What I Learned After 16 Years of Kissing My Wife Wrong

Co-authored by Galit Romanelli

For the past 16 years, Galit has told me from time to time that she doesn’t really enjoy the way I kiss. Not every time we kissed, but often enough that I noticed it. And I was like, sure, I’ll try. I guess it wasn’t that big of an issue for me.

She would also sometimes complain that she wanted more kissing, and that I don’t kiss her enough. She said I mostly kiss her when I want to have sex. I heard her, but I didn’t really change my oral lovemaking strategy.

Then a couple of months ago, toward the end of my 30-day challenge of touching Galit the way she wants to be touched, something changed. We were talking about kissing, and she laughed and said I don’t know how to make out, and that I haven’t made out since the ‘90s.

I initially laughed, but then I got it. She’s right. Since I’ve started having sex, I’ve stopped investing in my smooching.

Once that penny dropped, I knew it was time to change. I decided to put my ego aside and try to explore kissing from her perspective. I took upon myself a new challenge. I decided I would kiss her every single day, the way she prefers, regardless of sex.

Where Do Boys Learn to Kiss?

As I embarked on this challenge, I began to unpack my core beliefs about kissing. I realized that for a lot of men, the conditioning is that kissing is just one step toward sex. The whole metaphor of making out that my generation grew up with was that of baseball: first base, second base, third base, home run. If kissing is first base, you don’t want to end up at first base. You want to get a home run.

Where did I learn how to kiss? No one ever really teaches you. I picked it up along the way, through movies, TV shows, porn, experiences, and my buddies telling me what to do. Part of my process was also realizing I never really saw my parents kiss. They had the mom-and-dad partner’s kiss. I never saw them kissing as lovers. So kissing for me was either not sensual at all or associated with sex.

The tipping point is that once you start having sex, you don’t really make out just to make out. Because after you scored a home run, you don’t really enjoy staying on first.

Sensual ≠ Sexual

What I learned from our previous touch challenge is that sensual doesn’t mean sexual. Sensual is meeting in the senses. Experiencing the lips, connecting the bodies, enjoying the smell, the heat, the energy. Sexual is one specific dimension of the sensual encounter. It only relates to sex, reproduction, and sexual organs. A much narrower definition.

Sadly, many men conflate the two. From a young age, kissing gets categorized under the sexual, and not the sensual. It becomes associated with sex. Unfortunately, this has become the stigma: the horny husband who’s too tired for foreplay, hugging, or kissing, and just wants intercourse.

When kissing becomes linked to sex, the situation becomes binary. And binary thinking is not beneficial for relationships, and certainly not for sex. Especially for women. Many women share in the clinic that when their husbands kiss them, they already know that he’s looking for sex. That puts pressure on them. Pressure and sex don’t go together well. So it’s in men’s self-interest to cut the umbilical cord between kissing and sex.

Kissing Is a Portal

Long-term committed relationships require both, but in different ways. The goal of the sensual is to connect. To feel seen, to feel loved, to feel heard, to touch each other, to be connected. Sex is one means to that goal. Especially once you understand that there are actually two more ways to make love besides sex: mental and emotional.

So if men can learn to enjoy kissing for its own sake, they will unlock another gateway into the sensual. And the wider the sensual playground, the richer the sexual experience.

I believe that men want to be more sensual. We want to be celebrated, touched, and enjoyed. We’ve just been socialized that everything is about sex. If we dare to reframe kissing as a sensual opening, we will receive more love, attention, and caring from our partners.

As we age, our libido changes. Think about an elderly couple sitting next to each other on a bench, or in their wheelchairs. What they’ll probably enjoy is more sensuality, more connection, more touch, more kissing. That’s the good stuff.

Part of maturing as a man is moving from a hyper focus on sexuality to a wider focus on sensuality. More sensuality leads to a more satisfying and richer sexuality.

At the end of the day, what we really want is soul synergy, those rare moments that we transcend our existential loneliness, meet in a deepest way, and touch the sublime. Soul synergy happens when the physical, mental, and emotional lovemaking combine.

Kissing is not just part of physical lovemaking. It’s also an emotional move. It’s a way to be present together. When our bodies connect, when our lips join, when we’re exchanging that energy, we are making and transferring love. It’s just a different type of love.

The Kissing Audit

So here’s our invitation: Kiss your partner every day the way they like, regardless of sex.

And if you dare, ask yourself: Where did you learn how to kiss? Then have an honest conversation with your partner about the kissing dynamic in your marriage.

We created a fuller kissing audit for couples who want to go deeper based on our experience.

Galit Romanelli is a relationship coach, Ph.D. candidate, and co-creator of The Remarriage Roadmap.