The story behind the science.

HighRQ wasn't built by a tech company entering the relationship market. It was built by two lifelong friends — a clinical psychologist who spent 42 years watching couples, and a software architect who has spent just as long building the kind of systems that could finally bring that work to life.

This is the story of how a career's worth of clinical insight — over ten thousand clients in all — became a tool that helps you understand yourself, strengthen the relationships you already have, and, when you're ready, find the one you've been looking for.

42
years in clinical practice
10,000+
clients seen across a career
63
psychological dimensions measured
10
areas of relationship life

Meet the founders.

HighRQ exists because of two people who have known each other most of their lives.

Dr. Steven Griggs spent forty-two years building the clinical framework. Coincidentally, Steve Ahlstrom spent the same forty-two years building the kind of software that could bring it to life.

Dr. Steven Griggs, clinical psychologist and founder of HighRQ
Dr. Steven Griggs, PhD — Founder.

Dr. Steven Griggs

Clinical psychologist. Founder.

Dr. Steven Griggs is a clinical psychologist who has worked with more than ten thousand clients across his career — individuals, couples, families, teens, professionals in crisis, people rebuilding after loss. He has watched, again and again, the same patterns play out across thousands of relationships: what helps, what harms, what predicts whether two people will actually make it.

His path into the field wasn't obvious. He grew up the son of a Navy electrician, moved a dozen times before he finished high school, and arrived at Indiana University intending to be a professional musician. He left with a degree in psychology and a conviction that the most interesting question in the world was why people do what they do to the people they love.

He went on to earn his PhD at the graduate program founded by Carl Rogers in San Diego, and spent the next 42 years in clinical practice. The HighRQ assessment is the distillation of everything he learned in that chair.

Steve Ahlstrom, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of HighRQ
Steve Ahlstrom — Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer.

Steve Ahlstrom

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer.

Steve Ahlstrom is a software architect with forty-two years of experience designing the kind of enterprise systems that move money, secure data, and quietly power the modern internet — including work for Fortune 1000 companies in financial services, energy, and payment security.

That depth is what HighRQ is built on. Dr. Griggs spent decades developing the clinical framework. Steve translated it into a working platform — architecting the data model, designing the systems, and engineering the experience that allows a 63-dimension psychological assessment to actually reach the person taking it.

Most of what makes HighRQ feel modern — and most of what is coming next — originated with him.

How they met.

They met in the summer of 1969, in Lemoore, California. Both of their fathers were stationed at the naval air base there, and the two boys spent that summer the way two boys with nothing else to do spend a summer: staying up until three in the morning, playing gin rummy, and listening to rock and roll. They have been close friends ever since.

More than fifty years later, that friendship is the reason HighRQ exists in the form it does. The psychological model and data framework were developed by Dr. Steven Griggs. The platform itself was engineered by Steve Ahlstrom.

The realization that wouldn't go away.

Over those decades, Dr. Griggs began noticing something that bothered him. Couples would arrive in his office, often after years of conflict, and tell him how they had found each other. Many had used dating apps and matchmaking services. They had filled out elaborate compatibility questionnaires. They had checked boxes about politics, religion, hobbies, height, income, body type.

And yet, sitting in front of him, they were fighting over the very things those questionnaires had screened for.

He realized that the entire industry was measuring the wrong variables. Not because the questions were poorly designed, but because the questions were aimed at the surface — at preferences, demographics, and appearances. Not at the deeper psychological dimensions that actually predict whether two people will be able to navigate a life together.

He had been watching what those deeper dimensions actually were for decades. He just hadn't named them yet.

Building a different kind of assessment.

In session after session, Dr. Griggs began stopping his clients mid-conversation. When a couple was clearly communicating well — really seeing each other, really connecting — he would ask: "What's happening for you right now? What are you experiencing?"

He took what amounted to psychological biopsies. Frozen moments of functional connection, captured in real time. He gathered these reports across dozens of couples over several years. The same qualities kept appearing. Empathy. Altruism. Authenticity. The capacity for repair after conflict. The willingness to be honest about small things before they became big things.

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Dr. Griggs drew on validated psychological research throughout — established findings on attachment, emotional regulation, communication patterns, and the deeper psychological dimensions that decades of academic work had already identified as relevant to relationship outcomes. He combined that research with what he was seeing in real time, in his own office, with real couples. His doctoral training in psychometrics and statistical analysis gave him the tools to turn what he was observing into something measurable, comparable, and reliable.

The result is the HighRQ assessment — a comprehensive measurement of your Relationship Quotient across 63 distinct psychological dimensions.

What your RQ actually is.

Your RQ is a single number, like an IQ score, that summarizes how you show up across 63 psychological dimensions of relationship behavior. The dimensions are grouped into ten areas — character, emotional intelligence, communication, conflict and repair, intimacy, values, and others — that together capture the patterns you bring into every connection in your life.

It is not a personality quiz. It is not a dating profile (there's a place for that coming soon). It is a comprehensive picture of your relational self, drawn from decades of clinical practice and validated psychological research, and delivered to you in a form you can actually use.

Whether you're working on yourself, navigating dating, or strengthening a relationship you're already in, your RQ is where it starts.

To learn more about how the assessment works and what each of the ten areas measures, see The Science →

Built to reach people who could never reach Dr. Griggs.

A clinical psychologist can only sit with one person — or one couple — at a time. That has always been the bottleneck of the field: real clinical insight has historically been available only to people who could find a good professional, afford ongoing sessions, and live near enough to attend them.

HighRQ was built to change that. By pairing Dr. Griggs's clinical wisdom with cutting-edge AI, we've created something the field has never had: a way to deliver deeply personalized relational insight at a scale and depth that simply wasn't possible before — to anyone who wants it. Not as a substitute for professional support, but as a way to put what he has learned within reach of people who would never set foot in his office.

Who this is for.

HighRQ is built for anyone curious about how they actually show up in relationships — and what to do about it.

Singles

who want to understand themselves before their next chapter — to recognize their own patterns, lean into their strengths, and stop repeating the mistakes that quietly shape every relationship they enter.

Couples

who love each other and want to understand each other more deeply — and couples who keep getting stuck in the same arguments and want to know why.

Anyone not currently dating

who simply wants a clearer, more honest view of themselves — the kind of self-knowledge that changes how you show up at work, in friendships, and at home.

People ready for our upcoming dating community

where every member has taken the assessment, and matches are built on the deep compatibility factors that actually predict whether a relationship will last.

Whatever your starting point, HighRQ gives you a clearer view of what's actually happening in your relationships — and a more intentional path forward.

A note on what comes next.

"The deepest principle in human nature," wrote William James, "is the craving to be appreciated."

Over 4 decades of practice has taught Dr. Griggs that almost everything worth working on in a relationship — with a partner, with a family, with yourself — comes back to some version of being seen, being understood, being known.

That is what HighRQ was built to do. Not with shortcuts. Not with quizzes. Not with surface-level matching that fails the moment a real conflict arises. But with decades of clinical practice, decades of validated research, and a methodology designed to help you build the relationship you've been looking for — whether it's with someone new, someone you've known for years, or yourself.

Take the Assessment →Learn how the science works