Welcome to another exciting episode of "That Other Lifestyle Podcast" with your host, Jason. In today's episode, Jason dives deep into the art of conversation, exploring what makes a good conversation and how it differs in the lifestyle compared to the vanilla world. Whether you're naturally gifted at talking or find it challenging, this episode offers valuable insights and practical tips for everyone.
Jason shares his personal journey of overcoming shyness and improving his communication skills, emphasizing the importance of being inclusive and considerate in conversations. He introduces the SHOT method—Style, Hobbies, Outfits, Travel—as a more suitable alternative to the traditional FORD method for lifestyle conversations.
From understanding the nuances of body language to learning how to give and receive compliments, this episode is packed with advice to help you connect better with others in the lifestyle. Tune in for an engaging and informative discussion that will leave you feeling more confident in your conversational abilities.
Transcript
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you have blue skies and please tell a friend about this podcast. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Jason. Take a listen and let's leave vanilla behind. Today will be a super helpful episode for everyone. How to have a conversation. You already know how to have a conversation. You talk to people all the time. Okay, but have you ever stopped to like think about it? What makes for good conversation? And how is having a conversation in the lifestyle different than the vanilla world?
Subscribing to the podcast is free and fun and a huge help to me. I'm getting close to that all glorious 10,000 total downloads and I need your help to get across that line. Tell your friends, play the show on repeat, and please leave me a review. These are all great ways to help out the show. You want a deeper toes into the lifestyle? You can find a link to sign up for a trial account of SDC on my website, thatotherlifestyle.com. Later this summer, I will be publishing a course just for single men and the lifestyle. Stay tuned for the drop date.
I will cover how to approach couples, how to start a conversation with them, and how to have productive talks with others. So keep listening every week for updates. Please know this podcast is intended for adults only. It is not safe for work. We will talk about adult or sexual topics, and I will use salty language often. This content is for entertainment purposes only, and again, only for those over 18 years of age. I also try to be as inclusive with my language and terms as I can. It can be challenging to formulate and write and say all the inclusive terms in every instance.
For simplicity's sake and time management, I may use terms like husband or wife or partner or spouse for the purpose of the narrative I am sharing. This podcast is for everyone though, no matter your background, gender identity, gender expression, or whatever truth you may be living. Everyone is welcome no matter how you personally experience the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy. I know what you're thinking. Hey, Jason, I already know how to talk to people or ah, talking to people is hard and I have no idea what I'm doing.
The funny thing is these two groups don't realize the other one exists. Some people are really good at it. Some people freak out. The people who think they are terrible at conversing are actually really good at it. Don't sweat it. And if you need a refresher or tips, I'm here to help. Some people have a natural gift for talking. I always tell people the only thing I'm good at is talking. See, podcast for an example. I cannot play sports to save my life. I cannot catch anything, which when I was a kid means I was always pick last every time in PE.
I learned when I was 32 that I only have 50% depth perception of a normal person, which explains so much. It's the same thing Johnny Depp has. That phrase, keep your eye on the ball, does not work for people who cannot see the ball at all. I can't dance. I will dance. I will get out there and start moving my body to the beat, but I'm pretty sure I'm not very good at it. Here's the trick with dancing. Anyone can dance in a pack of people pressed against you. No one can see what you're doing. It takes fucking courage to be the first one out there all alone and start gyrating. I can't sing.
I might be tone deaf, but talking, that is my strength. Not always been good at it though. When I was a kid, in addition to being unable to play sports, I was also super shy. I came from the world of kids should be seen and not heard, one of those things. So yeah, adults didn't really talk to me, which means I missed forming those life skills as a kid. As a side note here, parents who actually talk to their kids, y'all are superstars.
Looking back at my own childhood, looking at how my friends interact with their children now, knowing that I missed out on that, seeing it now in action just warms my pee-picking heart. So nice to see parents use words when speaking to their kids instead of monosyllabic words and grunts. So what changed for me personally? I am the kind of person, just tell me what to do. Give me the damn directions. When I was in seventh grade and in junior beta, and junior beta was an academic club at my school around the states, not sure if it's still around, but I digress.
Junior Beta had a newsletter that came out every month. One month in the newsletter, there was an article on how to have a conversation, how to talk to people. This was amazing for me. Here were instructions. For instance, one bit of advice was to ask open-ended questions. And yeah, other people might have picked up on this by the time they were 12, but like I said, I was shy. Not much confidence. Not much confidence in my ability to communicate. Plus, puberty was a raging bitch. My voice cracked and changed over the course of six months or a year.
So yeah, that was a thing that totally impacted my personal confidence because when I did start talking to people, my voice would crack hard and high. A normal thing to happen but doesn't feel normal when the adults in your life laugh at you for it. Eventually, my voice did settle down and turn into the silky smooth symphony you're listening to now. And I got better at talking to people, better at communicating. I got better because I learned the skills necessary to converse. And you have these skills too. Probably never thought about them though until someone on a podcast points them out.
What the hell does my adolescence and talking have to do with the lifestyle? I have noticed that our conversations are different than the vanilla world. We have a culture and a language and a style to our conversations. To dispel the myths out there, lifestyle conversations are 90% boring, maybe 10% sexy. Flirting is great, but it is super hard to keep going for hours, so we naturally need to talk about other stuff. That other stuff gives people windows into our souls and minds and helps them see us as complete people and not just sex objects.
I also wanted to do this episode for those who may be neurodivergent in the lifestyle. ADHD, autism, everyone is welcome here on the show and in the lifestyle. And as a side note, neurodivergent people are very well represented in the lifestyle. I know from personal experience of friends who are neurodivergent, social skills can be a challenge. I know they like and need to have a framework to operate in, something to help them have good conversations. It helps to explain the how and the why instead of just assuming they already have a grasp on these concepts.
And I got a tip for that in a few minutes. Oh, let me put this out there for those who need it. Listen close. People like talking to you. Do not be self-conscious. People like you more than you think. People do want to talk to you. People will remember the good conversations way more often than the bad. Yes, we get lost in our own heads and start worrying. Maybe we're talking too much or this person thinks I'm weird. Then thoughts start racing. What if they don't like me? What if I say something stupid? What if this or that? Calm down. Be at peace. People are way more forgiving than you think.
Everyone has the same thoughts and you are not alone. There is a very little a person can say to me that would make me think they're weird. I personally want to know the weird stuff because it means you're human and not one of those pesky robots pretending to be a human. AI will never be able to simulate the weirdness of human expression. Talking to a human face-to-face is becoming a lost art. So let me put on my old man ranting hat right here. We use digital communications like texting and email. Okay, no one uses email, but I need a second example.
Way more than the sound waves coming from our mouths. With texting, we lose the nuance of communication. We lose inflection and tone. Words can be misread. Words can be twisted based on the reader's current mental state or emotion. With conversation, we can sell correct quickly. Texting, we throw the words out there and just hope they land. There is a value to conversations, especially in the lifestyle. When we meet new couples, one of the items on our list is determining attraction on that primal level. And I found making that determination is much easier and better in person through talking.
So why get better at conversations? You want to be the person people find in a group. If they have a good conversation with you once, they're going to find you again. Good communication helps build your social network and create connections with other couples, which can then open the door to new experiences and parties and events. Lots of good reasons to get better at conversation, but how? What are the concrete takeaways you can use right now? I learned at some point in my life about FORD. F-O-R-D. FORD is an acronym for Family Occupation Recreation Dreams.
Four things that everybody wants to talk about or at least make small talk about. I think I learned about this like 15 years or so ago. I worked with an ER nurse who used the FORD method to make small talk while she was doing her rounds or working on patients. No matter the situation, you can generally inquire safely about one of these four topics with others. Family, occupation, recreation, dreams. These are all topics people want to talk about. You appear interested in their lives by asking about one of these four topics so much better than rambling about the weather.
And this is a reverse tip, I guess. When someone talks about about the weather like they just drop it out of nowhere or they use it to break the ice that means they have nothing else to talk about they want they want to find a topic they want to talk to you about something they just don't know what in that case refer to ford by giving them a topic to talk about they will subconsciously thank you for creating that bridge and walk right across it to connect with you. I did attempt to find the origins of Ford. It has to come from somewhere, right? I couldn't find it.
I found a bunch of articles from LinkedIn about the Ford method, and I am not going down that rabbit hole on that site. LinkedIn lunatics are real. LinkedIn is a cesspool of navel-gazing troglodytes obsessed with their own careers in an unhealthy manner, and I don't want to deal with that insanity. Or it gets conflated with Henry Ford. Whatever. But it got me to thinking. Talking about how to make small talk, I looked at the Ford method. I don't think it works for the lifestyle, though. In my experience, as we go around, meet people, do events, make small talk, four doesn't work for us.
We need a better option. Four doesn't work because the first letter, family. We don't talk about family. People don't bring up their kids very often. Maybe in passing, I'm like, oh, I have three kids at home. Ha ha ha. Let's go do something fun. That's about it. We don't dwell on family relations because they're really not all that sexy. O is for occupation, which is completely wasted in the lifestyle. Yeah, some people might have super interesting jobs like lie and tamer, I guess. Generally, though, jobs exist in the vanilla world. We are not our jobs.
At parties, we are all equal and no one should be lording their socioeconomic status over another person. And we tend to keep our day jobs private for discretion. I don't need to know where you work. You don't need to know where I work. Let's get naked. Generally, people don't go around talking about their jobs at parties. Recreation. Okay, this one kind of fits a little bit. Like, what do you like to do for fun? What are your hobbies? This one is about your passions and interests. But I imagine the answer or the response to this is going to be the same.
Our hobby is having sex with people we meet on the internet, and if everyone has the same answer, it's not very useful. Dreams? What are your dreams? Ask a lifestyle person that and it will probably involve nudity and vigorous cardio. I am kind of just dismissing this method outright. Yeah, you can use it to make small talk super useful for vanilla stuff, but we can do better for the culture of the lifestyle. So I propose an alternative. A replacement. Shot. S-H-O-T. Shot. Or toss or hots. I don't care what order you use it in. I'm going to go with shot because it makes me think of that song.
Shots. I have no rhythm. It makes me think of that and I am happy. Shot. Style, hobbies, outfits, travel. Four topics that will get you very far in any lifestyle conversation. And you can use them in any order you want. So break it down, Jason. First letter, S, style. This question is about your play style. What do you like? Full swap, no swap, soft swap. This gives you an idea of what the other couple is looking for. You don't have to go into detail, but it's still good to know and it gives you a starting point for conversation. Second letter, H, hobbies.
People want to talk about the things they enjoy like their hobbies. People want to share their passions. Passions are sexy, y'all. This is a step beyond what do you do for fun question. This is more specifically like, what do you do outside of the lifestyle for fun when you have the time and energy to do it? Third letter, O, outfit. Most parties and events have a theme. Most people will dress up for that theme. Ask about their outfit. Compliment it. Ask where they got pieces of it or got the whole thing. Ask what their inspiration was. Fourth letter, T, travel.
We are a traveling bunch of people. We are nomads. Maybe the other couple just came back from a resort or a cruise. Maybe this is their first time at a particular event. Maybe they had plans to go on a resort or a cruise. Ask what other lifestyle places they have been to. So there you go. We got our own lifestyle conversation acronym. SHOT or HOTS or TOSH. I don't care. Use whatever you want. Going along with that, ask open-ended questions and give open-ended answers. That was the advice I got in seventh grade and it has worked out great for me. So let's say you meet a new couple at a bar.
A band is playing country music. You walk up and ask them, how do you like the band? They may respond, they don't care for country music. Your next question could be, oh, well, what kind of music do you like? That is an open-ended question. They will then share the music they like, which leads to more questions about their taste in music or a chance for you to share your own. Another example, you're at a party and notice a woman wearing a really cool shiny sequin dress. You could approach here and say, I really like your dress. Where did you get it?
And she answers that she made it by hand, sewing each hand-punched sequin individually with heirloom thread. People put a lot of work in their outfit, y'all. And on the other side of the equation, don't give one-word answers. Yes, no, okay, that sort of thing. Use your words. Use a bunch of them. They are technically free. If someone asks if you're having fun at a party, say yes or no and then elaborate. Yes, the music is good. No, my feet hurt. When you do answer a question, try to stay positive. No, I am not enjoying the party.
My feet hurt, but these shoes look fire, so it is worth it, which then opens the door to talk about shoes. The hardest part of starting a conversation, I get it, is nerves. Get out of your head. Most people in the lifestyle are genuinely nice and looking to make connections themselves. You are empowered to talk to people. Get out of your head that they will instantly not like you or judge you. Remember, everyone around you is just as nervous as you are, and they just might hide it better. If everyone has the same nerves, you can help.
And by helping other people with their nerves, it helps your nerves. People are nervous, especially in big group settings where they might not know anyone. You can help with that. You can be the one to approach and engage them in a conversation, just saying hi. Have a question read in your mind like, is this your first time here or did you meet that person over there? Simple stuff here, but it goes a long way to making people feel included in the gathering and it lets them open up.
If you hit a wall in a conversation, remember people love talking about themselves, not in a conceited way, but people are really good at talking about themselves and their spouses. There's a distinction about the lifestyle. We have found a magical golden ticket that can open up any conversation. In the vanilla world, people talk about themselves. In the lifestyle, people can and they're going to talk up their spouses. It is easier to talk about your spouse than yourself. I might feel self-conscious going on about myself, but I'm going to talk about for hours about how wonderful my wife is.
Asking about someone's spouse, what they do for work or fun, or saying they're attractive, super easy way to start a conversation with anyone. People want to sell their spouses in the lifestyle. Give them a chance. Once you start talking to someone, just follow some basic etiquette here. Do not look at your phone unless it's important. And you can say, oh, I got a message. Let me check it real quick. But put the phone away. People are giving you their attention. Give yours back to them.
When you pull out your phone and start doom scrolling while a person's talking to you, you are telling the other person that your phone is more important than them in that moment. And if the phone is more important, what reason do they have to continue talking to you? People are nodding along as I say this and probably wondering who does that. People do that and someone needs to hear it. Put the phone away. That's why I love my watch. If I do get a message, it pops up on my wrist. I can glance at it, read it, and then go back to talking. Easy. Listening is important too.
A couple of years ago, maybe the early 2000s, there was this wave of bullshit sweeping corporate America, a tsunami of stupidity. It was called active listening training. There were training courses and seminars on how to actively listen. People were making money on teaching other people how to listen to other people. Corporate America is dumb, y'all. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, were spent, and maybe still are, on how to actively listen to someone. The tips to just tell y'all what was up. Take notes. Nod along. Repeat things back to people.
Really make a show of fucking listening to a conversation. Or you could just fucking listen. Pay attention. People want to be paid attention to. People want to know that you're engaged in the words they're saying. That's it. I don't need you to take notes of our conversation. I don't need you to nod along to every 10th word I say. I swear to you, that was one of the tips. Count the words, nod along. I certainly don't need you to repeat back my last sentence followed by my name. Yes, Jason, you should repeat back your last sentence, Jason. This shit happens. I sat through this dumbass training.
Just fucking listen to people when they speak. You have two ears and one mouth. We are designed to listen 50 or 100% more than we speak. I don't know math good, but I can pay fucking attention to someone when they talk to me. We are designed for listening. We have two ears on the sides of our heads for hearing noises like tigers hunting us in the woods. Mouths and talking do not keep us safe from predators in the wild. We are evolutionarily designed to listen to sound. A person has deemed you worthy of their words. I will cherish them. I will listen and I will pay attention. That's it.
Now give me $32,000. Just kidding. I need to get into that corporate training seminar world. Jason, host of that other lifestyle podcast, is available for speaking engagements and corporate training seminars. These courses would go over appropriate body language for having a conversation with another person. Mirror their position, plant your feet on the floor, square up your shoulders to them. Okay, the body language stuff ain't half bad. Body language is the subconscious brain communicating with the world. That is important.
That is an important distinction of communication that gets lost in texting. Body language matters. Your body language matters. I am totally guilty of crossing my arms way too much. I am working on it. People tell me it makes me appear closed off or unapproachable. I am aware, y'all. That is my body language screaming out to other people. Really, it's just my arms are heavy and I don't know what to do with my hands. We're all guilty of it in some way, though.
Either that or resting bitch face, which I'm guilty of guilty of too because usually I'm just watching everything going on around me or my beard hides my smile. So yeah, resting bitch face or resting viking face as I prefer to call it, working on that too. And I encourage everyone else with RBF to work on it with me. Body language matters a lot in the lifestyle. People are potentially vetting you for the opportunity to have sex with them. There's a whole layer of complexity versus vanilla conversations. Basics of body language. What does good body language look like? Turn towards the person.
You don't have to be full-on square with them, but turn your body towards them. Smile. Smiling helps when you talk to people. Eye contact. Don't cross your arms. No resting bitch face. When you are talking to people and having a conversation, try to find out a unique fact or tidbit about them. That way the next time you see them, you can bring it back up. Ask about something they mentioned previously or like a trip they had planned. Remember those little details about people. I made a lady light up with a smile last month.
When we met her last year, she mentioned she was going out for a role at the local theater. Nine months later, a few weeks ago, I saw her again and I asked her about the role and she was ecstatic that I remembered. That made her happy. Okay, here's a tip that everyone needs. Names. Names are so damn hard. Between the names of the two people in the couple plus a username on a site or a chat group, names are hard. I will remember people's faces, boobs, pet names, interesting facts about them, and their names will just fly right out my brain. So here's the tip, just the tip.
When a couple that recognizes you comes up to you and you have a mental oh shit moment because you can't remember their names, turn to your spouse and say, hi, this is my wife and state her name. The other couple will reflexively say their own names. Boom, name sorted. Try to remember next time. You won't. Personally, I'm a big fan of name tags for everyone. Conversations and compliments. In this lifestyle, it is perfectly normal and acceptable to give another person a compliment on something. Appearance, outfit, personality, all of it is fair game. Vanilla world, not so much.
If a co-worker of mine gets a haircut, the most I will state is, it appears you have cut your hair in a different configuration. That's it. I'm keeping it real professional and uptight at work. Lifestyle, you can give compliments. Do you know how to give a compliment? I feel at some point, I covered this in a previous episode, so it's kind of your homework to go find where I talked about giving and receiving compliments. For today, let me share this little tidbit with you. For men, compliment their body. For women, compliment everything but their body. Huh.
For men, in general, men, we don't get enough compliments, period. At the fuck all. And every man you know will instantly be able to remember the last compliment he received. He will forget every important date on a calendar, but he remembers that time four years ago when he helped a lady carry something heavy to her car at the grocery store and she said he looked strong. Go test it. Go ask him. Men usually compliment their body, compliment their arms or their Thank you. a lady carry something heavy to her car at the grocery store and she said he looks strong. Go test it. Go ask him.
Men usually compliment their body. Compliment their arms or their physique if they work out even a little bit. Compliment their beard. May they have one like me. Compliment their outfit. Think physicality. For women, I said compliment everything but their body. Let me clarify. Compliment their outfits or their jewelry or shoes or personality or the way they laugh. In most cases, women, they get a lot of compliments about their body. So talking about like boob, tear, butts, whatever you want. A woman with prodigious boobies, she's going to get a lot of compliments about her boobies.
You want to stand out from the pack of men giving her compliments about her boobies? Compliment her hair, for instance. Be different. If everyone else is going right, you go left. Look beyond the physical aspects for qualities to compliment. Slide a nice compliment into the conversation once you start rolling. Nothing sexual. Do not make any reference to having sex or doing the sex or leading up to sex. A simple, you look very nice tonight is all you need. If the words in any configuration, fuck you, okay, in any context come out of your mouth, you fucked up. As in, I want to fuck you.
No, you fucked up. We don't lead with that. We save that for the transition to the sexy talk. What not to do in a conversation. It doesn't do much good to share what to do without sharing what not to do. Alright, blunt truth time here. You do not need to impress anyone. You do not need to wave around your success in life because it does not translate well to the lifestyle. Yes, in the vanilla world, it is a constant battle for conversational supremacy and throwing around your life accomplishments in a desperate attempt to impress people.
See, everyone who makes posts on LinkedIn for an example. Lifestyle? Not so much. Being boastful about money or your career or success in life? No one cares. Let me repeat that for everyone in the back. No one cares. Your money or career or success does not directly translate to your ability to have good sex. Don't care if you made a million dollars last year if you dick don't work. The lifestyle attracts people from all socioeconomic walks of life, and everyone is welcome no matter what their income. So bragging and boasting about that is a no-go. Boasting in general is frowned upon.
And coming at this from the male perspective, being boastful and trying to assert dominance over others in the vanilla world, sure, I guess that works. In the lifestyle, no. Your boasting looks desperate and shows lack of confidence. Men in the lifestyle need to have confidence. We have confidence in ourselves and our marriage. We don't need to elevate ourselves above anyone at any time. This is not to say, okay, don't talk about your job or accomplishments at all. If you're enthusiastic about it, if you love what you do, go for it.
You can drop it into a conversation as in, I did X today or I am in this career field. Let people ask questions about what you do versus what you have done versus telling them what you have done, if that makes sense. Pressure. Don't pressure people to talk about or engage in sex in a conversation. Sometimes our horny brain takes over and we want to jump straight into the sexy talk, or we just kind of want to get the ball rolling. People respond poorly to feeling pressured about anything. Buying a car, having sex with a couple, traffic lights.
We are pressured from all sides by the vanilla world all day long. The better tactic is to express interest once, just let it simmer. You could say, I'm interested in seeing you naked or a simple sit on my face. Simple and short and then you drop it. Don't repeat it or go back to that topic. This goes hand in hand with being too fast. I know people get excited, especially newbies, and they want to close the deal as quickly as possible. Hey, we just met. We think y'all are attractive. Let's go have sex right now. That whole sequence over the course of like five minutes. No, slow down.
Be patient. One more thing. Rapid fire questions. This comes across as people are trying to get as much information out of you as quickly as possible. What do you do for work? Where do you work? Are you attracted to me? Can I see you naked? Want to have sex? Can we do butt stuff? Quick, fast questions. Slow down, breathe. Good conversation is about the back and forth. When a person speaks, listen to what they have to say. Don't just cue up everything in your brain, standing on deck, waiting for them to finish their sentence, so then you can talk next. The silence. The awkward silence.
It happens. We are hardwired to avoid silence. The world is constantly making noise. We will stream a movie, play music, and doom scroll TikTok just for all the noise. In conversation, silence happens. Silence is not bad. It gives people time to think and breathe. It can be peaceful to just sit in silence with another person. If you're both comfortable with each other and in that moment, you don't need to fill the space with noise. I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics so feel free to reach out to me.
My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.
