The Case for Kissing

I think I mentioned, Oscar and I have been together for 10 years. When we first met, we were so hot for each other, it was almost ridiculous. I could hardly be in the same room with him without wanting to rip off his clothes, even though we didn't start having sex until we'd been dating for about 6 months (Hey! I'm a big flirt and I have a brazen little mouth on me, but that doesn't mean that you can bat your eyes at me and my pants are going to fall off. Unless you're Salma Hayek.) (Don't judge me!)

We are still pretty damn hot for each other, but as you can expect, 10 years and one kid later, our sex life is not as active as it used to be. I imagine we're still having sex more often than a lot of married couples with children. But we're also not looking for any excuse to duck into a nearby storage closet and get busy.

And yet, Oscar's kisses still make my knees melt. Not the fast pecks I get as I'm walking out the door or the perfunctory, "Hi, how are you?" kisses I get when he comes home from work. I'm talking about the ones that take time. The soft ones that make me close my eyes and drown in the sensation of being loved. The hard ones that quicken my pulse and make me want to feel his skin against my own. The light brushes of his lips against mine when we're breathing the same air, but in no hurry to close the gaps. The deep hungry ones when it's as if our tongues are at war and we can't get enough of each other.

I love kissing him and being kissed by him. So it's a bit of a surprise to me that we had sort of forgotten the art of the make-out session. I mean, don't get me wrong...we kiss a lot. But it's usually towards some purpose. To say hello, goodbye, I'll miss you, I forgive you, I want you, I love you. Rarely do we kiss just for the sake of kissing or of feeling that closeness and intimacy that comes from having his lips on my lips.

Last night, though, we had an argument. It was a stupid argument, which came about mostly because it had been far too long since we'd connected. But I had plans and those plans didn't leave time for the usual make-up sex, nor, really, would I have been in the mood for it if I did have the time. What I wanted was to feel connected to this man...to remember why I love him as much as I do. So I told him to follow me into the bedroom and take off his shirt, and I took mine off as well, and we crawled up onto the bed and kissed. Over and over again. Long drugging kisses. Hot fast kisses. With no purpose in mind other than to kiss and reconnect. It was a vivid reminder of the early days of our relationship.

I'm not going to get into what happened once we were done exploring how many different ways our lips could connect. But I will say that by challenging ourselves to kiss - just kiss - without the underlying goal of it leading to more, the end result was a deep sense of satisfaction and smug smiles on both our faces. Needless to say, from now on, we'll be taking more time out of our schedules to devote to that activity, and, you know....whatever we might be in the mood for after that.