Kissing is good stress relief, and so much more. Sure dating can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be! In fact dating can be fun and lower your stress levels once you get to making some physical contact. Simply touching and being touched by others can help elevate our mood, give us a warmer, more secure feeling, and kissing can reduce stress and give us other physical and emotional benefits as well.
It’s fun for me to realize there is science to the desires for connection with others. Sometimes we don’t really think about all the benefits of intimacy with others, we just feel a desire somewhere inside ourselves to touch and be close to one another. That feeling, that desire, is the longing for so many things. Often times we get caught up in the desire for sex, not realizing that there are so many other benefits to connecting with another person.
I am glad that the desire for sex has led me to enjoy so many other benefits of being with another. For many men I believe the desire for sex has led us to explore feelings for ourselves and other people. I have found myself learning and loving other people by pursuing my desire for sex, and I believe that many other men find themselves enjoying other benefits that they were not even consciously aware that they were longing for.
It’s like, yeah, I want to have sex with her or him, but what we find is we enjoy tasting, feeling, learning, loving, warmth, all these other benefits, physically, emotionally and intellectually when we engage the dating and mating processes.
A few of the scientific benefits of kisses were mentioned in an article from RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, published by the associated press in February 2009, including these:
Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.
…college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined.
For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women.
In a test group that merely held hands, chemical changes were similar, but much less pronounced, she said.
Men tend to think of kissing as a prelude to copulation, Fisher said. She noted that men prefer “sloppy” kisses, in which chemicals including testosterone can be passed on to the women in saliva. Testosterone increases the sex drive in both males and females.
___
On the Net:
AAAS: http://www.aaas.org
OF course there are many more benefits to kissing, dating and mating, but knowing a few more of the scientific changes that occur in these processes gives me even more motivation to continue intimate pursuits, and gives me something else to think about for a minute when I am kissing. It’s good to know that kissing along can make men have a feeling of pair bonding desires, that info makes a lot of sense out of other social and dating issues to me.
Kissing passion differs from men and women
Perhaps that’s one of the things that confuse men after kissing on a date. I’ve seen many men get confused after some kissing a few times. It seems to me that men are easily confused that a women may not feel strongly or even want to take things further into a more exclusive relationship after a few kissing sessions or even continue dating, when a guy feels that things were going great, or there was this “connection”. Yet it appears that women do not get the same dose of oxytocin from merely kissing, so it makes much more sense to me how both people in the same situation could be misunderstanding what’s going in with the other person.
This may also be the reason that people sometimes put a lot into needing to know about kissing when cheating or having sex with a prostitute. Certainly there are many prostitutes who don’t mind vaginal or anal penetration, but don’t want the intimacy of kissing, do they subconsciously know that this could cause men to have a stronger emotional desire for them and start acting crazy, and they want to keep it strictly business of sex not passion to make everyone’s lives easier?
Is this the reason that when someone cheats in a relationship there is often the question of kissing, how many times, what kind of kissing? Do we know subconsciously that there is a difference in emotional bonding with a cheater or prostitute if kissing is involved or not?
Certainly I have experienced sexual release with another without kissing, and though the orgasm felt great and the other factors of rushing, and possibility of getting caught in a semi public place were all exhilarating, there was no emotional connection or even desire to connect with her again. Yet there have been chance encounters with women where there was no sex involved, simply passionate kissing, and I found myself day dreaming of reconnecting with her again.
To know that scientifically a female generally does not get the same dose of oxytocin through the body during kissing makes me re-evaluate that last scenario. Could it be the the long passionate kissing session we had led me to feelings that were unusual, emotional and longing for more connection, yet for her it could of been more of a testosterone filling period of time that just made her yearn for sex without thoughts of emotional bonding. That is a lot to wrap my head around, much to think about. Really the science of kissing as described by those researchers means that men are more like women (or as women are generally portrayed in popular media in our culture) and women are more like men, at least when it comes to kissing – scientifically at least.
Of course it may be simple if it were simply kissing, certainly other factors would play a role in all of this. What if there was flirting and getting to know one another for a long time before, knowing that the two had a lot in common and had been longing for one another for some time, a good kiss may simply solidify that the desire is justified and a good kiss means that other physical stimulation will be incredible, which could lead both partners into higher levels of the pair bonding chemical ocytocin. And that’s just one scenario, I’m sure there are many more that play factors into this.
Maybe one day we;ll have a more complete picture scientifically of what happens inside the body and brain throughout the entire dating and mating process, from the first attracted glance to flirting, kissing, touching, fucking, sexual arousal, orgasm, and more. For now it seems we are getting more pieces of the scientific puzzle, put them all together with added data from social, cultural and other psychological issues within these research projects, and my get it all figured out one day.
Until then, let’s practice! Let’s experiment! Practice makes perfect, and I love to practice. It helps reduce stress for all of us. Just smack me when the kissing over and remind e that you may not be feeling the same rush of pair bonding desire that I may be feeling at the time.