their explanations behave under scrutiny |
3. Digital Behavior & Availability | Consistent unavailability and phone/social media concealment |
4. Narrative Control & Gaslighting | Whether your perception is being subtly destabilized |
5. Social Integration | Whether you exist in their actual life or a sealed-off compartment |
6. Commitment Language vs Behavior | The gap between what they say and what they do |
7. Power & Resource Imbalance | Asymmetries in age, experience, resources, and control |
8. Body & Intuition | What your nervous system is registering |
Understanding the Scoring
Each section has 8 questions. Each question is scored 0, 1, or 2, giving a maximum of 16 points per section and 128 points overall.
The scoring is intentionally directional — meaning some questions score 2 for "yes" and some score 2 for "no", depending on what the concerning answer is. For example, "Have you been inside their home?" scores 2 for no — because someone you've been dating for months who has never had you in their home is flagging a transparency problem, not a normal boundary.
A score of 1 represents "sometimes" or "unclear" — a middle ground for things that are present but not consistent or definitive.
Per-Section Thresholds
Score Range | Level | What It Means |
0–4 | Normal | Typical early-relationship variability. No consistent pattern. |
5–8 | Be Alert | A pattern is forming. Observe and verify. Trust, but verify. |
9–16 | Very Alert | Systemic issue. High likelihood of concealment or manipulation. Do not explain this away. |
Whole-Questionnaire Score (Max: 128)
Score Range | Level | What It Means |
0–24 | Low Risk | Minimal concerning patterns across categories. |
26–48 | Caution Zone | Some patterns present. Worth paying attention. |
50–80 | High Risk | Multiple overlapping patterns. Take this seriously. |
82–128 | Very Likely Toxic / Deceptive | Systemic, cross-domain pattern. Trust this. |
The Critical Rule
If Access & Transparency scores 10 or higher AND any two other sections score 8 or higher:
You likely do not need more data.
This combination highly suggests that the person is actively concealing their real life from you, the concealment is supported by behavioral patterns in multiple domains, and waiting for more evidence will cost you more time and more of yourself. |
What Each Section Is Looking For
1. Access & Transparency
This is the highest-weighted section in the questionnaire. The question it asks is simple: do you have genuine, unsupervised access to their actual daily life?
Not curated access. Not the version they control. Have you been inside their home? Have you met people they interact with every day? Can you account for where they live and how they live in a consistent, verifiable way?
A high score here — especially 10 or above — is one of the clearest single indicators that something is being hidden. It is the section most associated with cohabiting partners, hidden marriages, and deliberate double lives.
2. Excuse Pattern Detection
Lies are rarely single events. They are systems. This section looks at whether the explanations you receive are adaptive — meaning they shift, expand, and conveniently appear exactly when they are needed.
One of the strongest tells here is what this questionnaire calls "excuse stacking" — a pattern where each individual excuse seems plausible, but taken together they form an impenetrable barrier that always has a new layer when you push. Another tell is the reverse: being made to feel irrational or invasive for noticing that nothing ever adds up.
3. Digital Behavior & Availability
This section is less about what they show you and more about what they don't. Predictable blackout windows — nights, weekends, holidays, mornings — that are consistent across weeks are a behavioral signature, not a coincidence. They reflect scheduling around another commitment.
Phone behavior matters here too, but it's the combination that's telling. A private person who is also always unavailable on Saturday nights and never calls, only texts, is describing something specific.
4. Narrative Control & Gaslighting
This section asks whether your own perception is being managed. Healthy partners can handle questions. They may not always have answers, but they don't use your questions as evidence of your instability.
The signature of this section is confusion that follows clarity-seeking. If you routinely leave conversations feeling more uncertain than when you started — if your reasonable questions are met with deflection, annoyance, or a pivot to your "trust issues" — that is not a communication style difference. That is management.
5. Social Integration
Secrecy requires isolation. A person with something to hide cannot afford witnesses. This section looks at whether you exist as a full, integrated presence in their life, or whether you have been placed in a sealed compartment — spending time with them but invisible to everyone who actually knows them.
Months into a relationship with no meaningful social overlap is not introversion. It is architecture.
6. Commitment Language vs. Behavior
This section measures the gap between what someone says about the relationship and what they actually do. Vague commitment language, resistance to labels, and reluctance to define exclusivity are not always red flags on their own. But combined with patterns in other sections, they describe someone who needs you emotionally while keeping their options structurally open.
The phrase "ambiguity benefits the person with something to hide" captures the logic here. Clarity is costly to someone who is lying. Ambiguity lets them have you without giving you anything that could be used as evidence.
7. Power & Age/Resource Imbalance
This section looks at structural power differences — not to suggest that age gaps or resource differences are automatically problematic, but to ask whether those differences are being leveraged. A significant imbalance combined with secrecy is not accidental.
Questions here about feeling "lucky" rather than equal are particularly important. A partner who cultivates a sense of luck in you is creating conditions for tolerance — your gratitude becomes a mechanism that makes it harder to hold them accountable.
8. Body & Intuition
Your nervous system is a detection system. It registers information before your conscious mind has processed it into language. This section asks you to report honestly on what you are experiencing physically and emotionally — anxiety, hypervigilance, relief in their absence, a constant low-grade waiting.
A high score here, especially combined with high scores elsewhere, is not evidence of your anxiety disorder or your "trust issues." It is evidence that your body has already made an assessment.
How to Use This Tool
Complete it honestly, not charitably
The strongest bias working against you when filling this out is the urge to explain. You will want to give context. You will want to remember the good reasons. Do that after. Fill it out first as a neutral observer — as if you were watching someone else's relationship and you had never met the person being described.
Look at the sections, not just the total
A total score in the "caution" range can contain a section score that is essentially a verdict on its own. Pay attention to where the scores concentrate. A cluster of high scores in Access & Transparency, Digital Behavior, and Social Integration tells a different story than scattered low scores across everything.
Take it more than once
Because this tool is measuring patterns, not single incidents, it is most useful when taken at intervals — perhaps monthly during a new relationship — rather than once. Pattern detection requires time. A score that climbs significantly between two points in time is itself information.
Don't use it to justify — use it to decide
This questionnaire is not a courtroom. You do not need a score of 128 to make a decision. You do not need to prove anything to anyone. The purpose is to give structure to what you may already be sensing, not to create a threshold you have to cross before you are "allowed" to trust yourself.
What To Do With What You Find
The questionnaire does not tell you what to do. That is intentional. You are the only one who can weigh what you're experiencing against everything else in your life.
What it can do is interrupt the cycle of explanation. If you score high on this and find yourself immediately looking for reasons why the score is wrong, that is worth sitting with. The urge to explain away a pattern is often itself part of the pattern.
Some things that may help:
Talk to someone who knew you before this relationship — a friend, a therapist, a family member you trust. Ask them what they observe from the outside.
If you have a therapist or counselor, bring your scores to a session. Even the process of describing why you answered each question the way you did can be clarifying.
Give yourself permission to slow down. You do not have to end anything, confirm anything, or confront anything immediately. But you also do not have to keep moving forward at speed while ignoring what you already know. |
Try It and Tell Me How It Went
Because this tool is early — genuinely early, with only a handful of people who have used it so far — your experience with it matters a great deal.
If you try it, I want to hear from you. Not just whether you thought it was useful, but the specifics:
• Did your score reflect what you were actually experiencing?
• Were there questions that felt off, unclear, or missing entirely?
• Did the section breakdowns reveal something the total score didn't?
• Were there patterns in your situation that the questionnaire didn't capture?
• Did filling it out change anything for you — even slightly?
Your feedback directly shapes whether and how this tool gets refined. It was built from observed patterns, but patterns are only as good as the data behind them — and right now, that data is thin.
If you had a significant experience with this questionnaire, positive or negative, I would genuinely love to hear it. Reach out and let me know how it went.
Early Relationship Toxicity Quiz
Access & Transparency
Have you been inside their home?
(2 for no, 0 for yes)
Do they give specific, consistent explanations about where they live?
(2 for no, 0 for yes)
Have you met anyone in their personal daily life (friends, neighbors, roommates)?
(2 for no, 0 for yes)
Do they avoid hosting you without a concrete timeline for when you will?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do excuses for not hosting feel elaborate, changing, or oddly convenient?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they seem anxious about you knowing their address?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Have they ever discouraged you from dropping by unexpectedly?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they “live with parents” but somehow have total privacy and independence?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Excuse Pattern Detection
Do reasons for avoiding places or people conveniently appear after you suggest them?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Have they developed new allergies, phobias, or constraints that didn’t exist before?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do excuses shift when challenged (e.g., “I forgot,” “I never said that,” “You misunderstood”)?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do their explanations feel over-defended or rehearsed?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Are the obstacles always external and never resolvable?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do plans frequently get canceled last minute due to vague issues?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they blame circumstances but never propose solutions?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you feel silly for questioning things that objectively don’t add up?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Digital Behavior & Availability
Are they consistently unavailable at certain times (nights, weekends, holidays)?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they avoid phone calls and prefer texting?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they take long gaps to reply without explanation?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Is their phone always face-down, locked, or taken everywhere?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they get defensive if you casually glance at their screen?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Are social media profiles minimal, hidden, or oddly inactive?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they avoid posting you or acknowledging you publicly?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Have they ever said things like “I’m private” but selectively share elsewhere?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Narrative Control & Gaslighting
Do they minimize your concerns instead of addressing them?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they frame curiosity as insecurity?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Have you been told you’re “overthinking” more than once?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they deflect by bringing up your past or “trust issues”?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do conversations about clarity end unresolved?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they get annoyed when you ask reasonable questions?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you feel like you need proof to justify basic expectations?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you walk away from talks feeling confused instead of reassured?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Social Integration
Have you met any close friends?
(2 for no, 0 for yes)
Do they avoid group settings with you?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they keep work and personal life completely siloed?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Have months passed with no meaningful social overlap?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they have stories about people you never meet?
(2 for no, 0 for yes)
Are introductions always postponed “until later”?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you feel invisible in their real-world life?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Does it feel like you exist in a bubble with them?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Commitment Language vs Behavior
Do their words outpace their actions?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they promise future clarity without delivering it?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they use vague commitment language (“we’ll see,” “eventually”)?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they resist labels longer than feels reasonable?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they avoid defining exclusivity clearly?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they act committed privately but not publicly?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they discourage you from asking where things are going?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you feel like you’re waiting for permission to exist fully?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Power & Age/Resource Imbalance Check
Is there a significant age gap paired with secrecy?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they frame themselves as “experienced” or “worldly”?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they subtly position you as naive or emotional?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they control logistics (when, where, how you meet)?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they benefit more from the arrangement than you?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you adjust your life more than they adjust theirs?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do they discourage independence or outside input?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
Do you feel lucky rather than equal?
(0 for no, 2 for yes)
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Ashley Sophia is a model, actress, entrepreneur, and engineer. She applies systems thinking from her engineering background to understanding human behavior and building community pathways to independence — translating analytical expertise into accessible resources for the public.
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