Golden Retriever or Black Cat?
How your affection arrives, and what it looks like from outside
Somewhere along the way the internet decided there are two kinds of people in a relationship: the golden retriever, who is delighted you exist and shows it constantly, and the black cat, who chose you deliberately and will not be discussing it further. The joke works because it is about a real thing - how openly affection travels - and the interesting results are the two in the middle, where the outside and the inside do not match.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about how you are with someone you actually like, not about how you are at work. Four minutes.
What it measures
Two things at once: how much affection you feel, and how much of it is visible from outside. Those usually match and occasionally do not, which is where the two more interesting results come from.
Possible results
Golden Retriever
Everything you feel is on the outside of you
Black Cat
You chose them, and that was the declaration
Black Cat Outside, Golden Retriever Inside
The most misread result on this test
Golden Retriever Outside, Black Cat Inside
Everybody's favourite, and nobody knows you
Common questions
Is this based on anything?
On an internet joke, honestly, which is why it is in the Fun section. It does brush against something real - the distance between what people feel and what they show is a genuine individual difference - but no researcher has ever validated a golden retriever scale, and if one had, we would be suspicious. If you want the measured version of what this is playing with, the attachment style test on this site is the one with the evidence behind it.
Can you change which one you are?
The inside rarely moves much. The outside moves quite a lot, and that is where the useful work is - the two mixed results are both descriptions of a gap between them, and a gap can be narrowed by roughly one sentence a week said out loud. Nobody needs to become a different animal. They just need to stop having to guess.
My partner and I got the same result.
Then you already know which half of your relationship is easy. Two retrievers have a warm home and an unsaid list; two cats have an enormous amount of mutual respect and a running total of things neither has mentioned. Matching is comfortable and it removes the person who would otherwise have forced the conversation.
An honest note This one is for fun. Enjoy it, share it, but do not plan your life around it.
Try one of these next
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What's Your Sibling Relationship Really Like?
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