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  Family - Weekend Effect

The Lost Art of Kissing

Ralph & Karen Lewis

In the days before we were married, an acceptable date might have consisted of grabbing some dinner, and then parking somewhere to neck until is was time to go home. We loved to kiss. There were times when we skipped the dinner and went straight to the kissing. We passed a lot of time just talking, dreaming, laughing, and of course, kissing.

It was some time after our first daughter was born that we began to notice that we just didn't kiss very much any more. We were busy with jobs, house, our little girl and our hobbies. We were too tired to spontaneously feel romantic.

We even made love without kissing. We loved each other and acted lovingly toward each other, but we just didn't take the time for kissing any more.

Since that time, we made our Marriage Encounter Weekend. So many couples with strong marriages have affected us. Our attitudes and our lives have changed very much over the years. Last month, we rented Disney's Shaggy Dog video, and watched it with our 8- and 5-year-olds. We all laughed at the way Fred MacMurray and his leading lady played the father and mother at breakfast. They would kiss at the air, sort of in each other’s direction. His nose was buried in the newspaper and she was busy making sure everyone had enough pancakes.

We thought it was hilarious, especially since we had recently heard Fr. Chuck Gallagher challenge us to live a passionate relationship.

The Fred MacMurray couple was representing wholesome middle America. It was Mr. & Mrs. Stability of the late 50's. Many of us were influenced by those old programs for "family viewing" that depicted married couples the same way - separate beds, quick hugs on the way in or out of the house, but no touching or any kind of real intimacy. I (Karen) used to watch I Love Lucy reruns once or twice a day when I was a teenager!

Our current generation of media rarely shows a "typical" married couple. (Oh wait - there's the Bundys on Married with Children.) The emphasis is on diversity and demonstrating that it's okay to be different. It's a great message, but there aren't many role models for what we hope is the average family - mom, dad and the kids. Many shows with a married couple, such as Home Improvement often use a comic focus on the differences between men and women, if they deal with marriage at all.

Do married couples kiss?

How did our parents show affection for each other? Karen's kissed in front of the kids, and still do. Ralph's parents didn't show much physical affection for each other when the family was in the same room.

It seems that we aren't trained in American society to think of married couples as lovers. Synonyms for "kiss" in one thesaurus mainly have to do with dating and young people showing affection. The example in our dictionary says "He kissed his mother goodnight." Not exactly passion.

So one function of kissing is for showing affection. Like Fred MacMurray?

A few years ago, another couple challenged us to give each other a long kiss when we got home at the end of the day. To kiss like we meant it. That sounded good, so we gave it a try. No matter what was going on we would stop and hug and kiss when we greeted each other. It was a good thing and we still greet with at least a good long hug even if the kiss is short.

“Skin-to-skin” time, introduced to us at Fr. Chuck's "Celebrate Love" weekend also helped renew our physical intimacy. Skin-to-skin time is 10 to 20 minutes during the day – or right after work – where we locked the bedroom door, took our clothes off and lay on the bed together, touching and relaxing! We didn't talk much or make love during the skin-to-skin time – it was effective in reminding us how much we need physical contact with each other. We feel so much lighter, cheerful and loving toward each other when we've been intimate contact like that.

Once kissing was back into our consciousness, we made a point of spending time kissing in bed, even if we weren't making love. But is does often lead to more…. Bringing more kissing into our life has given us just a little more intimacy, a little more excitement and a lot more love.

We found that kissing could be a decision, just like love is a decision. Even when we aren’t predisposed to it, kissing leads us to feel more loving toward each other.

Good kissing is exciting. It’s an easy way to show affection and love that can lead to more physical intimacy. By getting out of the habit, we had lost a lot of our physical contact.

Kissing relieves stress and renews our energy. It’s healthy!

It also relieves the tedium that we allow to settle over our life.

We’ve dialogued a lot about how kissing affects each of us. We talked about what’s a turnoff (keep the breath mints handy), what we each like best about kissing, how we feel about kissing in front of others, how we felt about seeing our parents kiss. We learned a lot about each other, and it’s fun to sit around talking about kissing!

Then we stopped talking so we could get back to our research…

For Romantic Dialogue, KWE (Kiss When Exchanging)

· What do I like most about kissing? What feelings do I have about that?
· What do I dislike about kissing? What are my feelings?
· How do I fell recalling the affection between my parents while I was growing up?
· How do I feel about kissing in front of the kids?
· How do I feel about kissing in public?
· How do I feel about agreeing to a long kiss before dinner each day?
· Where would I like to have you kiss me? How do I feel telling you this?

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