According to science, depending on who you kiss, certain substances in each person’s saliva can increase or decrease attraction. Kissing in general lowers your cortisol levels, which helps reduce stress. It also increases the release of testosterone, which has a positive impact on sexual desire. At the same time, it increases the concentration of dopamine and oxytocin, which bolsters feelings of love and affection.
Moreover, French kissing isn’t just fun — there is an explanation by Richard Kohsiek, former board member of the KNMT, a professional association of dentists, orthodontists and oral surgeons. Kohsiek explains that kissing with your tongue is good for the oral environment because it stimulates saliva production, which helps keep teeth and gums healthy. Saliva washes away bacteria, reducing the risk of plaque and cavities. French kissing can therefore boost the immune system and build resistance by exchanging microbial cells.
“Relationships are all about compromise, but at this point, physical autonomy is a unique exception to that rule.”
My need for a French Kiss became the elephant in the room. Since talking about it wasn’t proving to be very effective, I tried another strategy: I suggested we watch a few different series like Bridgerton, Sex/Life and Sex Education, and a couple of Dutch series that guaranteed feature sex, all of which captured the beauty of French kissing (at least in my mind) — but he didn’t like any of the series and stopped watching after the first episodes.
I tried yet another approach: I sent him a YouTube video where you can actually see how it goes, which I hoped would demystify it for him and inspire him to try it. But we always ended up fighting over this kiss, an act that should bring a couple together.
Goodbye to a Desire
French kissing was clearly not for him. And because it involves physical boundaries, consent is incredibly important.
There was nothing to do but let go. No French kissing, which meant no extra oxytocin for bonding, no sharing microbes for a healthy oral environment, and never arriving at that deep physical intimacy that I craved. And was what I was craving really that absurd?
According to the love song “As Time Goes By”, “You must remember this / A kiss is just a kiss”, but for me, in the end, a kiss wasn’t just a kiss. A peck on the lips will never be enough for me — I need more, both physically and, in a way, spiritually. I think back to my high-school classmates bragging about who had French-kissed and who hadn’t; what they were really figuring out is who had gone the farthest into the (then) mysterious world of human intimacy.
In a way, my distress about my partner’s aversion for this practice wasn’t really about this kiss itself — it was a symptom of a fundamental incompatibility between us, a border that he couldn’t cross and a boundary that would leave me forever feeling a little unfulfilled. But it also gave me insight into my own needs. And although we broke up for other essential, intercultural different reasons, I have learned to value myself and not to settle.
And perhaps someday, who knows, I’ll meet someone else who also believes in the power of the French kiss.
