Read seven source statements in the relationship you chose
Read CTL-I 2018 items 1–7, including the reversed boredom statement, an exact calculation, a voluntary conversation and the limits of a new working translation.
Items 1–6 retain the selected 1–4 values; item 7 uses 5 minus the selected value. The seven-item keyed sum is 7–28 and its mean is 1–4.
The source domain and its seven items
Kapusta and colleagues’ 2018 CTL-Inventory places these seven items under interest in the other person’s life project. They ask about knowing and sharing plans, sharing success, feeling enriched by a partner’s growth, sadness when the partner is unhappy, empathy and boredom. These topics are not identical requirements. A summary records your endorsements of these particular statements; it does not observe how much information you actually know or establish whether your partner felt understood.
Follow the reversed item in one exact example
For raw choices 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2 and 1, items 1–6 remain 4, 3, 2, 4, 3 and 2. Item 7 is reversed to 5−1 = 4. The keyed sum is 22 and the mean is 22/7, displayed as 3.14. Calculation retains the unrounded mean. Reversing an item is a mathematical key, not a judgement that experiencing boredom is wrong. No sum or mean here becomes an overall capacity-to-love score.
Invite a story without requesting private plans
In an ordinary conversation, you might say: “You mentioned a project you care about. Would you like to tell me what matters to you about it?” The invitation leaves room for a short answer or no answer. A counterexample is demanding a partner’s full future plan because a test supposedly requires access. Interest is not permission to inspect messages, set priorities for another person or insist that every success be shared. The other person keeps control of what they disclose.
Higher and lower endorsement without a love grade
A larger keyed mean means greater endorsement of the positively keyed statements and less endorsement of the reversed boredom item in this attempt. A smaller value describes the opposite pattern. Neither identifies a good or bad partner, a stable amount of empathy or a population percentile. Different combinations can have the same sum. Boredom may concern a situation rather than a person, and feeling another person’s sadness is not an obligation to share every mood or abandon emotional boundaries.
Keep opportunity and the chosen relationship in view
Work schedules, disability, stress, separation, access to shared time and how recently a relationship ended can affect what is available to recall. The form does not isolate those influences. The source asks people to consider a current or last important relationship; that instruction does not make different relationships directly comparable. These seven items also overlap conceptually with interest and empathy discussed elsewhere on the site. Their presence does not establish a new independent trait or permit conversion to another questionnaire.
You can stop without filling a gap
This working projection has the source’s four numeric choices and no NA. It requires all forty-one valid selections before any personal domain result, not merely these seven answers. If a statement is irrelevant, unfamiliar, hard to judge or something you do not want to answer, you may stop and read all six full public guides instead. Do not choose a low value to stand for missing experience. Stopping does not generate a substitute result or a conclusion about your capacity.
A licensed 2018 item source and new website reading
The English items reproduce Table 1 of Kapusta et al. (2018), Measuring the Capacity to Love: Development of the CTL-Inventory, under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. Chinese is a new FermatMind working translation; the web instructions and explanations are adaptations. The 2018 German and Polish research does not establish validity of this English display, the new Chinese or online interpretation. Current author-site wording differs and is not substituted here. No local norms, language equivalence or meaningful-change threshold is claimed.
Keep one voluntary question, or finish here
If useful, privately note one aspect of your partner’s life you would like to understand and whether asking about it would be welcome. You can choose not to ask and the other person can decline. No result requires more disclosure, contact, affection or continuation of a relationship. A public guide link contains general information rather than your answers or mean. You may compare the other readings as topics, without ranking six domains or turning the largest number into your main love capacity.