Wishing for more on October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I really really really like my boyfriend. A LOT. We’ve been dating for a while now, and he’s the sweetest guy — he’s perfect. My parents love him (all adults do), he goes to church and is smart and good, and he plays soccer, and of course is really good looking. And I think I’m falling in love.

He’s also a good kisser. But…

This might sound gross. As much as we’ve kissed (and that’s quite a bit), he’s never kissed me with, oh, say, any tongue. Now these are wonderful kisses, and there’s nothing that disgusts me more than a lot of tongue, cause dude, it just gets on my nerves. I don’t want some huge foreign object in my mouth, especially someone else’s huge foreign object. But, I can handle a bit of tongue. In fact, I WANT just a little bit of tongue. So what can I do? I’m hesitant, cause I don’t want to do anything that’s going to shock him and make him think “Ewwwwwww.” But I’m so attracted to him. And I know he’s really attracted to me. In other words, how can I politely bump up the intensity of our love life very slightly?

— Wishing for Just a Little More!

Dear Wishing,

Oh! It is so refreshing to hear from younger folks for whom “more” is adding tongue, not … sex. So I will gladly help you out — especially because I know it’s hard to talk about these things. I mean, casual doesn’t really work — “Hey, sport, what say we toss in a little tongue?” Nor does formal — “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. It’s about, well, bumping up the intensity of our sex life. I’mhesitant, because I don’t want to shock you, yet I feel that given our level of mutual attraction, we are ready to … ” At this point, actually, he may stick his tongue in your mouth to get you to shut up already.

Instead, I recommend: Show, don’t Tell — then Ask. Start by touching his lips with your tongue. Ask, “Um, do you like how that feels? Blink once for yes, twice for no.” And so on (in). Betcha you’ll rock his world. Starr-report back to let us know how it goes, okay?

Love,
Breakup Girl

Kissing and telling on October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I was wondering if you could tell me the proper way to french kiss because every time me and my boyfriend do this there is spit on faces. What are we doing wrong? Please tell me.

— Teresa

Dear Teresa,

You guys aren’t really doing anything wrong. Where there’s French kissing, there’s also spit, if I remember correctly. But that’s just it: where there’s French kissing. So: just keep tongues in mouths, not on faces. Voila!

Love,
Breakup Girl

Never been kissed before August 24, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve tried writing to advice columns before, but not once have I seen/heard a response. I’m trying again, though, in hopes that you can help me out.

First of all, I’ll start by saying I’m a fifteen year old girl. A SHY fifteen year old girl. Before this year, I’ve never been kissed. Sure, I’ve gone out with guys before, but that was “kid stuff” and nothing happened.

Anyway, this year I met this guy, Greg. He was a senior, I was a freshman, but we were really alike, and immediately became friends. After a month or so, a mutual friend set us up. We started seeing each other soon after that.

One day I was over at his house, and we were watching a movie. Halfway through the movie, he leaned in for the “big kiss.” He had kissed me before, but they were just pecks. This time it was more than that. When I realized what was happening, I got nervous, and I was afraid I would do the wrong thing. In result, I pretty much messed up the whole kiss, and ruined the moment. I guess what made me nervous was the fact that I knew he had much more experience than I, and I didn’t want him to think of me as inexperienced. But because of that, I probably looked more inexperienced than I could have.

(more…)

Classic advice from April 13, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am 18 years old, graduated from high school, and am now well on my way to completing my first year of college. I managed to graduate from high school and make it through almost an entire year of college without actually having had a boyfriend. I haven’t really gone on that many dates, either. No, I do not have low self-esteem and/or think there is something wrong with me physically or mentally. My problem is that I have never actually been kissed! I mean, how am I going to explain this to future dates? I’m really dreading this since my roommate is currently trying to fix me up with one of her boyfriend’s friends who supposedly likes me. Help!

— Blake

(more…)

Here’s a treat to bolster our national mood as we await an Idol Rolling Stone night that’s three contestants shy of being enjoyable (now statistically proven). EW.com put together a great slideshow of the 14 Kisses That Made You Cringe. This ranges from the obvious (Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley) to the OMG-I-had-blocked-that-out (Angelina Jolie and her brother). For me, the funniest ones are not from real-life, but from movies — where actors (or, say, Prince) make poor choices and no director recognizes the problem (and no editor bails us out). Are there any lip-locks missing you’d like to “see” on this list?

Yang Ya-Ching, a Taiwanese music student living in Paris, is attempting to kiss 100 strangers and take a photo of each one for her blog. The blog is in Chinese, but Divine Caroline gives us the jist:

The desire for a lasting memory of Paris is what inspired Yang. According to her blog, the first kiss was from a worker installing outdoor advertising and was like “an autumn leaf falling into my pocket by accident.”

Some think her project may be just an excuse to kiss handsome young men. Whether it is or not, she’s hit on a great excuse for the rest of us to go out and kiss handsome young men!

Check out her blog for an album of her photos (taken by Xiang,zhen-hua), or you can see a slideshow here.

A group of scientists at Lafayette University recently found that kissing reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol. They also noted higher levels of the emotional-bonding chemical oxytocin in the guys  they studied — but curiously, not in the girls, whose oxytocin levels pretty much stayed the same.

The study’s subjects were male and female, college-age students from the school — no same-sex couples were studied! Erm! — who were asked to make out in the student health center for 15 minutes. Memo to Lafayette admissions: put that in the catalog!

While I am tickled to find that there’s a Latin-derived “-ology” for the study of kissing — philematology — I wish it didn’t sound quite so much like “phelgmatology.” And to an extent, I’m happy to remain a layman rather than overanalyzing the art of kissing. For example, I don’t think I need to know that “men prefer ‘sloppy’ kisses, in which chemicals including testosterone can be passed onto the women in saliva. Testosterone increases the sex drives in both males and females.” Dropping that bit of science on me has, I think, actually ruined my next makeout session.

Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, BG’s alter ego’s column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). Today, we meet Frankly Frustrated, who comes by his nickname honestly. What’s the problem? No love from his lover. “My girlfriend and I have a great relationship except for one thing: sex. There is no passion or excitement in our relationship,” he writes. And: “I try to initiate intimacy, but she just buries her head in my chest and hugs me.” And: “Kissing is huge for me, but she doesn’t like to kiss, because she says she can’t breathe out of her nose.”

Yyyyyeah. Lynn felt the same way when she read that line and snarfed her seltzer. How can Frankly get some heavy breathing back into his life? Find out here — and then come back to comment!

Find out what she told Frankly here — and then come back to comment!