Pleasure Mechanics

Esther Perel’s 7 Verbs Of Love

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Esther Perel's 7 Verbs Of Love Podcast Episode Speaking of Sex #318

Love is a verb – an action we must practice in an ongoing way. But “love” is also kind of vague, and the daily act of loving another human being is really a symphony of verbs that is constantly changing. So how do we get more specific about HOW we love and what actions are needed to feel loved and to be more loving?

In this podcast episode, we explore Esther Perel’s framework of the 7 Verbs of Love. Sex therapist and author Esther Perel offers these seven verbs as points of reflection to notice the specifics of how we love in our daily lives.

The 7 Verbs Of Love, offered by Esther Perel, are:

  • to ask
  • to take
  • to receive
  • to give
  • to share
  • to refuse
  • to play

Check out Esther Perel’s blog post about the 7 Verbs Of Love here.

Listen to our interview with Esther Perel on Speaking of Sex here.

Enroll in our FREE online course, The Erotic Essentials, to begin laying a stronger foundation for a happier sex life, on your own terms.

How To Fall Deeper In Love

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Ready to fall deeper in love? Here is a simple process that promises profound results.

Scientists have succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in a lab by getting them to do this process. So what happens if you are already in a relationship and you do this practice? Would it help you fall deeper in love?

The process is simple: Answer 36 questions in about an hour. Then set a timer and look into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes. Then see how you both feel.

Here’s a little background information on the research behind this practice:

In Mandy Len Catron’s New York Times Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” she refers to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron (and others) that explores whether intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them ask each other a specific series of personal questions. The 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one.

“The idea is that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness. To quote the study’s authors, “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure.” Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue.”

Some of the questions are:

  • What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
  • If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
  • Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

The 36 questions are designed to increase in levels of personal disclosure and thus intimacy as they progress.

We often forget to look at our partners anew, forget that we don’t know everything about them, even if we have been together for decades. When we remember that fact and choose to get intimate with each other’s minds and intentionally create vulnerability together, intimacy happens. From there, love can be present. The act of sharing information with your lover that you don’t often tell other people and discovering something new about yourself and each other can be fascinating and novel, which can create a new experience of intimacy and potentially love between you. Also, really paying attention to each other is intoxicating.

We dare you to create a Date Night around this, pour each other a glass of wine and take an hour or so and see what happens.

Find the “36 questions in love” here or as an app here

 

Lust, Love and Attachment: Helen Fisher on The Nature of Love

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Lust, Love and Attachment :: Free Podcast Episode

In this podcast, leading love researcher shares the difference between lust, love and attachment. She uncovers the nature of these three different circuits associated with love and challenges our assumptions about “happily ever after” relationships. Hit the “play” button above to reveal the truth about how humans are wired for lust, love and attachment. Check out Helen Fisher’s book Why We Love for more on the nature of love.

This podcast challenges our notions of what is normal and natural in love.

We have concrete scientific evidence here from a well respected researcher that your relationship isn’t broken if the mutual passion has waned. In fact there is some biological inevitability that this will happen over time. Additionally there is nothing wrong with you if you feel passion for a coworker even though you love your partner. It is scientifically confirmed that lust and romance are not the same. So is it really ok if you feel love for your partner and intense attraction for another?

What matters is what you choose to do about having any kind of feelings outside of your primary relationship. This is up to you and your ethics, values and ideals, but having the feelings is very natural and normal. To have feelings for someone other than whom you are technically devoted to does not mean there is anything wrong with your relationship, it is just how we humans are wired.

So many of us feel tortured by this reality of experiencing different levels of passion or excitement for different people at various points in our lives. What happens if we didn’t see these feelings as problematic but made peace with what is and then go on and decide on the choices you want to make. My hope is some of you will experience a bit more freedom within yourself so you can be more present with enjoying your erotic life instead of wishing for something else.

We have spoken in other podcasts about how to keep long term relationships exciting. We emphasize that you need to keep life interesting by doing new stimulating things together in and out of the bedroom. We will fully admit that we love reading the same advice we give regularly in this highly respected author’s book. We think we all need to keep hearing this hopeful, practical piece of advice until we are really putting it into action.

Our challenge to you this week if you are in a long term relationship where excitement has waned a bit (or if you wish to take preventative steps!) is to consider what kind of excitement and novelty will you introduce into your relationship to increase your excitement in life, and thus with each other.

Remember if you want to explore novelty in the bedroom check out our erotic mastery courses. These online, multimedia courses guide you in mastering new erotic skills to experience more orgasmic pleasure, skill and confidence.

Fight Free Travel: Five Tips

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Fight Free Travel: Free Podcast EpisodeWe just got back from a week long retreat in rural Canada.

Every year, we spend some time by the lake, with no phone and no internet. Just the distant call of loons.

Every year, we are reminded of the pleasure of being device free and slowing down our pace of life.

We tune into the sounds of the lake lapping on the stones, the trees swaying in the wind and the hum of dragonflies.

Each year we bring a big stack of sex & relationship books, diving deep into the research to inspire our offerings. We sketch, we play, we recharge and reset.

When we returned home, we realized with surprise that we had traveled hundreds of miles, with a teething baby, without a single moment of stress or conflict. We both were feeling super grateful and in love with one another, refreshed from our travels, and excited to get back to life.

This was a perfect example of one of the themes of our discussions this week:

Happiness Is A Choice.

We both love to travel but early on in our relationship it often caused stress and fighting. We deliberately worked on it over the years, and changed the patterns that were causing stress. We just proved we can travel stress free, and wanted to share our strategies for making traveling with your lover a total pleasure.

Find Out:

  • How To Use Codewords In Your Relationship
  • Easy Communication Techniques To Reduce Conflict
  • How To Make Any Travel A Sexy Adventure
  • Proven Strategies For Minimizing Burn Out

Need To Feel Loved? Here’s How

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Need To Feel More Loved? Here's How

Barbara Fredrickson has been researching love for over twenty years. Her book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become presents the idea that our idea of love needs a massive upgrade.

He research shows that love is not exclusive, unconditional or long lasting. Instead, love “is best measured in seconds or minutes, not months or years.” And though love is fleeting, it is also endlessly renewable.

“Although you may subscribe to a whole host of definitions of love, your body subscribes to just one: Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being.”