Which one do you mean—the rating the woman gave her partner, or the rating the woman received from him?
Either way, it’s neither good nor bad, so there’s no need to worry. You’re probably not disliked. Rather than starting with a high rating and going down, look at it positively: there’s room to improve.
For your reference.
Ratings can be given on a scale of one to five stars. So, three stars is the middle rating—basically average.
For example, if you stay at a high-end Japanese inn and it turns out to be exactly what you imagined, you might give it three stars. Since that means the price, service, and everything else were just as you expected, it seems fitting that the rating would be the middle number.
With that in mind, three stars means “it was just as I expected”—in other words, it met my expectations.
Four stars would mean your expectations were exceeded in a good way, while two stars would mean they were let down in a bad way.
Of course, people think differently, and not everyone uses the same standards. Some people, like the person asking the question, may rate things based entirely on their own subjective impressions.
In other words, even though it’s a five-point scale, some people may use it like this: one to three stars means it wasn’t what they expected, four stars means it met expectations, and five stars means it was good. That makes the middle rating of three lean toward one side of the scale.
If that’s the case, then the standards—and even the meaning of the numbers—vary from person to person.
Still, hearing that some people consider three stars on a five-point scale to mean “it didn’t meet expectations” was eye-opening. I learned that there are people who think that way.
If everyone has different standards for star ratings, then the ratings themselves aren’t really useful as a reference, are they? (Though I imagine most people are thinking, “We already know that.”)
