The recent New Yorker short story “Cat Person” details a young girl’s experience of a bad date with a guy who turns out to be an inept and insensitive lover, and later a general jerk to boot. (The story appears to have struck a nerve in expressing many women’s fears of sexual assault.)
One of the things the girl notes is that the guy kisses her very clumsily, essentially shoving his tongue down her throat too early and forcefully.
This got me wondering about what makes for a good kiss.
Ladies, your thoughts please?
FWIW, I’m a het male, so I’m most interested in het females’ opinions. But all are welcome.
Kisses should be light on spit. Tongue only after a few minutes. I don’t mind beard or scruffy face, but some women do. Of course it should be impeccably clean. No bad breath please or tobacco, yuk!
A kiss is like a little microcosm of sex. You gotta have foreplay. There’s gotta be a little tease in it. I want to feel your lips* barely touching mine. It’s like asking a question. You’re going to get an answer. You’re going to kiss me gently like that, over and over, until I’m so overwhelmed with desire that my mouth falls open. Then - and only then - do you go in for more. Just a little flicker of the tongue, another question, and yes, you’ll get another answer, and then all bets are off. Let it be a two-way street. Take as much as you give. You’re not the only one with things to say and there’s no reason you need to be dominating the conversation.
*Er, general you, of course.
As a general note… Not saying I speak from overwhelming amounts of experience, but I reckon a lot of guys would solve a lot of romancing problem with these two simple words: Slow. Down.
Maybe your kissing style is not exactly the same style as the lady you’re trying to get with. But the slower you go, the more chance you’ll have to correct things before they go completely off the rails. A reasonably chaste sloppy kiss can be a teachable moment, but shove a tongue down a woman’s throat at the wrong time and you are probably not coming back from that. I’m very communicative about this kind of thing. It’s not like we (well, I’m really speaking for myself) demand perfection, but I think a part of the give-and-take of romance is learning to use what turns the other person on to the maximum advantage. The slower you take it, the easier it will be to learn what pushes her buttons and the less likely you’ll careen into one of those fatal error moments.
then there’s us flirting-impaired guys, who, by Spice Weasel’s guidelines, are (or should be) the Gods of Great Kissing, because we’re afraid we misunderstood where things were going and are basically, yeah, asking, “is this okay, is this what you wanted?” and are three heart beats and a face slap away from wetting ourselves from nervousness:o:cool::o
Missed the edit window for this, but I just realized I kiss my wife exactly like Spice Weasel described as good to this day, because, well, because, well, we both like it that way.
Almost touching,
Barely there,
Passing breeze
Light brushing
Etc
Gnawing faces off
and the PENULTIMATE: nuzzling along the jawline to end with an earlobe lick-nibble-suck and back
A kiss, or a makeout session, is a conversation. All parties involved talk with their mouths, their hands, with getting closer or moving further away; with a gasp or a “hmmmMMmmmm” or an “ugh!” A bad one is like those people who never let anybody else get a word in edgewise; a good one goes to interesting places.
Just a few adds…
A kiss starts before you even move your face close to hers. It starts in your eyes.
Kiss like you mean it. Don’t think too much about technique. I know that seems counter-intuitive with all this advice coming at you, but guys who focus on technique are a turn-off–for me at least.
Don’t think of kissing as a way to get to sex. It might turn out that way, but it’s MORE likely to turn out that way if you kiss for the sake of kissing.
And finally, once you’re in a relationship, don’t forget any of the above. Perfunctory kissing doesn’t light any fires.
I’m going to tell you a secret: she’s nervous, too. You probably don’t appear as awkward as you feel, and she’s probably feeling ten times more awkward than she looks.
Also, I can’t speak for other women, but nervousness is adorable. It worked out pretty well for my husband. I tend to take the lead on this sort of thing, which may be unusual for a woman, but I am so not a patient person and I tend to be attracted to socially awkward guys. If you sit there heming and hawing for a while, I’m probably going to ask you to freakin kiss me already.
Edit: I personally think “Is this okay? Is this what you wanted?” is an incredibly sexy thing for a man to say.
