Kissing can make a man and a woman feel perfectly connected. It can also set off a full-blown battle of the Pleasure
Poets, playwrights, and regular folks agree: A passionate kiss is one of life’s most magnificent pleasures. Breathing quickens. Bodies tingle. Knees buckle. (In a romance movie, this is the part where the camera pans to a crackling fireplace.)
If you’ve experienced it, you know it: A great kiss feels like heaven on Earth.
But underneath all that nuzzling and nibbling, things aren’t always so copasetic. While a great smooch can make you feel as if you and your partner are melting into oneness, science shows kissing is a distinctly different experience for men versus women. And each gender brings to this very intimate act vastly different attitudes, preferences, and expectations.
The ways we’re in harmony
Kissing is something most humans love. Practiced around the globe, it’s among the first physically intimate courtship behaviors.
In a recent study published in Science, Troel Arboll, a professor of Asian history at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, argues that romantic kissing developed in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia and became more widespread through written stories. An early example is the Kama Sutra — a third-century Pleasure guide that sets rules for kissing and Pleasure according to Hindu law.
Fast-forward to today, where according to 2016 research, the average age of a first romantic kiss is 15. When it’s a good kiss, more than 90% of people can recall it in vivid detail. When it’s a dud, the majority of both men and women will end a budding relationship, according to a study published in 2017 in Evolutionary Psychology.
There’s no international school for smooching, but it turns out most of us use similar techniques. After watching lovestruck partners kiss in public places, researchers reported in the journal Nature that more than two-thirds of us tilt our heads to the right (and that includes lefties). Some suspect this preference is set in infancy. Studies show up to 80 percent of nursing mothers cradle their babies on their left arm, prompting the baby’s head to turn to the right.
For both men and women, a good kiss creates intense feelings of bonding. Social scientists report that prostitutes often won’t kiss because it requires “a genuine desire and love for another person.” Keeping their lips out of the transaction helps them keep their emotions out of their work.
Your brain on kissing
For men and women alike, a good kiss sends a cascade of electric impulses bouncing between the brain, lips, tongue, and skin. According to a 2019 study published in Scientific Research, the resulting rush of endorphins brings on feelings of a natural “high.”
Kissing sends a flood of messages to the brain. Among the most active signals come from the lips, which are packed with nerve endings and are ultra-sensitive to every kind of stimulus.
Human lips are unique in the animal kingdom because they’re everted — meaning they turn outward. “Unlike other primates, the soft fleshy surface of our lips remains exposed, making their shape and composition intensely alluring,” writes author Sheril Kirshenbaum in The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us.
The sculpture below, dubbed Sensory Homunculus, shows the relationship between each human body part and the proportion of brain tissue dedicated to processing its sensory information. As you can see, the lips are obscenely large, since they contain so many sensitive nerve endings. (Although this sculpture depicts a man, a female version would show lips and tongue similarly outsized.)
As Sensory Homunculus illustrates, even the lightest brush to the lips can launch a cascade of impulses in the brain — stimulating an area even larger than the one activated by genital stimulation. The (ahem) bottom line? For both men and women, our lips are our most exposed erogenous zone.
The gender divide
While kissing may bring a man and woman together, different expectations and preferences can pull them apart. In other words, there’s more to a kiss than meets the lips.
Consider, for example, smooching styles. Social surveys indicate men prefer open-mouthed, wet kisses. Women, on the other hand, can do without all that saliva and tongue action.
The gender divide even extends to when men and women like to kiss. Though men typically want to pucker up only until the Pleasure begins, women enjoy kissing before, during, and after lovemaking.
Different preferences may reflect different motivations. A study published in 2017 in Evolutionary Psychology found that while women often consider a bad first kiss to be a deal-breaker, men are not so easily deterred. Whatever the quality of the kiss, the male focus doesn’t stop at first base. It seeks the full Pleasure prize.
“Whereas females felt there was a greater likelihood that kissing should lead to Pleasure with a long-term partner than a short-term partner,” the researchers wrote, “males felt that in either instance, kissing should lead to Pleasure.”
The study also found women are far more likely to view kissing as a kind of litmus test for weighing the value and long-term status of a relationship. Men, on the other hand, tend to see it as a means to an end. “Men swap spit,” Kirshenbaum says, “in the hopes of swapping other bodily fluids later.”
Biology is destiny
Does this prove men are focused on nothing more than adding notches to their bedposts? Take a deep breath, male readers: Psychologists say no. While women undoubtedly place more emphasis on the kiss itself, kissing matters to men, too — just in different ways.
Some theories say men can gorge on casual kissing because, unlike women, they’re able to spread millions of sperm around. With good health and hearty stamina, a male can theoretically impregnate hundreds of females. (The famous 13th-century plunderer Genghis Khan was so successful that geneticists have detected his DNA in one of every 200 men alive today!)
In contrast, females have much fewer opportunities to pass on their genes. Between puberty and menopause, a woman has only about 400 mature eggs. Plus, having just a single one fertilized can translate to a full load of responsibility. A woman who engages in kissing and Pleasure may be required to carry a developing baby to term and deliver it, care for it, and provide it with resources for many years to come.
No surprise here: When it comes to kissing and Pleasure, women have much more skin in the game. As Kirshenbaum points out, “From a strictly wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am perspective, a man can be off to the next conquest in minutes.” No wonder women are more picky!
The nose knows
With so much at stake, how does a woman evaluate a potential mate? Some studies say the answer is as clear as the nose on her face.
In the famous 1995 “sweaty T-shirt experiment,” researchers studied women’s reactions to male odors. Females who sniffed the T-shirts recently worn by males preferred the scent of those whose immune response genes differed from their own.
This suggests that the secret for mate selection may lie with the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) — a group of genes that control how our immune system defends itself against disease. Simply put, if you carry more variation in your MHC genes, your body has an easier time recognizing foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses, and your offspring may be more healthy.
This theory was confirmed by a 2006 study published in Psychological Science that examined the genes and bedroom behavior of 48 couples. Researchers found that women who were more genetically distinct from their partners reported a higher level of physical satisfaction. By contrast, those with MHC genes similar to their mate reported having more fantasies about other men and were more likely to cheat.
Sealed with a kiss
Whether it’s a peck on the cheek or a passionate liplock, a kiss is an extraordinary shared experience. It can extend greetings, demonstrate affection, increase emotional connection, help in the selection of a suitable partner, decrease stress, and bring incredible pleasure. While the Pleasure may approach it from different perspectives, ultimately kissing doesn’t divide. It unites.