Kissing with Love

Synopsis: We start with a kiss puzzle; then address a kiss learning question and give steps you might want to take along with some important things to consider about love-filled kissing; then we go on to great kiss reception; and some thoughts about what could get in the way; then we end with a personal challenge question.

A Kissing Puzzle

“His kisses are so filled with love,” Angela sighed.  “There’s something about the way she kisses me that makes me feel like I am really loved and really special,” Brad affirmed.  “The way he kisses me is totally hot and sexy, and it really turns me on.  But I don’t feel any love in it,” Claire protested. 

Donald moaned, “my lover is such a romantic kisser.  The trouble is it’s just romance.  I don’t feel any love in it”.  “Evelyn sighed and said, “I wish when I kiss or get kissed there was something more to it.  It’s nice but it’s always kind of blah; no sex, no romance and nothing I’d call kissing with love feelings”.

What is going on or not going on for the people who made those statements about kissing?  Is there a problem in the way they kiss or the way their partners kiss?  Is it that love’s magic is sometimes in the kiss and sometimes not?  Does it have something to do with the way they saw kisses done in the families they grew up in?   Does it have something to do with the mood or attitude at the time of kissing?  Is the answer in their neurochemistry?  Were they, as children, somehow traumatized with kissing?  Do some people have good kissing teachers and some not?  Are all of them in some type of false love and so they just can’t feel any real love?

The answer to the above questions is – maybe all of these things and other answers too. Biochemistry is likely to be part of it because the saliva in people who are feeling love and the people who are not feeling love is perhaps rather different.  There also may be tiny neuro-electrical differences sensed only in the non-conscious mind.  Definitive research on this has yet to be done.

Can We Learn to Make Our Kisses More Love Filled?

I think the answer to this is probably yes, and you really have to put your heart into it.  Here are three ways and some additional things to think about that may help you do the giving, the getting and the growing of real love through kissing.

∙    First, before you do anything else, take a few seconds to center yourself in your love for the person you are about to kiss. (See mini-love-lesson “Love Centering Yourself”).  You might want to use mental imaging, or something similar, and fantasize your love pouring up from your heart and across to your loved one through your kiss.

∙    Along with love centering yourself, mentally see yourself putting everything else out of your mind except your love.

∙    As a you start to kiss purposefully, tell yourself you are opening yourself to letting your love out and your loved one’s love in.  You are filling with love and pouring love into your beloved.  You both are wonderfully saturated with love.  Focus on those or similar thoughts as you begin the kiss.  Then just feel what you feel.

Here are some additional things you might want to give thought to.
Kissing with love often begins with the eyes and the facial expressions of love. Sometimes looking at someone with love, especially if they are looking back with love, is done at some distance and sometimes it starts just inches away from each other.  These looks may be of tenderness, may be intense, may be caring, or may be a sweet happy smile.

∙    How you move toward someone to kiss them is important too.  The movement toward starting a love-filled kiss often is a bit slow but very direct.  The slowness helps the other person mentally and emotionally start to psychologically connect with you before the physical kiss actually happens.  The directness helps them mentally and emotionally feel that energized intimacy is starting to happen with you.  Fast surprise kisses also can convey love but usually not with the precious, cherishing feelings of the kisses that are approached more slowly and directly.

∙    Closing the eyes first on the part of the recipient, and then the initiator, often helps.  This allows a fuller focus on the feeling of the kiss and the emotions that come with it, without visual distraction or interference.

∙    Touching with hands, arms and body are also important to creating a love-filled kiss.  With a loving embrace, the kiss becomes a total body experience.  Caresses, so long as they are not too sexual, holding hands, and light fingertip gliding touches on the back, neck, cheeks, arms, etc. can assist a person feeling this really is about being loved.

∙    The length of time the kiss takes also has importance.  Usually lingering a bit, and truly savoring the experience, and not darting away too soon helps to both convey love and receive love feelings.
∙    Be aware of lip pressure and movement.  Kissing can be very light and tender, or more firm and passionate.  It kind of depends on what a person likes and wants to feel.  In the love-filled kiss, there may be some lip movement but again it is important for it not to be too sexual so that it can be really about love first and most.

∙    Parting from the kiss is the next important part.  After lips part, it usually is important to keep looking into the eyes of the person you have just kissed and continuing to lovingly touch them with your hands for a bit, then slowly pull apart while really savoring the experience.  That often is very enhancing to the love feelings possible.

Those are pretty specific instructions.  What I want to convey is for you to make kissing a love-filled art.  You may prefer eyes open – fine.  Your partner may not like the face touched much, that is OK.  Talk about your kisses, then give and ask for what you really like, as long as ‘love’ is the main ingredient.

Receiving a Love-Filled Kiss

How well do you think you receive a love-filled kiss?  Do you respond in kind?  Do you really focus on opening to the love coming in?  Do you let yourself feel fully and really loved?  Do you think things like “I’m really being loved at this moment”?  Do you think you really savor, digest, absorb and let yourself intensely experience the kissing with love you are receiving?  Are you able to be ‘in the here and now’, and nowhere else as you are kissed and kiss back?  Remember, receiving love well is a major way to give love.

What Can Get in the Way

Lots and lots of things can get in the way and block love being given, received and generated in a kiss.  Fear and its cousins, apprehension and anxiety, can do it.  Self-doubt, self-consciousness, feeling unworthy, insecurity and allowing distraction can operate to deprive you of the love experience in a kiss.  Coming from habit instead of love may dilute the kiss for both of you.  Worry about anything, trying to impress, focusing in the future or the past, guilt, duty, work, embarrassment, shame connected to anything, feeling clumsy, awkward, inferior or superior, all can take you away from fully experiencing the kiss and the love that may be coming with it.

Letting any of these things occur can crowd your mind and prevent you from fully feeling a love-filled kiss.  That can make the experience far less than you both might want it to be.  It also can have a negative effect on the person you are being kissed by.  Any of these things might make you pull away too soon, or make you move in some less than loving way.  Such movements can be interpreted as rejection, repulsion, discomfort with intimacy, valuing the person kissing you as relatively unimportant, or in some other way sending an anti-love message.

So, as you think about these things, how are you doing at giving, getting and growing love through love-filled kissing?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who are you going to kiss next, and how are you perhaps going to make it a truly love-filled kiss?