How serious should we take kissing? Well, just imagine a world without it. Certainly there was never any chance that kissing would disappear, but in the 1960s and 1970s some aspects of romance, kissing being one of them, seemed to take a back seat as we rushed head long into the sexual revolution. For a time, what had been a cornerstone of a solid relationship was in danger of becoming viewed as quaint and old fashioned while we searched for ever wilder and more intense experiences. That attitude has been changing for a while now. Possibly this is due in part to illnesses such as AIDS creating a pendulum swing in the direction of slowing down and taking time to really get to know each other. It's also possible that, having sowed our wild oats as a society, we^e now collectively looking for more meaning and depth in our relationships.
When it’s given the attention it deserves, kissing has the potential to be ati enormously positive experience in our lives, a shared source of pleasure, comfort and intimate communication that can help fulfill a deeply human longing
meaningful contact with another person. We're so perfectly built for it that to give kissing the bum’s rush seems an odd sort of self-denial, as if we're not committed to getting all we can from life.
To set the stage for the rest of the book, the remainder of this chapter points to three aspects of kissing that make the case for it being far more than a pleasant way to end a date.
•Kissing is an entirely natural activity that goes way back in human history
•Kissing improves our health and overall well-being.
•Kissing enhances the bond with our significant other.
Kissing Comes Naturally
It's tempting to say that kissing is a universal experience, but that’s not quite true. About 90 percent of the human population kisses, but there are a few cultures in Africa, Asia and South America that don't kiss at all and have no idea what the fuss is about. Then there are cultures that kiss but in ways that may seem foreign or strange to us. Polynesians, for instance, practice a kiss they call the “mitakuku”, which involves biting hairs from their sweetheart's eyebrows. Trobriand Islanders do something similar but take it several steps further, biting their partner's lips, chin, nose, and cheeks, often drawing blood in the process, before finally biting off the tips of their partner's eyelashes.
How did this seemingly strange practice of pressing our lips to another's first take hold? There are several theories floating about. One of the most popular suggests that kissing first developed among our caveman ancestors. Long before sterilized bottles of pureed peas and carrots were available, early mothers fed their infants by thoroughly chewing up food, and then passing this nutritious mush from their mouth to the mouth of their waiting infant From this be-ginning, so the theory goes, the pleasures of pressing lips together soon became obvious, with or without the extra reward of food. It's not hard to see why such a theory is popular.
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