Love

Philematology-The science of Kissing

February 14, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The science of kissing. Sounds like a study that I might have concocted in my college days, except back then it would have been funded solely by me. 😉

At the risk of ruining my reputation I’ll concede that a good kiss has always influenced my decisions. In fact one kiss changed my life, but that is not a story to be told now.

“the practice of kissing is nearly universal. It is practiced in at least 90 percent of cultures among sexual or romantic partners, experts say. Now, scientists are investigating the biological factors underlying that ubiquitous expression of love.

The science of kissing even has a name: philematology. Research on the subject was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in Chicago on Friday.

“Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice,” said Helen Fisher, professor at Rutgers University and author of the book “Why Him, Why Her: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type.

A study by Gordon Gallup Jr., professor of psychology at the University of Albany, showed that 59 percent of men and 66 percent of women reported that after feeling attracted to another person initially, the attraction ended after the first kiss, Fisher said.

Looking at a sample of more than 1,000 college students, Gallup and colleagues found that women also tend to emphasize kissing more than men, and are much more likely to insist on kissing before a sexual encounter.

A person receives information about the person he or she is smooching by locking lips, Fisher said. A kiss transmits smells, tastes, sound and tactile signals that all affect how the individuals perceive each other and, ultimately, whether they will want to kiss again.

Women tend to be attracted to male partners with a different immune system makeup from their own, Fisher said. They subconsciously detect information about a partner’s immune system through smell during kissing, she said.

Research led by Wendy Hill, professor of neuroscience at Lafayette College, looked at how kissing affects the hormones oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” which is associated with social bonding, and cortisol, a measure of stress.”

Sex & Love- A Father Speaks

February 1, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Ah the joys of fatherhood are never ending. The inquisitive lad you know as Little Jack has struck again and insisted that I explain love, divorce and girls in general to him. That little rascal reminds me of the Terminator. He is relentless and unstoppable. You can divert his attention but sooner or later he will be back.

We have been over this ground on a number of occasions. Here is an incomplete list of posts that help to provide some background:

Not Quite a Recap- Let’s Talk about Body Parts
Dear Tooth Fairy
She Broke My Penis
For A Good Time Call…
A Life Without Regrets
Mr Nobody Made Me Do it
Proud and Humbled By the Four-Year-Old
Things My Four-Year-Old Has Done
A Six Year Old Wonders Where Babies Come From
Profanity- The Children Learn New Words Part Deux
Sex & Children
Great Moments In Parenting- Parts of our Body That Grow
Are You Smarter Than A Rabbi? Part I
Are You Smarter Than A Rabbi? Part II

And that is the short and incomplete list. It really doesn’t touch upon any of the stories involving the dark haired beauty, which is good. I need some time to prepare myself for the coming onslaught that she is going to unleash upon me.

As I sit here typing I am grinding my teeth, excuse me I am trying not to grind my teeth. My jaw is clenched and the muscles in my back and neck are tying new knots upon the existing ones.

Ok, I know that is a bit heavy for the normal tone of these posts. Usually they are a light hearted recollection of conversations between my children and I. But the rules of the blog dictate that I share what is really happening so that is what I am doing.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The big guy is acutely aware of the world around him and constantly exploring and asking questions about what he sees. Some of his classmates have parents that are divorced and some that are in the process of getting divorced so he is intensely interested in what this means and how it happens.

Today he asked me to try and explain to him what it means to be married and why people don’t stay married. He also asked me to try and explain why men are interested in women and in a whisper asked me to tell him about kissing.

Now the first rule of Jack’s tips for fathers is to keep your explanations short and simple. No need to answer the question of what time is it with a three hour diatribe on how to make a clock. Kind of funny coming from a man who is brevity challenged, but it is an important safety tip because everything you say opens you up for new questions.

Marriage

I really was tempted to start the discussion about marriage by sharing a clip from The Princess Bride but I managed to resist the temptation. Instead I provided him with a short description of marriage as a partnership between friends who love each other and have a desire to be together every day.

For a moment that worked for him and then he started peppering me with questions:

How old do you have to be to get married?
How long do you have to be married?
How many times can you get married?
Would you marry someone else?
How do you know you won’t marry someone else?
Do you have to kiss the girl at the wedding?

We spent a few minutes running through answers and then he told me that he never wants to get married because he doesn’t like girls. I smiled and told him that it was ok. I am not worried about it. He smiled back and told me that he is never going to change his mind because girls are far too bossy.

I let out a loud guffaw and muttered “you have no idea.” I was tempted to let loose with my impression of Al Bundy and run through a list of of cracks about women but it was too easy. And let’s face it my audience, an inquisitive eight year-old wasn’t going to appreciate it.

He still wanted to know why I laughed so told him that it was because I agreed with him, girls can be very bossy and then he said illogical and irrational too. Ok, he didn’t say that, but it would have been something if he had. Just what that something is I don’t know.

Then he got serious and asked me to tell him about kissing and why people do it. And because I have juvenile sense of humor I had to restrain myself again from making a crack about foreplay and how men would like to skip right over it. But I didn’t, because even though I have a juvenile sense of humor I have a romantic streak.

So I gave him a quick line about kissing feels good and helps to show that two people love each other and that is when he hit me with how do people stop loving each other.

It was a serious question and I had to think about it.

I paused and for a moment I thought about the great loves and heartbreaks of my life. Inside my head I remembered moments of intense passion and unfettered love. I remembered the feeling of utter joy and I remember the intense pain and loneliness of the end. I remembered that moment when you first realize that you are in love and you can’t wait to see that special person. And I remembered the soul crushing feeling of being told that it was over.

All of that feeling is far too much to pass along. He doesn’t need to know about that. I hope that one day many years from now we’ll have the sort of father/son relationship where we can discuss those things. And then I can tell him about those things. Then I can give him the background on the relationships that helped shape me, but not now.

For now I tried to explain being in love as the feeling you get when you are with your best friend. You always have fun together and you never get tired of doing things together. And then I told him that sometimes people change. Sometimes when you grow older you grow apart.

That seemed to satisfy him, at least for now. As he went back to playing with his Legos I stared at him and tried to imagine what sort of man he’ll grow into. I can almost picture him grownup, at least I can visualize the body. I can’t quite see his face or picture what his voice will sound like.

I hope that he finds the sort of love that makes him understand what it is really all about. The kind of love that makes your heart pound like a hammer on an anvil. I want him to understand that there is a fierce love that gives you incredible power and strength.

But that is a post for a different time and place.

Change is Coming

January 20, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Three weeks into the new year and I can tell you that I am still grumpy from the old one. Still have too many bills to pay and too few options. Tired of listening to people say that Bush is responsible for all of our problems. Tired of listening to people say that Obama is going to fix all of them. Tired of listening to Sarah Palin whine about whatever it is she is whining about. I am ready to turn on the television, open a newspaper and or surf the net without seeing her name.

Talked to the boys and confirmed that I am not the only curmudgeon feeling this way. But even if I were, I wouldn’t care. It is how I feel. Spent more than a few hours talking about such things over the weekend. A few of us got together and held a state of the union and discovered a few things.

We’re all ready to give up on women. every last one of us. The wives have gone out of their way to drive us to drink. There is a reason why clumps of hair keep falling out and we have knots in our necks. But I suppose that is only fair to say that the wives are telling similar stories among themselves and truth is that none of us are going to give on women.

To quote my friend John. “Jack, I love hanging out with you and talking to you is real easy. But it is much more fun to sleep with Kelly.”

John hadn’t quite finished his sentence when he realized how he had left himself open to all sorts of fun replies. Being a gentleman I told him that I agreed with him, it is much more fun to sleep with Kelly because she doesn’t snore.

On a more serious note, I suspect that a few more of the boys really are going to hang up their spikes and seek greener pastures. I find these conversations about troubled marriages to be troubling. I don’t really want to have give my opinion on whether they should stay or go. I think that it is the sort of conversation that is rife with pitfalls that I don’t want to fall into.

Every relationship is different and everybody has their own ideas about what they have to have and what they are willing to compromise upon. I can’t really tell anyone what to do, only what I’d do. I don’t like straddling the fence, but sometimes it is safer there.

If you wanted a list of complaints about these marriages I can provide it without trying too hard:

Not enough sex
Too much sex
Money problems
Different ideas about child rearing

I suspect that those are relatively universal problems that can crop up. But if you ask me the thing that I don’t hear any of them say is that their wives are their best friends or even good friends. Mostly they refer to them in a way that sounds more like a business partner that they occasionally have sexual relations with.

If I have any real advice about marriage to offer anyone it is that you need to like your partner. That is different than love and different than lust. If you don’t like them I don’t know how you are going to make it for the long haul.

Enough about all that. Here we are less than two hours into the Obama presidency and I wonder what we are going to see happen over the next four years. I am curious for any number of reasons. I suppose that part of it is because President Obama holds the title of first president that I consider to be a contemporary. As far as I am concerned he and I are pretty much part of the same generation.

It is kind of different. Until now I had always thought of the president as being either a really old man or closer to my parent’s generation then anything else. Maybe I really am getting older, who knows.

Kissing

January 14, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The big guy who helps run this joint has become interested in kissing. He routinely tells me that it is gross and that he never wants to do it. But every now and then he’ll approach me and ask if I like to kiss girls and why.

I tempted fate once by telling him that if he does a proper job of kissing a girl he can leave the seat up all the time and gain a maid and personal shopper. Men, learn from my experience, don’t say this thing in range of women who wear pointy shoes or have heavy purses. Those things leave a dent in the old melon.

But because I push my luck I once said that kissing is a necessary evil called foreplay. This in turn generated the question of “does that mean that I get to kiss and play with four girls at once.” I said something to the effect of it only works that way if you are Hugh Hefner.

Anyhoo I have attempted to try and explain to the young lad that kissing is an exercise that can blow your mind, but only if you are kissing the right person. Because when you have that sort of chemistry it is an organic experience that is worth doing over and over again. In fact a good kiss has been the reason why I got onto an airplane to fly untold miles to experience that again.

It was a life changing kiss that one. It was the sort of kiss that you find unsettling. It is so good that you can’t help but ask yourself it is real. And if you are like me you open your eyes in the middle and find her staring back at you. At that point in time you reach into your pocket and hand her a breath mint. Don’t forget to duck.

But on a serious note it was the kind of thing that spoke of unlimited potential. The kind of kiss that makes it clear to yourself that if you don’t pursue the situation further you will forever be known by the moniker of “Super Schmuck” because only a super schmuck would walk away from that. There are some things in life that you can dream of and experience. And some experiences that are so good they are a dream.

Before I forget today’s lucky numbers are as follows:

1 15 03 8 31 68 5 9 69

If you share that combination of numbers than you are guaranteed a chance to engage in the most incredible and amazing experience you have ever had. Sheer bliss.

I hate to walk away and leave this post half done, but I have to attend to putting a young child back to bed.

True Love Can Last A Lifetime

January 4, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

I thought that this story on CNN was interesting:

“...scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime.

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.”

Who says I love You First

December 28, 2008 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

This has got to be one of the dumbest articles I have ever read. I have to wonder if the author truly believes what she has written or if this was a feeble attempt to meet a deadline. If you read the article you’ll see that this woman says that men should always be first to say “I love you.”

“So what happens if you get there first and you say it and he’s not there yet? What happens when your “I love you” is met with a “thank you,” or worse, a deer-in-headlights look? Well, it stings, sure, but more than that, it can stop a perfectly happy and healthy relationship in its tracks before it’s even too far from the station.

If a woman asks a man out and he says ‘no,’ at least she knows where she stands with him and she doesn’t waste any time pining over someone who isn’t interested. Same thing goes if she makes a move on him and she’s rejected.

If she’s in a serious relationship — one where the expression of love has been made clearly by both partners — and she’s eager to make a deeper commitment, there’s nothing wrong with proposing. At the very least, it’ll start a conversation of where the relationship is headed so the woman can decide for herself if and how long she’s willing to wait if the man isn’t interested in getting married yet.

But an “I love you” uttered too soon, before the man has processed his feelings and reached the same level of adoration could end a relationship that just as easily could have had an eternal shelf life. As soon as those words are said, they change the dynamic. If a man isn’t feeling the love quite yet, he may suddenly feel pressure to manifest that emotion. And if the woman doesn’t get the response she expected, it could damage her confidence enough to derail the whole relationship entirely.”

I suppose that part of what annoys me about this nonsense is that there is a lack of logic here or at least a lack of acknowledgement that men run the same risk. If a man tells a woman that he is in love with her he risks her bolting from the relationship just as she does in the reverse.