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The Survivor Love Styles Quiz is a thoughtful tool that helps you explore and understand how early life experiences shaped your relationship patterns.

Created by survivors for survivors, it's designed to help you make sense of how your early life experiences show up in your relationships today.

This is not a diagnostic quiz. On our platform, if you believe your early experiences have strong effects on your relationships, that's enough. We honor that belief and start from where you are.

The quiz provides you with personalized, easy to understand, survivor love styles—showing how your early life experiences may play a role in your relationships with others, as well as pointing out your unique personal strengths.

The quiz identifies how your early survival adaptations - the strategies your young mind developed to stay safe and maintain essential bonds - may still be influencing your relationships today.

The Survivor Love Styles Quiz was created by people who experienced challenging early lives. We're not psychologists. We're app developers and fellow trauma survivors﹣each on their journey. We wanted to build a supportive, empathetic resource for other people like ourselves, who might be on similar journeys.

We developed this quiz with assistance from AI tools for trauma research and organization and shaped it based on our own life experiences.

While we've done our best to create a useful tool for self-discovery we appreciate that each person's journey is unique.

Therefore it's best to view your results as possible perspectives based on common patterns in trauma survivors' relationships, not definitive answers or absolute truths. These styles represent themes we've observed across many people, but we don't know your specific experiences or where you are in your healing journey right now. They may or may not resonate with you—and that's perfectly okay too.

This quiz is built on the idea that humans are incredibly adaptive creatures. When we face challenges early in life, our brains and bodies develop creative strategies to help us survive and find connection.

These survival strategies aren't unique to humans—we see similar patterns in many other species. Animals who grow up in harsh environments develop different approaches to bonding, procreating, and protecting themselves than those raised in safety.

The same thing happens with people. Your childhood experiences shaped how your nervous system learned to love, trust, and deal with relationships. What might look like "personal issues" to others actually makes perfect sense when you understand the environment that created it and the reasons why it exists.

The quiz presents you with scenarios and asks simple yes/no questions to identify which adaptive patterns you developed. These aren't disorders or flaws—they're evidence of your remarkable ability to survive and find love under difficult circumstances.

You'll see a list of early life experiences and related questions. All are optional — you can skip, stop, or exit at any time. Proceed at your own pace. Honor your wellbeing.

Choose one category that resonates with you to begin your assessment. This helps avoid feeling overwhelmed and keeps you grounded.

Answer questions about your experiences by voting Yes or No. Answer only what feels okay to you.

Read the survivor love style that our algorithm matched to your answers for that experience category.

Pause and reflect. Check in with your feelings and take care of yourself.

If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a break from the site and come back when you're ready. Your well-being comes first, and processing memories should happen at your own pace.

At your own pace, return to explore additional experience categories when you feel ready to continue.

You can save, print or share your full guide when you're ready.

Each experience takes around 3-5 minutes to complete. Your survivor love styles may take longer to read.

Your results are based on adaptations commonly seen in people with challenging early life experiences — but we can't know your exact situation. Think of them as styles, not medical or psychological diagnoses. This quiz is not a substitute for professional therapy. Consider it an aide that may help with your therapy and self-discovery journey and discuss the results with your therapist.

Survivor love styles are the creative ways your heart learned to find connection and safety in relationships. They're not problems to fix—they're evidence of your remarkable ability to adapt and survive.

When you were young, your developing nervous system figured out ingenious strategies to get the love and protection you needed, even in difficult circumstances. These patterns made perfect sense in the environment that created them. Your brain isn't broken—it is brilliantly adaptive!

Everyone's journey is different: People develop different approaches to love based on their unique experiences, personality, and what resources were available to them. Your particular style reflects your individual story, not a one-size-fits-all response to challenging environment.

These patterns can evolve: Just as your brain learned these strategies to help you survive, it can also learn new ways of connecting as you grow and heal. Understanding your style is the first step toward choosing which patterns still serve you and which ones you're ready to outgrow.

Neuroplasticity research shows that our brains continue forming new connections throughout our lives. The survivor love styles that developed from early life experiences can be changed through conscious awareness and practice.

These survivor love styles are survival strategies and intelligent adaptations that helped you navigate unsafe or unpredictable environments. Your developing brain created exactly what you needed to survive those circumstances. Recognizing their original protective function can help you approach them with self-empathy rather than self-criticism.

Healing survivor love styles is typically a gradual process that happens in layers over time. Small, consistent changes in awareness and behavior can lead to significant shifts in how you relate to others.

Positive relationship experiences—whether with friends, partners, family, or therapists—can help change old patterns and create new, healthier ways of connecting with others.

Working with a therapist who understands trauma survivor experiences can provide specialized tools and safe space to process early life experiences. Your therapist can help you identify your unique survivor love styles, understand their origins, and develop healthier coping strategies at a pace that feels manageable.

Memories often carry intense feelings that can feel overwhelming when you're dealing with them alone. Professional guidance helps you revisit these experiences safely, without becoming retraumatized, while building strength and self-compassion.

Growing up with unpredictable caregivers—whether through addiction cycles, mood swings, or emotional flip-flopping—you developed an incredibly sensitive radar for reading people's true intentions. This awareness became your survival superpower, but now creates heightened sensitivity in relationships.

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Years of living with challenging experiences rewired your nervous system to stay alert and aware—a biological survival system that kept you safe when your world felt uncertain.

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You became a master at reading the room and caring for others. Your ability to see what people need is remarkable, but you learned that love means accepting others' challenges and find yourself drawn to people who need support.

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Life taught you that people who are supposed to stay can just leave. You became incredibly self-reliant, but you're always prepared for loss and hold back from getting too comfortable or hopeful in relationships.

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The people who were supposed to be there for you—weren't. This wasn't just loss—it was a break in trust of the core promise that every parent makes to their child. Now you're always scanning for signs that people are about to leave you.

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When your parents split, you became a shapeshifter: mirroring each parent's values, adjusting parts of yourself to keep the peace. Now you sometimes struggle to know who you are when no one's watching.

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Living with uncertainty meant your nervous system learned to stay in heightened awareness. You became a master at reading micro-expressions and energy shifts, but your body stays alert even in safe spaces.

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You became the family's emotional thermostat—constantly adjusting yourself to keep everyone else comfortable. Your ability to create peace is a superpower, but you feel responsible for everyone else's emotional well-being.

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When your family kept reshuffling, you learned that love comes with uncertainty. You became incredibly adaptable, but you love with one foot out the door, always preparing for the possibility of goodbye.

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