Ok, here's a funny article I found today. Not that I'm smooching anybody but I must admit with those last few guys I've let get to that point, when I didn't feel the flutters, I knew it was not going to work. This was printed in today's Tennesseean.
Smooches can make or break a relationship
By KEILANI BEST
Florida Today
Kissing is so common that many of us don't think there's more to it than meets the lips.
Kissing is a universal language, a cross-cultural phenomenon, a sign of love, affection and kindness. But it could also be nature's way of filtering certain people from our lives.
For example, have you ever thought about why you liked someone until you kissed them?
According to research conducted by Gordon Gallup, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, kissing is a way to weed out people who are genetically incompatible with you.
"The evidence suggests that kissing evolved as a mate-assessment technique and that females, in particular, not only use kissing as a mate-assessment technique but also, once they're in a committed relationship with a male, continue to use kissing as a way to monitor and update the status of their relationship," he says.
Bad kiss is a deal breaker
Maybe that's why a kiss can spell the kiss of death to a budding relationship.
In the same study, most of the respondents admitted that they were attracted to someone only to have that attraction wane after they kissed him or her for the first time. After a bad kiss, then were no longer interested in building anything solid with that person. "There may be unconscious mechanisms that would make people make an assessment of genetic compatibility through a kiss," says Gallup.
Jennifer Schmall recalls a time when she experienced a bad kiss.
"It was kind of like an epiphany, like, 'What am I doing?' " says the Titusville, Fla., resident. "It wasn't so much sloppy. It just didn't feel right. It was pretty much over at that point. It became, 'Let's be friends.' Yeah, that was the deal breaker."
Now engaged, Schmall describes her first kiss with her now-fiancé as a deal maker. It sealed the deal on whether or not she was going to continue to date him.
"It was very unexpected, because he kind of snuck it in there when we were playing a game of pool," she says. "I shot a ball into one of the pockets, and to congratulate me, he leaned over and gave me a kiss. It felt right. I knew afterwards that he was definitely relationship material."
Danielle Smith of Satellite Beach, Fla., recalls a similar experience with a bad kisser.
"It was like, what the heck was that?" she says of the sloppy, wet kiss. "It was horrible."
Now also engaged, Smith says she got "butterflies" after her first kiss with her fiancé.
"It was exciting, like, 'Oh, gosh,' " she says. "Kind of like where you feel like you're in high school again, just kind of giggly."
Men kiss from Mars Gallup's study, which involved about 1,000 college students, also suggests that men and woman kiss for different reasons.
According to Gallup, men tend to kiss to gain sexual favors or to reconcile, whereas women kiss to check the status of their relationships. Kissing is also a way for men to connect with their partners and keep them interested physically. Men's saliva has trace amounts of testosterone, he says.
"As a consequence of male saliva exchange extending over a long period of time, it's conceivable that the testosterone in male saliva can stimulate female sex hormones and make females more receptive to sex," he says.
And while the male respondents in the survey say that they would be more than happy to get physical with women who were bad kissers, most of the female respondents said they wouldn't dare.
This finding may be biologically significant as well.
According to Gallup, women have a small reproductive window in their lives, which can be why women tend to place so much more emphasis on that first kiss.
Kiss reflects relationship
Smith says she does kiss a lot during her relationship, but that lustful kiss has worn off and has been replaced by a more typical kiss as the status of her relationship has progressed.
Gallup's research says a kiss won't necessarily make a relationship, but it can kill one.
"There's an incredible amount of exchange of information, even the exchange of chemical information (during a kiss)," he says.
That first-kiss bug can strike men as well. Scott Burkett says that his first kiss with his partner and fiancé Dawn Falotico was "magical."
"It was in her bird's room, and it's painted blue and has stars on the ceiling that glow when you turn the lights off," he says. "It was perfect."
The two, who've known each other since 1979, lost touch and reconnected again. They are engaged to be married in January and couldn't be happier.
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