Marriage Mondays: A Passion for Puckering

Research shows that people are losing their passion for osculation: KISSING. Despite the fact that Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of The Science of Kissing from the University of Texas, says that by kissing, “we can express ourselves in ways that words just don’t,” most married couples are having more cups of coffee than kisses in their day. What about you?

It’s a physical expression of an inner longing that we’ve been enjoying for millenia, but it’s endangered. The first heterosexual kiss described in the Bible was between a couple who had just been introduced, Jacob and Rachel (Genesis 29:10-12). Maybe it was part of Jacob’s interview process when he went on the wife hunt. We know kissing happened before that, because “Adam knew Eve, his wife and conceived,” (Genesis 4:1) and that kind of intimate knowing (yada) means they were doing more than holding hands or rubbing noses. There was definite lip locking going on in the earliest days of mankind.

In 2011 the British Heart Foundation did a little “philematology” … science of kissing. 🙂 They wanted to encourage all British people to be ready, willing, and able to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation. But people are feeling turned off by the age old lip limbo. In fact, they found that 1 in 5 married people doesn’t kiss for a whole week. Out of the limited ones in the kissing category, 2 out of 5 kissed just 5 seconds or less. What’s getting in the way?

What keeps us from kissing?

1. People are busy and on the move. Everything’s faster.
2. The developed world in hung up on sanitation, and lips tend to have germs.
3. Couples have been watching other couples on tv & in the movies, and the real thing is sometimes a “let down.”
4. Pre-marital experience has tainted the real deal and left married couples with guilt, insecurity, or comparisons.
5. Many homes are kid-ruled, and parents find themselves too tired, too stressed, and with too little privacy to kiss.

That’s just for starters. What do YOU think makes us less likely to nurture our passion for kissing? After all, a kiss has so many benefits!

Benefits of Kissing

1. A kiss engages all of our senses.
2. Kissing happens in our personal space, so it takes and it builds trust.
3. Lips have sensitive nerve endings, so our brain goes crazy when our lips are stimulated.
4. When you kiss your mate (the longer the relationship, the greater the effect) your stress hormone, cortisol, declines!
5. Men, especially, show an increase in their “love” hormone, oxytocin, when they kiss their mate.

So if you want to feel more alive, grow the trust between you, feel less stressed, and help your man feel more bonded to you, pucker up and lay one on him .. preferably for more than 5 seconds!

My husband’s going to read this today and expect a big kiss when he gets home. I dare you to greet your guy with a big count-to-ten-kiss and see what happens!