A friend told me last night that she went out on a date with a bad kisser. Normally, I’d want to correct her, “You mean, you went out on a date, and he turned out to be a bad kisser. It’s not that he was a bad kisser, and you knew this, and you went out with him anyway, right?” Except she had already said as much. She had gone out with him before. And he was a bad kisser then. How is this tolerated?
So it got me to thinking, what makes a bad kisser? I don’t mean, ‘what’s wrong with their technique?’ There are, doubtless, hundreds of ways someone could mess up a kiss. What I’m interested in is, ‘how does someone not figure this out?’ That’s really two questions: First, do they know they’re a bad kisser and, if not, how come? Second, if they know – hell, even if they don’t – what has prevented them from learning how to do this correctly?
I’d like to blame girls. I’m going to draw some sandy lines here and say that women judge men on kissing way more than guys do girls. Given that, I’ll concede that women are keepers of the kiss, and get to decide on the standards. So shouldn’t it be their responsibility to correct the guys?
But the onus, of course, is on the bad kisser, guy or girl. Didn’t they watch Top Gun a thousand times like I did? Didn’t they eventually stop closing their eyes at the icky, silhouetted scene of Tom Cruise’s tongue darting in and out of Kelly McGillis? I’m serious here.
Standard movie kiss. Guys hand on girls face, eye contact, slow approach, start with the lips, move to tongue. There, was that so hard?
So I’m really wondering about this. I figure that some people are just a bit awkward with their sensual bodies. These people are probably bad lays too. Again, I think they should be corrected. Some guy or girl should stop them, slow them down, and say, “hey, let’s try this, and then model the correct movement.” Frankly, I think it’s unfair of anyone to complain about a bad kisser, unless included with their account of how bad the kissing was, they include their many attempts to explicitly teach the person.
I had a girl tell me once, “not so hard.” It threw me at first, but I quickly realized she was right, and that my pride had nothing to do with it. I softened the kiss, and she enjoyed it more. Perfect. I also once had a girl, mid-sex, stop me, and tell me to relax, and to enjoy myself more. I think I had been really caught up in my head, too serious about performance or goal. That girl, that moment, really changed me, and I laughed, and relaxed, and I took that suggestion to heart. We had an amazing time, and I’ve been a better lover for it.
I think the real problem is that people treat kissing like it’s supposed to be an instinct, like it’s something you just figure out, and some people are good, and some bad. That’s wrong. Kissing, like almost anything else, is something you learn, and work on, and improve. It reminds me of this friend that I lived with for a few months. We were talking about sex, and I was talking about everything I had learned, all the books I had read since I was, like, fourteen, all the movies I’d watched, the conversations I’d had, the trials and experimentation with different girlfriends. He thought that was totally wrong. His opinion was that sex should remain innocent, new and, in a sense, unpracticed. He felt that it should just be something you figure out with your lover, that part of the romance and fun was in figuring it out. He had some really good points; I think a lot of the idea that sex should be fun and part of the fun is figuring out what works with a partner. But I can’t abide by the idea that educating yourself, looking things up, getting advice, is ever a bad idea.
So, what it comes down to is that people make two mistakes. First, bad kissers probably haven’t taken the time to really explore something that they think is ‘natural.’ Instead of exploring the thing like an adult, they still act like teenagers, all pent up in the shame of still figuring something out. The other mistake is made by the people saying someone is a bad kisser. If you like them enough to kiss them, have the guts to smile, and say something about it. Be prepared to reassure them. Learn something about teaching somebody in a way that makes them comfortable.
So tell me what you think? What makes a bad kisser bad at it? How did they get that way? What have you done to learn about how to be better? What have you taught someone that’s helped them?
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Bad kisser…
the tongue monster
-they try to shove their tongue down your throat
-they shove their tongue around like a whiplash….
mostly… if they are bad with their tongue… anyone can give a peck… lol
So what you’re saying is, we should really be teaching our young men how to better use their tongues? I can agree with that.
It reminds me of this time I made love with a French girl and afterwards she says, “Strange, I mean, I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect an American to know what to do.”
Here’s the thing…I think men are fighting against some strenuous odds, at least a lot of men are, at any rate. I still have a tiny comic-strip word bubble I clipped from a long-forgotten strip when I was in high school. It says “For god’s sake, don’t watch porn for pointers!” The fact that this is a joke, that it’s funny at all, suggests “oh ho ho, I totally know what you mean with that joke! In fact I dated a guy one time, who must’ve done just that!”
Secondly, awkward dudes are lightning rods for swindlers. For instance, the target audience of the dating brochure I posted excerpts of at my own blog (a bunch of entries in Sept/ Oct). Whoa, dang, those poor schlumps? They probably started off as bad kissers and it was straight downhill the moment they picked up that advice pamphlet!
Still, there is no excuse for a crappy chocolate chip cookie, nor is there an excuse for a bad kiss. End of story.
I’d take a partial exception with porn being a bad way for boys to learn about sex. Of course, if a guy is particularly insensative to begin with, or just very naive/immature, there is the risk that he’s just going to get the generally rough or even mysogynistic sex depicted in mainstream porn, and that would be a mistake.
But there’s a lot of good that can come from it as well. First off, porn will lessen a lot of the mystery that surrounds sex, from the simple but understandable confusion a young man (or woman) may have about the basic mechanics of how the one bit is meant to sort of fit into the other, to the more advanced concepts such as multiple positions or differences in some people’s tastes.
Again, the trouble comes when a man only see’s the purely male side of things or, to put it more accurately, the purely aggressive side. That’s important for sex, but there is usually a tenderness required to balance it out.
I would also argue that many women I’ve talked with have had a real lacking in their understanding of sexuality (including their own) because of being underexposed to pornographic material. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with not viewing it, just that it can be a useful tool for women too.
Just as men so often need to learn about tenderness to please a woman, so too women ought to learn about some of the more adventerous things their fellow might enjoy. And an article in Cosmo isn’t going to cut it. There’s a lot of free material out there, ladies. I think I might write more about this.
Oh, I so agree with pretty much all you’ve said. When it comes to porn, it has its time and its place, and hey, even if it’s just there for fun (and not a more “intellectual” purpose), I say “go for it, give it a look (or read or listen)!” I kinda think it’s more odd to not expose oneself to porn than to get into it now and then.
What I meant was, I think a lot of men get a lot of sh*tty advice, and there is a dearth of good advice (and assertive women who are comfortable articulating what they do and don’t want), so often dudes are left floundering amidst a sea of absurd suggestions and guidelines.
I just used to practice with my mates at science camp. The molecular sequence of glucose wasn’t the only sexy thing going on that week.
I think that your right. There is no good or bad kisser. Just some people like different things. Kissing is something that should be worked on for each couple to mould to there preffered kissing techiniques. Some may like a hot steamy kiss with lots of tongue, others preffere a sweet romantic kiss and most preffere both depending on which mood they'e in. The only problem is… how exactly do we tell the person we love and would hate to hurt, to change there way of kissing. For example, Telling someone to 'Let you take the lead, and you show them what you like' could come across as wanting to lead to something more than a kiss in the end. Also saying something like "Could we try a little less tongue?" could come across as being picky and sarcastic. So how would you suggest telling someone to change what they're doing without hurting them, or making them feel like they were doing it wrong?
I'd have to mention that if you gather a bunch of education on a topic, then you never really do it on your own (unless you gather the education afterward). If someone tries something, and figures out it works, they likely tell others. It turns into education, which you consume. So instead of you making your own path, you get on theirs.
That's all I wanted to mention.