A few years into our marriage, my ex-husband Simon and I stopped kissing just because. We only kissed when we were about to have sex.
Obviously it’s hard to find the will for a long make-out session with toddlers hanging from your ankles but, for me, it was the canary in the coal mine. First the kissing stopped, then the sex, and then all hell broke loose.
But now, after the divorce, I am rediscovering the pleasure of kissing.
Very often, Eliot and I kissed for ten minutes straight, simply for pleasure, not as a precursor to sex.
I kiss him if he looks cute making me dinner, he kisses me if I’m dancing in his apartment. We kiss on the dance floor on Saturday nights. If we say goodbye, we kiss against the barriers of train stations, at bus stops, and at the entrance to subway stations as travelers hurry by.
Our goodbye kisses have a rhythm, the intensity of which deepens and then lightens, like a dance. Sometimes we walk away, only to start again.
The strength of our feelings makes us intertwine our hands in each other’s hair, press against each other, trying to savor every last moment.
In the first few days of my split, I spent three dates lusting after a lithe hottie from Clapham, writes Annabel Bond.
It helps, of course, that I really like Eliot and that he’s amazing at it. He kisses me all over my cheeks, small kisses, stopping at the corner of my lips, where his lips become softer, and then on the lips themselves, our tongues barely touching.
My particular obsession with kissing might have to do with my attendance at a single-sex boarding school back in the 1980s. At the beginning of each term, my friends and I would count up who had “dated” someone during the holidays; It was much more important than losing our virginity.
My first make-out session occurred at a Gatecrashers dance in the same decade and it was a gruesome rite of passage. I have forgotten the boy’s name (something that starts with A?), but not his smell (cigarettes) or his technique (washing machine). I remember thinking in dismay: this is not how it looks in the Bond films! But at 15 it was okay to bravely carry on, wrapped in a Laura Ashley ballgown, until your chin got wet with saliva and your parents came to pick you up.
Since then I have kissed many frogs… and many princes. There was the gentle oriental who had almost no lips but made up for it with his hands: in my hair, caressing my cheek. The stranger I met on the train last year, with whom I shared a first (and last) passionate kiss that made me gasp as I exited the overground. Was it her pheromones? I will never know.
In the frog camp was the Italian with the sticky mouth and excessively energetic tongue that penetrated my own mouth like a snake. I’ve read that men unconsciously try to transfer as much testosterone as they can into a woman’s mouth to stimulate sexual desire, but for me too much tongue has the opposite effect.
In the early days of my separation, I spent three dates lusting after a lithe hottie from Clapham, only to get mad at him at the first kiss. He was intelligent and elegant, but his tongue was foolish and ill-mannered.
He pushed, pushed, pushed, down the back of my throat, like he wanted to break into my house and abscond with my cutlery.
It was very different when I kissed Simon for the first time, over 20 years ago. That kiss told me he was the one or, as it turned out, one of the ones.
I still remember every detail. We had spent the day walking along a Dorset beach on a winter’s day, accidentally bumping into each other on purpose. We finally looked at each other outside my friend’s house. An initial moment of awkwardness and then he held my face in his hands and brought his face close to mine.
She had big lips that were perfect for kissing, and she kept them soft and gentle, even as the kiss became deeper and more layered with intention. When we finally pulled back, my heart was pounding. Sex was definitely on the cards, and it turned out marriage and children, but the kiss was enough for that moment. It held the promise of a whole new adventure.
There seems to be a divide between men and women on the importance of kissing, especially in long-term relationships. I’m pretty sure I’ve always been more interested in it than my partners. For me, kissing is a playful way to be intimate and sexy without committing to taking off all my clothes. For him, after a while, it always seems to be the snack before the main event.
But even if I’m too old to have sex, I still want to French kiss as much as I can. In the unlikely event that I remarry, I intend to put kissing on my schedule at least twice a week, along with doing laundry and taking out the trash.
- Annabel Bond is a pseudonym. The names have been changed.