Sex File: He doesn't kiss me properly anymore — how can we resolve this?

Research by Susan Hughes at Albright College in Pennsylvania suggests that men are more likely to initiate kissing before sex, when it might be used for arousal purposes, whereas women are more likely to initiate kissing after sex, where it might better serve a relationship maintenance function.

My partner of five years never kisses me properly any more, unless it's definitely going to lead to sex. I know we're out of the honeymoon period but I miss the kissing sessions we used to have as a pleasure in their own right. How can we resolve this?

Kissing is greatly underrated but there has been a lot of research into it. Most of it concludes that kissing is a fundamental measure of relationship quality and, having read a number of papers on the subject myself, I believe that none of us are doing enough of it.

Most of the older studies on kissing took a more evolutionary approach. They hypothesised that kissing might be a way of picking up pheromonal cues to assess genetic compatibility or general health. 

Kissing was also thought to be an important psychological signal of commitment. Recent research finds gender differences in kissing behaviours between men and women that accurately reflect the situation you describe. Essentially, women seem to place greater overall importance on romantic kissing than men. 

Research by Susan Hughes at Albright College in Pennsylvania suggests that men are more likely to initiate kissing before sex, when it might be used for arousal purposes, whereas women are more likely to initiate kissing after sex, where it might better serve a relationship maintenance function.

In 2023, Dean Busby and a team at Brigham Young University in Utah conducted a kissing study with 1,605 people who had been in a committed relationship for at least two years. 

That research found that kissing frequency was a strong barometer of sexual quality, relationship connectivity and overall relationship quality.

In another study from Finland, Julia Katila at Tampere University videoed the everyday interactions of ten heterosexual and same-sex couples for up to 20 hours a day to try to capture how and when couples kissed. 

The team mounted video cameras in the participants' living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, hallways and bedrooms. What the study showed is that kissing has its own subtle form of choreography. 

The build-up to a kiss starts well in advance of any physical contact with some kind of shared emotional connection or good humour. Then couples begin to mirror each other's movements, facial expressions and even tone of voice. 

It is a multisensorial reciprocal action that creates and sustains intimacy in long-term relationships.

If kissing is a sign that a relationship is thriving, not kissing indicates that there is work to do, so you do need to talk to your partner about this. Ask him whether there is a reason he doesn't want to kiss you unless you are going to have sex. You may discover that he is not even aware of this pattern and just drawing attention to it might change things. 

You may also find that because he associates kissing with having sex, he doesn't want to engage in kissing at times when it is not possible or appropriate to do so. There is also a possibility that he doesn't actually like some aspect of kissing. 

If that is the case, find out what the problem is and you will have a better chance of being able to resolve it. Either way, you are right to try to address this because kissing is an important way to remain physically and emotionally connected. 

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