Nosy-Ass Question for You About Making Out

Today's reader mail reminded me of the olden days of the blog when it was about married women and how the fuck they were dealing with the realities of married sex. Over the years (four!), it has become way less Studs Terkel-ish and sociological and more Onahole-ish, which, quite frankly, I have no excuse for.

Anyway, here's an earnest letter from "Janet," that reminds me of the blog of yore, née "In Thy Bede Withe Thee Married Wiffe."

Hi! I love your blog. I know this is somewhat tame, but as a person who has been with the same man for about 6 years, and has sex regularly, I wonder about making out. We haven't sat around and made out since about 4 months into our relationship. There is occasional kissing during sex, but really not much. And really, thinking about sitting on the couch and making out seems kind of gross to me now. Is that normal? Do people who have been married for 20 years make out with each other? Maybe you could take a poll. I keep wondering why we don't do that so much (couples in general) as we do when we first meet. Thanks!

Now, this is actually completely interesting to me because not so long ago two different women confided in me (note: don't confide in me) that although they were still somewhat into having sex with their long-time husbands (depending on vagaries of their moods, how pissed off they were, how interesting their book/show/other diversion was, etc...) they were super-not into kissing the husbands.  Like kissing seemed...yes...gross!

So what is that? Has anyone else has a similar experience?

I have a poorly-formed theory that it has to do with hormones--the basic idea being that before one's puberty hormones kick in, kissing seems disgusting and maybe there is sort of a return to that kissing=icky mode as one's hormones recede again with time. Anyone? Yes?

Whatever it is, it's a crying shame because there is nothing better than being kissed by someone who knows how to kiss the hell out of you.

Last week, I watched a video from One Taste on the pleasures of making out as an experience, not a route to something else. Though it's not gonna tell you anything you don't already know (plus you have to put your email address in to watch it), it did remind me of the delightful sensuality of making out. The sexy deliberate kisses finding sweet, soft places on their neck, the focus on sucking on an earlobe the exact right way to make them groan, the deep melty, lust-heavy kisses with swollen lips and sort of desperate pressing against each other through your clothes and feeling the hard ridge of cock*. God. Remember this?

So yeah. Are you doing that anymore? And if not, why not? Spill it.

xoxo
jill

*Or whatever it is/was you feel/felt. Don't want to be too hetero-normative.

(p.s. while looking for a photo, I came across this one which I love, though prob. a bit too penisy for me to post. I'm in enough damn trouble already. Nothing stopping you from looking though...)

On the Benefits of Someone Who Can Kiss The Hell Out of You

The other day at the grocery store, a man came up to me and said, "You must know that you smell incredible." "Uh, thanks," I murmured because, in truth, it was all I could do to tamp down my geeky impulse to add, in a manner reminiscent of a female Mister Peabody: "Ah, you are responding to biological clues in my scent. Most likely you are detecting a favorable genetic similarity between us--although not too much similarity, as that would encourage genetic mutations in our young. All this sensory information is telling you we are probably well-suited to bear healthy, symmetrical young with a balanced assortment of genes." 

It is impulses like these that make me glad I am already married. As Dorothy Parker said, "Men seldom make passes at girls who say nerdy &%$# like that."  

So it was with trepidation that I started studying the biochemistry of kissing. Because as any formerly religious person can tell you, there's nothing like a little science to ruin a wondrous, magical thing. 

"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips," said Percy Bysshe Shelley in Prometheus Unbound. A truly good kiss does feel like the meeting of souls -- maybe it's because so much is happening in a kiss. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, calls kissing a "mate assessment tool" and says, "When you kiss, you can touch, see, feel, taste somebody. A huge part of our brain lights up." Feeling someone's breath upon us or inhaling the scent of their neck is lovely in its own right, but also provides us clues as to each other's health, diet, and genetic make-up. In other words, it makes good biological sense to mate with the one whose kisses make you weak in the knees. 

So why is kissing the right person so damn good? Well, darling, those sweet kisses are making you crazy with a triple hormone combo that increases your sex drive (testosterone), makes you think pair bonding with this person is a fine idea (oxytocin) and causes you to be all sappy and prone to the excessive playing of Iron and Wine CDs (serotonin). In a 2007 study, researcher Wendy Hill compared the hormone levels of college students who had spent 15 minutes kissing with those who merely held hands and listened to music in the student center. For some reason, I love the detail that they were in the student center. The results of the study--stress levels in the kissing couples decreased, blah blah blah... wasn't as interesting as this bit of student center-related info:  

Hill thought that the setting might have been too clinical for the women to get turned on, so she tried in her latest study to up the ambience by locating the couples in a secluded room of an academic building, outfitted with a couch, flowers, jazz music and electric candles.

Alas, the article did not include a picture of this academic love nest with its "electric candles." Not that I think that setting is really all that important. I base this sweeping assessment on the fact that I received my best, most sublime kisses ever in an attic bedroom in Ann Arbor, Michigan, atop a set of bed sheets festooned with pictures of The Flintstones. (There was also a giant tapestry over his bed featuring Aries the ram, but in my memory, I choose to edit that detail out.) I didn't care about any of the decor though because, god, that guy could kiss. Sweet, melty, insanely wonderful kisses. I would live inside his kisses if I could. As the night grew later and later, I told him I should probably go home. "You could," he whispered, while placing the most delightfully soft kisses on my chin and nose, "Or you could stay here and kiss me all night." In a typically bad decision of that era (I was drunk, natch, as was my wont in those days), I inexplicably chose to go home. Dumb moves such as that, plus--okay, fine--my delightful habit of drunkenly calling him at all hours, ended things quickly thereafter.   

Which was too bad, because, damn, our young would have been symmetrical as hell.