Quick Connection Exercise for Couples

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Want to boost connection & appreciation in a matter of minutes? In this episode, we work our way through this short activity, One Thing I Love About You. You can try it with a partner or anyone else you love. It’s simple and you can power through it in a few minutes if you keep things short and sweet. Use these prompts to get started:

• One thing I love about your body…
• One thing I love about your voice…
• One thing I love about your energy/aura…
• One thing I love about your touch…
• One thing I love about your personality…
• One thing I love about your character…
• One thing I love about how you interact with others…
• One thing I love about how you treat me…
• One thing I love about your…

This exercise is excerpted from The Ultimate Guide to Seduction and Foreplay: Techniques & Strategies for Mind-Blowing Pleasure by Jessica O’Reilly & Marla Renee Stewart. This book is full of advice and activities designed to help you better understand and communicate sexual needs, desires, and values. Order your copy here.

Adam and Eve are extending their offer of 50% off almost any item + FREE Shipping + some FREE goodies with code DRJESS.

Rough Transcript:

This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health or other professional advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.

Quick Connection Exercise for Couples

Participant #1:
You’re listening to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast. Sex and relationship advice you can use tonight. Welcome to the Sex with Dr. Jess podcast. I’m your cohost, Brandon Ware, here with my always lovely other half, Dr. Jess. I’m just here celebrating, man. I’m celebrating you. It’s your birthday. What was yesterday? Kind of a big deal. Yeah, such a big deal that I was out of town for work and just flew in this morning. That’s all good. You come pick me up? Not made you, but you came 06:00 a.m.. I’ve been up since, I guess, the equivalent of 02:00 A.m. Here, and we’re feeling good. I’m actually feeling fine. I’ve got the adrenaline rush because I just have started another speaking tour. I’m finally feeling like I’m getting back to work. Pretty excited. We are going to do a quickie podcast on that note, because I have another flight to catch. Yeah. Which is greater flight off to an exciting place for other work prospects. So. And Brandon’s joining me. Looking forward to it in Barcelona. Barcelona? You have a friend in Spain. Brandon has the equivalent of I guess it’s the modern day pen pal. Yes, I have a penpal. I do. But explain what you do, because I think it’s really cool. I went on to a website where you can communicate with other people who are trying to learn your language. So I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for years. And I’m off and on and off and on. And I think speaking the language is a great way to learn it. So I went on and posted a message and Jose, who lives in Spain, replied, and we’re now great friends. And the communication is slow and steady. So you meet with him 30 minutes. Is that what it is? 30, 45 minutes? And we chat and you spend half of the time speaking English and helping him with his English. And then he spends half the time I spend half the time screwing up his English

Participant #1:
participle. Yeah. I was like, I don’t know. That’s just not right. But you know how to say it. You just don’t know the names of the parts of speech because you’re cooler than me. Exactly. All right. With that said, we’re going to dive into our conversation today. As I said, it’s going to be a quick one. And this is The Lovers Inquiry from The Ultimate Guide to Seduction and Foreplay, which I co authored with Marla Rene Stewart. And I really feel so good about this book because I think it’s not just chock full of, I think, meaningful theories and some case studies and examples, but also exercises that people can do on their own or with a partner. And yeah, I wish as an author, I don’t know how much I can say here, but depending on which publisher you have, that’s kind of how much circulation your book gets. And I just think that this book is how do you say it. It’s like fighting below its weight class. It’s punching below punching. I think that’s what it is. It’s kicking below anyhow really cool book. Please do check it out. There’s links in my Instagram. It’s on all the big sites, as well as check your local bookstores. Before we get to that, need to shout out our sponsor, Adamandeve.com. They’ve extended the 50% code this week. So 50% off almost any single item, plus free shipping and a bunch of free little gifts for you, too, with Code Doctor Jess. Everything from latex wear to lingerie strapons to butt plugs and everything in between. Because there’s a lot of space in between. I guess there is. Maybe not a lot of space between the strapon and the butt plug, but they have nipple clamps. Yeah. Actual space. Yeah. There’s probably not too much, but go have some fun. Yes, Adam and Eve.com, Code Doctor Jess. And so let’s move into our lovers inquiry. So this exercise is called One Thing I Love About You and it’s in the section around emotional erotic connection. So we’re trying to help people to understand the roles emotions play in sexual desire and arousal and pleasure and fulfillment and give people exercises just to keep talking about what they want, what they don’t want, what their boundaries are. But this specific exercise is about appreciation and learning to identify what you appreciate, but also to verbalize it. So as usual, Brandon is going to be put on the spot. Although you did read the book, this is the first one you’ve actually read cover to cover covered a couple of times when you are helping me comb through it. So this is one thing I love about you, and it goes through a series of things you love about a partner or a friend or yourself. Most of them could be used platonically, I think. Maybe only. Oh, no, I think you could appreciate anyone’s body. So here it is. One thing I love about your body is one thing I love about your voice. One thing I love about your energy. One thing I love about your touch. One thing I love about your personality, your character, about the way you interact with others, about how you treat me. And you can just go on and on and add your own. Are you going to be firing these questions at me? Do I have to answer on the spot or do I get to go into detail? Yeah, we can just chat a little, knowing that. Also, we have a flight to catch. Yeah, for sure. So do you want to start or do you want me to start? Let’s do it. I’ll start. Okay. So one thing I love about your body is and I want you to, like say the whole sentence because I think it’s good practice.

One thing I love. There’s so many things I love about your body, but right now this isn’t one thing, the one area that I love. I love your face. I love your smile. I love your eyes. There’s so much comfort I take out of it. There’s so much, like, there’s support, empathy. It’s also you give me the sexy eyes, which I like too. I mean, you’re not doing it right now. I am not. But no, right now you’re giving me the confused eyes. Do I give you sexy eyes more than I roll my eyes? Yes, definitely. And I know people are like, that’s silly. You love your face. It just calms me down. I feel like when my heart is racing and I think about your face and I think about, you know, I’m stumbling over my words, but that’s what I right now. I also love your butt. Thank you. I love you. Okay. One thing. I love everything about your body. I love your arms. I love just, like, how big you are around me, and it feels strong and I don’t know, I just really like your arms. I always liked them when I met you, and I still really like them. Cool. I’ll remember to keep working on them. No, but I like them anyway. I don’t know. There I think because they envelope me and maybe it’s not even about, like, size, but they just feel strong. You’re stronger than me, for sure. It’s a competition. Everything’s a competition. You went. All right, I’ll go first on this one, and I’m kind of scared for you to have to answer this one. One thing I love about your voice is just that it’s so calming, so soothing. I’m totally an auditory lover. An auditory person. I’m very, very attracted to voices, which I’m sure people are thinking, well, that’s ironic because your voice is so annoying. Just. But it is what it is. I really just love the tone of your voice. It’s often measured and calm and. Oh, I also like, kind of when you get mad. Really? Okay, not me. But when you sometimes because you’re so calm, when you freak out about something, it’s kind of. Yeah, usually or something stupid. Can’t believe the worms are in this thing. The what? It’s something dumb. Yeah. I’ll be like in a potted plant. I get mad at worms. You should get mad at worms and potato bugs. I don’t like potato bugs. So what’s the line? I have to say one thing I love about your voice. No, I do have something I love about your voice. So the one thing I love about your voice is the energy in your voice. I love the positivity in your voice, and I think that carries through from your attitude and your approach. But every time I talk to you, it’s always uplifting. So the energy in your voice is really what resonates with me. Thank you. I’m going to leave it at queue because I have a lot to say on that, but I’m just going to soak it up so good next is one thing I love about your energy or your aura. The one thing I love about your energy and your aura is that it’s loving and it’s caring. I feel like you love and care for everyone, even the people who bother you. I think that you still want good for them, which I think even they don’t realize. But I think you’re always approaching things from that perspective, which I value. Thank you. Does that include the guy who called me a washed up bar Hag or something last week? I want to punch him in the face. Yeah. Do I still feel love for him? But I do feel love for him. That’s what I said to you badly, that somebody felt that they needed to say that on Twitter. Like, I wasn’t even talking to him. He just saw a video of me and said, oh, what did you call me? A washed up bar skank, whatever it is. How did he know that I worked in a bar and that I dressed like skanky? How did he know that even in that situation, you still said, I feel bad that this person feels this way. I feel bad. And I wonder what they’re going through, that they feel the need to convey this to me on this platform. And for me, I immediately go to the knee jerk reaction, which is just anger and frustration and wanting to fire something back. But you approach it from a different angle, and it makes me do that or at least want to do it. So your actions make me want to be a better person. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I love that there’s this back and forth where, I mean, I think that I do the sum of the same for you. I’m not sure how, but there definitely are circumstances where I’m sure you want to take a page out of my book and I want to take a page out of yours. I think living a life like that means that inevitably things are going to get better. I hope, as you describe it, I’m like, is it that I’m empathetic or is it an avoidance mechanism, a trauma response? Because I don’t want to fight with anyone, but we’ll leave that for another time.

Okay, baby, your energy, you’re very present. One thing I really love is that you’re just really present. And I said that from the moment I met you, that when you are looking at me or talking to someone, you’re really into them. And yeah, it’s a lot. When you look at me, it feels piercing and it’s lovely. But yeah, I just really appreciate that. I mean, also, you know what? I’m going to leave it at one thing. I mean, I should be literal. It’s one thing, Jessica. One thing. One thing I love about your touch. You’re so good at balancing being gentle and being rough and knowing when or reading what it is I like or responding to my feedback. One thing I love about your touch is your ice cold fingers. What about my toes? Don’t leave my toes. I know my gosh. Your hands and feet are always so cold. And just to play and have a little bit of fun on that, I like it because it makes me think I can do something for you. I can warm your hands. I can warm your feet. Can you, though? I don’t know. I hope I can increase the blood flow to those peripheries, but I think maybe in this dialogue, in this conversation, it doesn’t always have to be. I don’t have to spend ten minutes thinking about things. You can just kind of fire off. Right. And have some fun with it for sure. All right, let’s do that. One thing I love about your personality. One thing I love about your personality is, okay, you’re so funny. You’re so funny. There you go. It’s on the record. It’s been recorded. It’s on the interweb forever. I got to tell you, I got to give this workshop yesterday, and it was so fun just joking around again, like getting to land my regular jokes and on the spot come up with new jokes. Then it’s just I am hilarious. What was it? I think I’m hilarious. But, Babe, that’s exactly what I would say about you. One thing I love about your personality is that you make me laugh. You make old people laugh. You can also joke around with kids. Your sense of humor is immature. Immature. Oh, my gosh. Go watch me almost pee my pants on Jesse’s Instagram page when we were playing cards against humanity with how old are your cousins? Ten and twelve or ten and twelve. Yes. So we bought them the family edition. Yes, I should have said that, sir. And we were playing cards against humanity. And the card was me and my friends were not into dolls anymore. We’re more into oh, no. Me and my friends, we don’t play with dolls anymore. We’re more into blank now. And so I had a card and it was a last round winner take all. I had a card my nasty cousin Tammy or something like that. My nasty cousin something. So it would have been. It would have been a winner. Me and my friends, we don’t play with dolls anymore. We’re more into my nasty cousin Tammy now. But I didn’t play it because I was like, oh, this is a family game with my two cousins and their mom. And they’re like, my cousin’s kids anyhow, what did she play? Me and my friends, we’re not into dolls anymore. We’re into my mom’s friend Donna now. And at the time, if you look at that Instagram video, my eyelid, like, my eyebrows pops up because the shock when I read that it hurt so bad. I was laughing. I couldn’t even talk. I just want to watch that video over and over again because your laughter is infectious. Your pure joy in it is infectious. It was the best. I don’t feel like I laugh that hard that often anymore. And it felt so good. It felt like crying. You were crying. I was crying because I was filming it because the whole game, he was just having too much fun with his kids version. So the options were my mom’s friend Donna ice pee, which for some reason that was funny. Buttholes buttholes. That was super fun. Anything else about, like, wet farts or something like that? Yeah. But I mean, listen, you got to know your judge when you’re playing that game and play immature fart, poop butt hole jokes. And I’m going to laugh. If you’re not familiar with cards against humanity, there’s a main card, and then everywhere, it’s like there’s a fill in the blank usually, and then everyone else gets to play their cards to fill in the blank. And then the person with the main card picks the winner. So I should have given some context there, but it’s been around a while. I think most people know it. So back to this. Your personality, it is absolutely your sense of humor that I appreciate most. And actually, when we think about the language of this, it’s not about hierarchy. I appreciate this the most. It’s just one thing so we could do it faster, but one of us is wordy.

One thing I love about your character is that you just do the right thing. Yeah, I was going to say the same. Yeah. I actually think that is a core value that unites us. I think also I look at my parents marriage, and although they’re not together, I think that was the important core value and what I took from both of them. And I think it came from my grandparents, at least on my mom’s side. I don’t know my dad’s side, but really, it was about honesty. And that doesn’t mean I’m always honest. And I haven’t done bad things and I haven’t done things that I regret. I know exactly what you’re thinking about right now. I’m thinking about this thing that I did when I was 20, and somebody brought it up recently. My dad brought it up last week, and I’m like, he can’t remember anything at all, but he remembers the story and likes to embarrass me with it. And also, I feel really bad about this thing that I did. I don’t know that it was. Should I just tell the story? No, I don’t think you should. I think you should just let it go. And I think it was something that happened. It was so bad. No one should know. No, I’m just going to tell it. I think that we all do bad things. What is the saying? Let sleeping dogs lie. Oh, my gosh. Okay, you know what? You’re a better judge of everything than me. So we’ll leave it at that another time. But anyhow, I did something that I regretted, and my dad was there, and he is bringing it up still. The character piece is good that we took from our parents, but the holding it over so much. All right. We agreed on the same thing for character there. Okay. One thing I love about how you interact with others. One thing I love about how you interact with others is I love how you make people feel included. I like how no matter what we’re doing, you always want to make sure that everybody is having a good time, comfortable, well fed, they’re not thirsty. They have a place to sit and that they’re enjoying themselves. So I really appreciate I love that about you. I know that you’ll always take care of everyone. I always feel like I’m the host, even if I’m not hosting. Yes. You absolutely. That wine doesn’t go with that meat. No. What I love about the way you interact with us is that you’re just charming like people like you. And I love that I can bring you anywhere. I love to show you off. And I don’t mean your appearance. I mean just your personality. I know that I can take you anywhere with any group, and you’re going to either entertain or sit back and listen and kind of know when it’s time to step up and know when it’s time to sit back. That’s something I’ve only learned over the last handful of years. But yes, I feel like there is a time to speak and there is a time to listen, and I’m trying to do my best to know when to do that. I think it’s quite intuitive for you, honestly. I know that you’re more conscious of it now and more conscious of the different intersections and reasonings behind it, but I think you’ve always had an intuition for it. I’m learning a little bit every day. So how many more do we have? Let’s do one more. All right. One thing I love about how you treat me. The one word I have for the way you treat me is that you’re supportive. Anything I want to do, anything at all, become a frickin sexologist, like have this job that keeps me away all the time. But I love it. Any of the weird stuff that I don’t know any interest I have. Like, I want to collect wine or I want to collect wine. What’s the third thing I want to collect wine or, like, different investments that I wanted to make or companies that I’ve wanted to support through investment. I just feel like you’re always on board. So give me that line again. The one thing I love about how you treat me. How you treat me. I would have said supportive, too, so to not piggyback off that. I also love how you challenge me. I love how kind of the opposite of that where when I do bring? Well, no, but in a caring way. I feel like when I have an idea, when I have a concept, when I have something, you’re not a yes person. No. You’re not always going to just unilaterally agree with me behind closed doors, like when we’re having a conversation, you know, the Jamaican side where the answer is always no. Big Mike. Mike, I’m inclined to be self critical here, but I’m just going to let this flow. No, but I do. I love that there’s always that caring, supportive kind of questioning, but not in a way that makes me feel like what I’ve asked is silly or not, you know, is unintelligent or anything like that. It’s more just like, have you thought about this or have you thought about that? And honestly, I feel like it makes me or it makes me make more accurate decisions. So if I didn’t say supportive, that’s the first thing I thought of. I would say that gentle kind of questioning. Thank you for that.

All right, well, thank you. So that was short and sweet, right? Lovers inquiry. One thing I love about you. We’ll post the prompts in the show notes, and hopefully people will give it a try. I would love for people to do it about themselves. Could you do that super quickly? Yeah, absolutely. And we don’t have to do all of them. I don’t know if you have to love your voice, but one thing you like about your body, that’s the question. My neck. Really? It’s really weird, but I do like my neck. I don’t know why. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, I won’t get into it, but yes. One thing you like about your own energy. Oh, wow. Actually, Jesus put me on the spot. My own energy, I think. I’m always trying. I’m always pushing through. I feel like I’m always making an effort. I don’t know if that really answers a question. Fair enough. Anything you like about yourself is good. I’m going to lob this one up for you. One thing you love about your own touch. It’s soft. It’s so caring. It’s strong, but yeah. And rhythmic. And it’s at a medium pace. How did I love that episode? Remind me of Adam Sandler’s. Medium pace. Yeah. What do you like about your own personality? I know what you’re going to say. I think I’m funny. I think I sell some jokes sometimes. One thing you like about your character,

Participant #1:
honestly, it feels weird to answer these questions. Like, if I had to be honest, I feel uncomfortable saying good stuff about yourself, saying good things about myself. And what does that say? Right. I think it’s human. Nobody wants to get up here and brag. No, we want to humbrate. Yeah. I do think ethically, I always try to do the right thing. I think that it’s important to me time when I haven’t, it eats at me. Good thing my dad wasn’t there at the time. You didn’t oh, my God. One thing you like about the way you interact with others or treat others, I think is the better. I think I try to treat others with respect. I think it’s very important. I don’t care who you are, meaning like what you do, where anything. I feel like everybody is deserving of my respect. Yeah. And you’re quite loving toward people

Participant #1:
kind. But I feel like everybody is as a default, you should have my respect and my kindness. I feel like that’s the minimum I should be offering every single person that I meet. I don’t know if we can flip this one around. One thing you love about how you treat yourself, do you practice self compassion? I don’t, but I’ve started to excuse me, I’ve been trying to be more forgiving of myself lately. And I don’t know how it’s working, but I think it does make me generally feel a little bit better, like just cutting myself some slack, because I think the idea before was always like, go hard with everything that you do, whether it’s work, it’s play, it’s personal. And lately I’m just like, you know what, I’ve got to take it easy today or I’m going to take some time. And I’ve been doing some meditative, just short breathing practice. And you know what? I think it’s feeling better. Let’s check back in on that in another few months. We talk so much about self care in our culture, but I think self compassion is something we need to talk about even more. Well, it’s a new year for you. You’re 44. Yes, I am. Cinco Dos, as they say. I’m just kidding. I’m learning Spanish. I know. Thank you. It was a bad joke. I got it. I totally didn’t get it. And we’re in the Year of the Tiger, too. We didn’t talk about that. This is my mom’s year, I think. Is it? Yeah. So it’s a fresh start, a year to practice self compassion. So hopefully, folks, hopefully you’ll do the same. And hopefully you’ll also give this exercise a try on your own or with a partner or with anyone that you love. One thing I love about you, you can check the show notes. And thanks for doing that, Babe. Yes, thank you. That was great. And you know what? I’m going to give a shout out to somebody who fired me a note the other day, kind of came in at a really nice time, and it was just a really nice, supportive, appreciative message. And you know what? Thank you. I appreciate that. I hope to kind of dive into your question a little bit more at a later time. I thought it was a really great statement that you made. And anyway, really appreciate it. Thanks so much. I get lots of positive feedback about you on the podcast. You always downplay what you do and what you bring to the table. But people, obviously your perspective is super valuable and you’re a lovely person. And once in a while you make a joke. That’s funny. Clearly not very often. All right. Thank you for doing this. Thank you folks, for listening. Once again check out Adam and Eve.com for 50% off almost any single item plus free shipping. Plus some freegoodies with code. Dr. Jessadam and Eve.com, thanks for being here and have a great one. Wherever you’re at you’re listening to the sex with Dr. Jess podcast improve your sex life. Improve your life.