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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, and then we are hurt when our partner does not do it. The Love List is our answer to that: a page each, in your own words, worked through together in the session and then taped up somewhere you both look every day.
What makes you feel loved, written down
Summary: what happens in the session
1 Write your twenty, before the session. Each of you, on your own. Twenty things that would make you feel loved.
2 Your therapist makes the vague ones concrete. One at a time, out loud, until each one names a day, a place, or the words you want to hear.
3 You read your list out loud. All twenty, to your partner. Then your partner reads theirs to you.
4 Each of you says no, item by item. Out loud, in the session, going down the list you were handed. Saying no is part of the exercise.
5 One item is done in the room. Your partner picks one off your list and does it right then. Then you swap.
6 You decide where the lists live. Before anyone leaves. Each of you takes your partner’s list home.
Each of you owns your own list, and either of you can change yours at any time.
Step 1. Write your twenty
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 research is on the side of saying it. When studies of how accurately partners guess each other’s feelings were pooled, the link to a happy relationship was small, and almost all of it came from reading negative feelings. Reading your partner’s good feelings made no clear difference.1
So we ask you to write it down. It is our own exercise, on our site as Worksheet 20, and it asks for twenty. Not wishes. Instructions your partner could follow tomorrow.
How your therapist sets it up. Twenty each, before we meet, and write them on your own. Not what you think you ought to want. What actually lands for you.
If nothing comes. Some people sit down and the page stays empty, because they genuinely do not know what makes them feel loved. That is not a failure. That is the work. For a week or two, notice what warms you and what leaves you flat, try small things, and write the list from what you find.
Watch
Harry Motro, PsyD, LMFT
Harry walks through the exercise: what an item needs to look like, and how the reading works.
Step 2. What an item looks like
Most people write them too vague the first time. Nothing is read out yet, because a vague item is where the whole thing comes apart at home.
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, and in the session the fix is the item, not the partner.
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.
Why so concrete. A vague item has to be interpreted, and a wrong guess reads as not caring. A concrete one can be done on the way home from the store, and both of you know when it happened. That is how your partner learns how to love you.
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.
The two at the top are wishes. The three underneath are the same kind of wish, written so that someone could carry them out tomorrow.
Step 3. Reading the lists aloud
Then you read your twenty out loud, to your partner rather than to your therapist, all the way down the page. Your partner listens and does not answer yet. When you are finished, you swap, and your partner reads theirs to you.
What usually happens here. Hearing it in your partner’s own voice does something a page does not. Several of the items usually turn out to be easier than you had assumed, and people often say so out loud on the spot.
Handing over the reading. Read them to him, not to me. All twenty, top to bottom. He is not answering yet, he is just listening.
Step 4. Saying no to an item
Now each of you goes back through your partner’s list and says no to the items that are beyond you. Some are more than you could manage; some you simply do not want to. Both are allowed, and both are said in the room rather than worked out at home over the following month.
Why twenty. Because you get to say no. Four or five of them going is not a problem when there are twenty, and what is left is still more than anyone could do in a week.
The noes are marked on the sheet as they are said, so nobody has to remember afterward which ones they were.
Saying no. Which ones are a no? Say them to her now, and say them plainly.
You can always say it. If any of this starts to feel like too much, you can say I am uncomfortable. That is a complete sentence. Nobody has to explain it or defend it. We stop, we look together at what is happening, and we decide as a group whether to stay with it or to understand first what is getting in the way.
Hearing a no about the item that mattered most to you can sting more than you expect, and saying no out loud to someone you love is hard in the other direction. If this is the part that gets heavy, stop it there.
Step 5. One item, in the room
Your partner picks one item off your list and does it, right then, with your therapist sitting there. Then you swap and do one of theirs. It feels staged, and most couples laugh partway through.
Doing it once in front of someone makes the first time at home a second time.
Practicing one. Pick one from her list and do it now. Yes, now, in front of me. It will feel staged. Do it anyway.
Step 6. Where the lists live
A list in a drawer is a list nobody reads, so the last few minutes go on where each one is going to hang. Somewhere you are standing still twice a day anyway, with nothing else to do.
Where it goes. Where do you brush your teeth? Tape her list up beside the mirror before you go home.
Not a folder, not a note on your phone. Taped up, at eye height, in the room nobody skips.
After the session
One a day, in any order. The aim is one item, whichever one you can manage that day. Some days it will be the easiest thing on the page, and that still counts.
When your partner does one of yours, say you noticed. When someone shares something good and their partner answers warmly, the good feeling usually outlasts the event, and couples who do that report more closeness day to day.2 A thank-you is plenty. It does not need a grade.
If an item did not land, or you have changed your mind about it, rewrite it 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 bring those. 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 said no to
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 which ones are a no, 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.
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