Why a kiss is NEVER just a kiss
It’s always a betrayal if it’s not with your other half, insists SALLY EMERSON — no matter what men say
AS CHER sang in The Shoop Shoop Song, there’s only one way to tell whether a man truly loves you. It’s not the adoring look in his eyes, for ‘you’ll be deceived’.
And it’s not his warm embrace — ‘that’s just his arms’. Oh no. If you really ‘want to know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss’.
The lyrics pretty accurately sum up how much significance women invest in a kiss.
‘Kissing — and I mean like, yummy, smacky kissing — is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do,’ one Hollywood actress gushed, and most women, it seems, would agree.
In a recent survey, 91 per cent of women concurred that kissing someone else when you are in a relationship is as much a betrayal as cheating on your partner. But one in five of the men who took part in the study commissioned by Relate didn’t see it as a problem.
A straw poll of some of my longmarried girlfriends showed how much kissing someone else matters.
‘Of course kissing is cheating,’ insisted one of them.
‘If it’s any good, a kiss is definitely cheating,’ observed a second.
I asked another, older friend, an artist. ‘I suppose it depends on the circles in which you move. If they are all swapping bed partners, a kiss is comparatively small fry, but in most circles it would be considered a threat to the status quo.’
So why do women value kissing so much? Men do not have to be quite as picky about the genes of potential partners because they can be fertile all their lives. But women are very aware of the potential in a kiss.
Kissing can tell you more than a dozen conversations. Through a kiss we can establish whether he’s healthy, or at least if his breath is. We can work out if he’s strong, commanding, skilful.
As teenagers, we rated boys entirely on their ability to kiss. I remember particular kisses from when I was 15. A passionate kiss at a Cambridge ball when I was 16. Heaven. In my first novel Second Sight, it’s a kiss, rather than sex, which catapults my young heroine into adulthood.
SHERIL Kirshenbaum, author of The Science of Kissing, writes: ‘Women use kissing and their sense of smell and their sense of taste to figure out who is the right partner for them when it comes to reproduction.
‘We’re not consciously thinking about this when we’re kissing someone, of course, but kissing is a very reliable way to get a sense of whether someone is genetically a well-suited partner.’
Clearly a woman doesn’t want her beloved kissing another woman if by doing so she is checking out his genes. The kiss may not always lead to a fullblown affair but the thought is definitely there.
‘Mate choice and courtship in humans is complex. It involves a series of periods of assessments where people ask themselves, “Shall I carry on deeper into this relationship?” ’ explains Professor Robin Dunbar, of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology, who led another study into the importance of kissing in human relationships.
He also concluded that kissing is less about sex and more about auditioning a potential partner.
While we’re initially attracted to a face or a nicely proportioned body, he says as we progress deeper into the courtship stages, the assessments become more and more intimate and ‘this is where kissing comes in’. No wonder women realise the danger of a kiss. What’s more, in the early skirmishes of romance, while the kissing is all that’s going on, we still have the upper hand. There is something special still to give. This balance of power tends to shift once a couple make love. Suddenly it’s far more complicated. Will he phone me up? How come I find myself strangely in love with that awful man I didn’t mean to sleep with? Women often regret moving too fast sexually, while men regret not moving fast enough. But a kiss? Who regrets a kiss? For women, kisses are power and romance. As Jennifer Lopez remarked in an interview: ‘I am a strong believer in kissing being very intimate. The minute you kiss, the floodgates open for everything else.’ A kiss starts it all. Think of the intensity of Rodin’s The Kiss. Rhett Butler kissing Scarlett with a passion more appealing than any modern-day sex scene. Paul kissing Holly Golightly in the rain in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the prow of the Titanic. Into these kisses are poured the passion and excitement that mark the early days of a relationship.
In films and on TV nowadays a couple kiss and within seconds they are against the wall, making love. Just think of Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Debicki in John le Carre’s The Night Manager last year. RING back those delicious, long kisses, I say. Bring back that shocked expression when the boy and girl who have just kissed stare into each other’s eyes, the world having shifted.
No worry about having fallen asleep and waking up with bad breath or snoring. Just a kiss. High romance.
Sadly when a couple has been together for some years passionate kissing all but stops.
One study from the British Heart Foundation revealed that 18 per cent of married people can go a week without kissing their partner, while 40 per cent smooch for just five seconds or less.
The pleasure of kissing is partly down to anatomy. Because our lips purse outwards — our nerve endings are particularly sensitive. Sheril Kirshenbaum explains: ‘Even a slight brush of the lips stimulates physiological changes in our bodies.
‘One of them is the release of dopamine, a brain chemical that is stimulated when we’re doing something that feels very good.’
New York comedian Mindy Kaling is unlike most women as she recommends guilt- free kissing, up to a point.
What she says is key is the length of the smooch. A quick snog is fine, but any sustained clinch should be forbidden.
Her joke solution is The Kiss Monitor, a device which, when worn, would let the wearer ‘cheat’ with a 90 second kiss.
If the kiss carries on beyond that the couple are zapped with an electric shock. Well, maybe.
To misquote those famous lines which Sam croons to Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa in Casablanca — a kiss is just a kiss.