A kiss is not just a kiss, especially for women. While men use kissing as a prelude to sex or as a way to reconcile, women see it as so much more – and men should pay attention to this.
Women use kissing as a way to assess a man as a potential partner, making that first kiss a make-or-break deal for most budding relationships. Once a relationship is established, a woman uses kisses to both maintain intimacy with her partner and run a status check on the state of the relationship or marriage, reports the BBC News.
Meanwhile, men place much less emphasis on the meaning of a kiss. Because they are far less discriminating than women when it comes to deciding whom they will kiss, a kiss doesn't carry as much hidden meaning. In addition, they are more willing to have sex with someone without ever kissing her, as well as to have sex with a woman to whom they are not really attracted. Even if they think a woman is a bad kisser, they will still have sex with her.
Not so for women on all three counts, who view kissing as a way to bond with a man in the short term and maintain a relationship in the long term. As a relationship progresses, men tend to place less emphasis on kissing.
That's the word from Dr. Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York who questioned more than 1,000 male and female students and determined that kissing has developed over time to become an essential part of the courtship process. He says that kissing is a way both men and women can reject people who are genetically incompatible with them.
What kind of kisses do men and women each prefer? Men like passionate and wet tongue kisses, while women prefer more tender smooches.
The study findings were published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.
From the Editors at Netscape
