Sorry, Sam, a kiss is more than just lip syncing.
When two people are attracted to each other, there’s no mistaking the intention of a kiss. Yet how confounding the experience when lips finally touch.
Oh that first kiss, not the one you give your first crush, but the one that feels like a down payment on the rest of your life. That first kiss.
The lead-up, the lean-in, the prayer they’ll kiss you back, and that intoxication your brain cannot name, but the heart readily approves of, once your lips press together, and perhaps lock for a while.
Science says a kiss is a messenger. Less Cupid, more Mercury in a lab coat neurotransmitting a cocktail of feel-good and love-inducing chemicals. If you’re lucky, it’s the rush of kissing’s trifecta of “happy” hormones: the dopamine triggering feelings of pleasure and reward so you want more, the serotonin signalling evidence of romance and cueing the anxiety to chill, and the oxytocin injecting the fidelity that fosters monogamy.
Kissing my wife for the first time was an ineluctable collision of magic and relief. While I teetered between being gentlemanly and not being man enough to seize the overture, Maria made the first move. She leaned in, I reciprocated, and while my brain reached for the wordfinder, my heart unconditionally endorsed the moment.
And once you find love, a kiss just gets better as time goes by.