Show the full module text
Module 20 — The Love List
The session where you each write twenty very specific things that make you feel loved, read them to each other, and put them up where you will see them every day.
Most of us never ask for what we actually want. Then we get angry with our partner for not doing it. This module is our Love List: twenty very specific things that make you feel loved, written down, read to each other in session, and put up where you will see them every day.
What this is about
You expect your partner to know what makes you feel loved. Your partner expects the same of you. Neither of you says it out loud, and then both of you are hurt that it did not happen.
We expect our partner to read our minds. In real life that does not happen.
The Love List is the fix. It is our own exercise, on our site as Worksheet 20. Each of you writes twenty things that would make you feel loved. Not wishes. Instructions your partner could follow tomorrow.
The same wish, written twice. Be more affectionate.
Reach for my hand when we walk, hold it gently, and say I love you when you let go.
The first leaves your partner guessing. The second can be done on the way home from the store. The more concrete the ask, the more likely it gets met, and that is how your partner learns how to love you.
Watch
Harry Motro, PsyD, LMFT
Harry walks through the exercise: what an item needs to look like, and how the reading works.
What happens in the session
Both of you write your twenty before the session. Most people write them too vague the first time, so the session starts with what an item looks like. These are from real lists.
Three items from real lists. Text me at lunchtime on Wednesday with one thing you appreciate about me, and add a smiley.
Sit on my side of the sofa, let me put my feet on your lap and give me a foot rub, but stay silent while we’re watching TV.
When you come in from work, tell the kids to wait before hugging them, hug me first, and tell me you appreciate all I’ve done during the day.
Every item gets this question. A vague item asks your partner to work out what you meant and then get it right, and a wrong guess reads as not caring.
The List Session
1 Write your twenty. Each of you, before the session. Every item concrete enough that your partner could do it tomorrow without asking you a question. A day, a place, the words you want to hear.
2 Read, and say what you can’t do. You read yours aloud; your partner reads theirs. Then each of you says which items you cannot do. That is allowed. Nobody has to do all twenty.
3 Practice one in the room. Your partner picks one item from your list and does it, right then. Then you swap. It feels staged. That is fine; it is practice.
4 Post the lists. Your partner’s list goes where you will see it morning and night, like where you brush your teeth. You look at it and think, I can do one of these today.
Each of you owns your own list, and either of you can change yours at any time. If your partner tried an item and it did not land, change the item and put up a new list.
Why twenty. Because you get to say no. Some items your partner cannot do, or will not, and they say so in the session. With twenty on the page there are always enough left that someone can do.
The four struck lines are not a failure. Saying no to an item, out loud, in the session, is part of the exercise, and the twenty exist so that after the noes there is still plenty left.
Making it concrete. Text me is not an item yet. Text me when? Lunchtime. Which day? Wednesday. Saying what? One thing you appreciate about her. Now it is something you can do.
Saying no. You do not have to do all twenty. Which ones can you not do? Say them now, so she hears it from you.
Practicing one. Pick one from her list and do it now. Yes, now. It will feel staged. Do it anyway.
Posting it. Where do you brush your teeth? Put her list there. Twice a day you will see it and think, I could do one of these today.
The way this goes wrong. She writes be more affectionate. He hugs her at the door every evening for two weeks. What she wanted was his hand on the walk after dinner. She decides he did not really try; he decides nothing he does counts. Neither of them is wrong. The item was too vague to be done. In session the fix is the item, not the partner: hold my hand on the walk after dinner, and say I love you when you let go.
If you cannot write the list. Some people sit down and nothing comes, because they do not know what makes them feel loved. That is not a failure. Then that is the work. For a week or two, pay close attention day by day to what warms you and what leaves you flat, and run little experiments to find out. The list gets written from what you notice.
Why we do it this way
The belief under you should not have to ask is that a loving partner just knows. Thousands of neurodiverse couples have shown us something else: two people who love each other, each waiting to be read, and each quietly keeping score.
The research agrees. When studies of how accurately partners guess each other’s feelings were pooled, the link to a happy relationship was small, and it came almost entirely from reading negative feelings. Guessing what makes your partner feel good made no clear difference.1
Saying what lands is the job of the person who knows the answer.
Why so concrete. A concrete item can be done, and you both know when it was done. A vague one has to be interpreted, and a wrong interpretation reads as not caring. For a couple with two kinds of brain, that gap does most of the damage.
A list is not a contract. It is your current best description of what makes you feel loved, and you can change it whenever that changes.
One more thing decides whether any of this survives: what happens when your partner does one. When a person shares something good and their partner responds warmly, the good feeling is larger, and couples where that is the habit report more closeness and day-to-day satisfaction.2 So say you noticed. Do not grade it.
After the session
The lists go up where you decided, and each of you looks at your partner’s list morning and night. The aim is one item a day, whichever one you can do that day. When your partner does one of yours, say so.
Where you brush your teeth is a place you stand twice a day with nothing else to do. The list goes there so that seeing it costs no memory at all.
If an item did not land, or you have changed your mind about it, change the item and put up a new list. The workbook below holds your twenty, the items you said no to, and where the lists live.
The one thing, if that is all you have. If twenty is too many this week, write five your partner could do tomorrow and put them up where you brush your teeth. The rest can be written in the session.
Your workbook
Your answers save to this device only - we cannot see a word of what you write. This one is your Love List, the items you said no to on your partner's, and where the lists live.
Your twenty
Each one concrete enough that your partner could do it tomorrow without asking you a question. A day, a place, the words you want to hear.
Your twenty, one per line. Start each one: I feel loved when you...
Could your partner do every one of these tomorrow without asking you a question? — All twenty, Most of them, Some are still wishes, not instructions, I could not write the list yet
If you could not write it: what did you notice this week that made you feel loved, and what did you try?
Your partner's list
In their words.
The items on your partner's list you cannot do
The one item from your partner's list you did in the session
Where it lives
Somewhere you see it morning and night.
Where is your partner's list posted? — Beside the bathroom mirror, Somewhere else I see morning and night, It is not up yet
This week: which of your items did your partner do, and did you say you noticed?
Where this comes from
Every source below was checked against the published record. They are grouped by the kind of evidence they are, so the numbers may not run straight down the page — a number points back to where the source is used in the lesson.
Research discussion
The Love List is the practice’s own exercise, in the tradition of behavior-exchange and caring-days work that goes back to the 1960s and has never been isolated in a trial. Its instructions are on Worksheet 20. The claim the lesson makes is modest: a concrete ask gets met more often than a vague one, twenty items leave room to say no, and a list you see twice a day gets done more often than one you have to remember.
The lesson cites two studies. The empathic-accuracy meta-analysis1 pools 21 studies and 2,739 participants: accuracy about a partner’s inner states correlates with satisfaction at 0.13, carried by accuracy about negative states at 0.17, with accuracy about positive states at 0.07 and not significant. It comes from general-population couples in laboratory paradigms and says nothing about neurodiverse couples specifically; the lesson uses it against a belief, not for a technique.
The capitalization studies2 are four diary and questionnaire studies from 2004. All are correlational, so they show that warm, active responding goes with better relationships, not that coaching it causes them.
Who this research was done with. The studies behind this module, neither of them of neurodiverse couples, drew heavily on white, comparatively well-off, English-speaking participants. If your household carries pressures those samples did not — money, immigration, racism, disability, unsafe housing — the practice still applies, but the room you are practicing in is harder. That is the room, not you.
Peer-reviewed research
1. Sened H, Lavidor M, Lazarus G, Bar-Kalifa E, Rafaeli E, Ickes W (2017) Empathic accuracy and relationship satisfaction: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Family Psychology, 31(6), 742-752. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000320 Meta-analysis of 21 studies (2,739 participants) using the dyadic interaction paradigm. Empathic accuracy showed a small but significant association with relationship satisfaction (r = .134); accuracy for negative emotions was more closely related (r = .171) than accuracy for positive emotions (r = .068, not significant); gender and procedural variations did not moderate the association. Limitation: general-population couples in laboratory paradigms; correlational.
2. Gable SL, Reis HT, Impett EA, Asher ER (2004) What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 228-245. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228 Four studies of capitalization, sharing personal positive events with others. Sharing was associated with increased daily positive affect and well-being beyond the event itself, more so when others responded actively and constructively; close relationships in which a partner typically responded enthusiastically showed higher relationship well-being, including intimacy and daily marital satisfaction. Limitation: correlational and diary-based; shows an association, not that coaching the response causes the benefit.
Further reading
• Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center (2026) Worksheet 20: Love List (and the earlier Love List Instructions and Loom walkthrough). Practice materials, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. https://www.neurodiversecouplescounseling.com/worksheets/love-list The practice's exercise: at least twenty specific, actionable items; read aloud in session; each partner says which items they cannot do; tape your partner's list up where you will see it and do one thing a day; either partner may change their list at any time. Limitation: a clinical exercise in the behavior-exchange tradition, developed in use.
Twenty to write, and somewhere to put them
The Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center works with couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD. The list session reads the practice's Love List aloud, lets each of you say what you cannot do, practices one item in the room, and decides where the lists go before anyone leaves. Therapy for clients in California, coaching worldwide, all by telehealth. A first conversation costs nothing.
Up next