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Worksheet

About 10 minutes · On your own

One Thing You Haven’t Said

Find the specific thing your partner did this week that you noticed and never mentioned, and work out how to say it so it actually lands.

What this is for

Before you start

There is almost always something. A thing they did this week that you noticed, felt warmly about for four seconds, and then did not say — because it was small, or because saying it out of nowhere feels odd, or because you assumed they knew. This worksheet finds that thing and turns it into a sentence specific enough to be believed. The second half looks at the smaller currency underneath it: the moments one of you reaches for the other and the other is on their phone.

Any evening, in ten minutes, on your own. It is the tool to reach for when nothing is wrong — when you have drifted rather than fought, or when things are fine and slightly flat. It also works surprisingly well the day after a repair, when there is warmth available and nothing obvious to do with it.

The research behind it

What the evidence actually says.

Gratitude between partners has been studied fairly carefully, and the findings are consistent in a specific way. A fourteen-night diary study of 67 cohabiting couples found that receiving a thoughtful act produced both gratitude and indebtedness — but only the gratitude predicted feeling more connected and satisfied the next day, and it did so for the person expressing it as well as the person receiving it. A later set of studies found feeling appreciated predicted being appreciative, which predicted responsiveness, commitment, and still being together at a nine-month follow-up; outside observers could see the difference. And a pre-registered study of 2,193 people found that where housework was divided unequally, feeling appreciated substantially flattened the usual drop in satisfaction. On the reaching-toward half: a study of 79 couples found that how a partner responds to your good news carried more weight for the relationship than how they respond to your bad news, which is not the way most people would guess it works.

Where it runs out

All of this is correlational. The diary and observation studies cannot tell you that expressing gratitude causes closeness rather than closeness causing gratitude, and the authors of both say so plainly — the 2012 studies also lean on students in fairly new relationships, over a quarter of whom had broken up by follow-up. The appreciation study is the strongest of the set, being pre-registered and large, and it is careful to say that appreciation buffered the effect of an unequal division of labour rather than fixing the inequality. Saying the thing is cheap and there is no evidence of harm. It is not a substitute for the other person doing their share.

Our write-ups of these papers:

The papers

  1. Algoe, S. B., Gable, S. L., & Maisel, N. C. (2010). It’s the little things: Everyday gratitude as a booster shot for romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 17(2), 217–233.

    doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01273.x1,768 nightly reports, and gratitude — not indebtedness — predicting next-day connection for both partners.

  2. Gordon, A. M., Impett, E. A., Kogan, A., Oveis, C., & Keltner, D. (2012). To have and to hold: Gratitude promotes relationship maintenance in intimate bonds. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 257–274.

    doi.org/10.1037/a0028723Feeling appreciated predicting appreciativeness, responsiveness, and still being together nine months on.

  3. Gordon, A. M., Cross, E., Ascigil, E., Balzarini, R., Luerssen, A., & Muise, A. (2022). Feeling Appreciated Buffers Against the Negative Effects of Unequal Division of Household Labor on Relationship Satisfaction. Psychological Science, 33(8), 1313–1327.

    doi.org/10.1177/09567976221081872Pre-registered, 2,193 people: appreciation flattening the curve where the division of labour was unequal.

  4. Gable, S. L., Gonzaga, G. C., & Strachman, A. (2006). Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 904–917.

    doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.90479 couples, and good-news responses outweighing bad-news ones for the relationship.

Checked against the publisher record before this piece went up. If a number here cannot be traced to the paper above, it should not be here.

The One Thing You Haven’t Said worksheet

The worksheet

Nothing filled in yet

Everything you type stays in this browser, on this device. It is not sent to us, and we could not read it if we wanted to.

The thing

Something from the last week or so. Small is good. Small is in fact better — a specific small thing is far more believable than a large general one.

Write it the way you would say it to them — “you did X” rather than “they did X”. The worksheet is building a sentence you can actually use.

Still addressed to them. This is the part that makes a thank-you land: anybody can notice the act, and noticing the effort is what says you were paying attention.

Not what it says about them as a person. What it did for you, on the day.

Saying it

Not saved up for a good moment. The good moment is the thing that kills most of these.

What’s making it awkward?

Naming it makes it about four times less likely to stop you. All five of these are extremely common.

And the ones you missed

The other half of the same currency. Small moments where one of you reached — showed you something, started a story, put a hand somewhere — and the other was mid-email.

Three times they reached for you this week

They are almost never dramatic. “Look at this”, mostly.

Not to feel bad about. Just to see the shape of it — most people are surprised by how ordinary the missed ones are.

The good-news moment turns out to carry more than the bad-news one, and it takes about twenty seconds.

The sentence

Your own words, put in the order that tends to land: the act, then the effort you noticed, then what it did for you. Nothing here was written by us or by a model.

It appears here as you fill the fields above in.

One more thought, if you want it

Elena can read what you have written and add a short note at the end. This is the only thing on this page that sends anything anywhere.

Fill in a few answers first — there is nothing to read yet.

Take it with you

Printing gives you the whole worksheet on paper, with your answers in it — or with ruled lines to fill in by hand if you have not typed anything. Your browser’s print dialogue will offer “Save as PDF”.

Want us to write when the session for two opens?

We’ll send one email then, and nothing else. To be exact about what this does and does not do: it does not email you your answers — those stay on this device and we never receive them — and the worksheet itself lives at this address, so a bookmark or a printout is the way to keep it.

One email when the free session opens up. Nothing else, and no sharing your address with anyone.

Say it once, and don’t explain it.

The commonest failure here is not forgetting. It is saying the thing and then, into the slightly awkward silence, immediately explaining why you said it — which turns a piece of appreciation into a report on a worksheet you filled in. Say your sentence. Let it be a bit awkward. It is supposed to be.

Questions

What people ask about this one.

Won’t it sound fake if I’ve planned it?
It sounds fake if it is general. “You're amazing” planned or unplanned lands as nothing; “thank you for taking the bins out in the rain when you'd just sat down” could not have been said by anyone who was not paying attention, and that is what carries it. Specificity is the whole difference.
What if they don’t say anything back?
Most people do not, the first few times, and quite a lot of people get visibly awkward. The diary evidence suggests the person expressing it gets something from it too, which is worth knowing on the evenings when it appears to bounce.
I’m the one doing more. Why should I be the one being grateful?
That is a fair objection and the research does not really argue with it. Feeling appreciated buffered the drop in satisfaction from an unequal division of labour — it did not make the division equal, and nothing here suggests being grateful instead of asking for change. If the division is the actual problem, Two Circles or a session is a better use of your evening than this worksheet.
How often should I do this?
The worksheet is a one-off; the thing it is trying to install is not. Once you have done it twice you generally stop needing the sheet, because you start noticing the fourth-second thing and saying it in the moment, which is the whole objective.

When you want the other half

Do this one live, with Elena.

Your first session is free — about fifteen minutes, on your own, no card and no account. Bring what you just wrote, or bring the bit you got stuck on.

Start your free sessionHow it works →

Also on the shelf

Two more that go with this one.

Would rather take a reading first? The attachment style check-in is 12 questions, about 3 minutes, free and with no signup.

One Thing You Haven’t Said: a gratitude worksheet