Mouth Trap
I really like this guy I've started dating. We've only kissed once. He's not a great kisser. Can you teach somebody to kiss better? My girlfriends say a bad kisser is a dealbreaker.
--Wondering
With friends like yours, Snow White would still be in a coma. The prince would maybe put too much saliva into the kiss, and she'd wake up for a moment -- just long enough to exclaim, "Eeeuw! You kiss bad!" -- then pull the silk pillow over her head and go back to bed for the rest of her life.
Come on, the guy kissed you once. Even criminals get a second chance. You can't change a man's character, but you can whisper in his ear, "softer" or "a little slower." Don't make it about what he's doing wrong but about what you really like. Kiss him the way you want to be kissed. If need be, tell him what turns you on, like how you love gentle biting on your bottom lip (as grateful as you are to have discovered what it's like to close your eyes and be licked upside the mouth by a romantically minded Great Dane).
"He's not a great kisser."
(1) How do you know you are any good at it?
(2) Better phrasing: I don't like how he kisses me.
Spartee at September 15, 2010 5:10 AM
Right on. Great kissing is a learned skill. Why not take this opportunity to get lots and lots of practice.
Sabrina at September 15, 2010 5:10 AM
How old is the person who wrote this letter? Is it telling that my first assumption is that it's a grown woman? This is why I don't have "girlfriends." Oy vey!
Thag Jones at September 15, 2010 5:34 AM
Women love 'dealbreakers'. I think that there are several reasons..
1. They're good for tricking your girlfriends into staying single.
2. They create the illusion of control and superiority. Because any man who meets you is going to want the 'deal' and your the one who'll choose if he gets it.
3. They allow us to demean men, who are all 'disposable' after all.
4. They're empowering. I don't know how, but whenever women engage in childish stupid behavior it's got to be spun as being 'empowering'.
It's funny that Tina Fey has done a whole riff on the stupidity on dealbreakers but that women think that she's endorsing them.
tina at September 15, 2010 6:31 AM
A mature person can state "this is how I liked to be kissed," instead of running to her girlfriends who call it a "dealbreaker."
He may have been with girls that liked to be kissed differently than what you like.
When I was younger all the girls wanted extremely passionate french kissing with lots of tongue like you were a glass of water and they had been is the desert for 2 days.
As I got older a lot of the women wanted soft loving kisses.
There is a possibility that there is something he may not like about you. But, given time he will probably tell you about it rather than cash in the whole relationship.
David M. at September 15, 2010 6:54 AM
Well said Tina. There is a lot truth in your list. Women of a certain age (generally young) can't ever imagine a time when they will not be 25 and hot. By the time the bitter truth is revealed, those "deal breakers" all start sounding pretty stupid.
Sheepmommy at September 15, 2010 7:10 AM
Tina for the win.
Letterwriter, if your friends are in to creating wedges between you and potential lovers, you need new friends.
I have seen women (and men, but less often) start peeling off from wonderful mates that other people will quickly leap at once the mates are single again, merely because the person's friends were down on attachment to mates at the time.
It works like this. Say a woman has a great boyfriend. That woman's friend, however, is breaking up with her own boyfriend. Friend then starts working on woman, to make woman feel that woman's relationship is insufficient. Woman breaks up with mate. Yahtzee! Now woman and friend are both single. Let's party! Let's go dancing! Naturally, friend then finds a new guy, and stops calling woman, who now realizes she is alone and dumped a great guy for a "friend" who was just concerned about being alone.
Woman may experience a moment of awakened horror, when she realizes her lousy friend cost her a relationship with a great mate.
Thence comes the woman's attempt at reconciliation with a former mate, who was puzzled as to why this gal dumped him but now wants him back.
Gals seem more attuned to the sense of how others view their guy, relative to men, and when their peer group starts expressing disapproval of a guy, the guy is toast. Guys will often dump their friends before they will dump a girlfriend.
Spartee at September 15, 2010 7:16 AM
Everyone has dealbreakers. We all get to choose what our limits are. It does seem silly to make your dealbreaker something that's easily rectified.
MonicaP at September 15, 2010 8:16 AM
Oh, for crying out loud! Not such a great kisser? Are some people so worried about life's imperfections that they can't let themselves enjoy anything or anybody?
And, as others have pointed out, Tina nails it. Her girlfriends say bad kissing is a dealbreaker. Her girlfriends say? Her girlfriends say? Hey, LW, what do you say?
Old RPM Daddy at September 15, 2010 9:17 AM
@tina
"...3. They allow us to demean men, who are all 'disposable' after all..."
WTF ?!?
can you elaborate a bit? disposable how?
i've been seeing a lot on this site from women that is starting to open my eyes as to how they [/generalisation] see men - it's pretty ugly
i realise that tina is only one person and one opinion but none of the women here comment on these statements. does that mean they are complicit in their agreement - do they not see anything wrong with these statements?
seriously - i'm really curious
theOtherJim at September 15, 2010 10:23 AM
@tina
BTW tina, i get that you don't agree with the things you pointed out. i'm just curious as to whether this is how a lot of women feel about men and why
theOtherJim at September 15, 2010 10:27 AM
@Jim I was being a little sarcastic, sort of riffing on the attitudes of some younger women, and what you'll see promoted in women's media. Don't take it too seriously.
But it's true that just like some men pride themselves on their conquests, there are women who like to reject men. It's empowering!
There's also an certain negative attitude that can come out when women are unhappy, or complaining about men and relationships, which is were 'disposable' comes from. It's obviously meant as an insult and a way of bragging that you don't need men. But women who actually thought that way probably wouldn't be dating men to begin with.
tina at September 15, 2010 2:24 PM
I'd rather have the concept of a "dealbreaker" and be able to cleanly walk away from a relationship that isn't satisfying in an important way, than be like so many women who stay with the wrong guy because they are too wimpish to leave and think they won't find anything better.
Kissing is important--period. And in my experience, someone who doesn't kiss well is also not very good in the sack. If that's an unfair generalization, so be it, but it's my experience.
I agree with Amy, in that you should give it another go. There are a number of factors that could have been involved to make this a less-than-appealing experience, not least of all that he isn't that attracted to you. If it doesn't float your boat on the next go-around, look elsewhere.
Razor at September 15, 2010 5:57 PM
Oh, and MonicaP, bad kissing is not something that is "easily rectified."
I taught it for a living--if only it were that easy.
Razor at September 15, 2010 5:59 PM
@ Razor:
You say that "Kissing is important--period. And...someone who doesn't kiss well is also not very good in the sack."
But then you turn right around and say "You should give it another go."
So which is it, Razor? Is lousy kissing -- or, for that matter, lousy sex -- SO much of a "dealbreaker" that it overrides the things which are TRULY vital to the success of a long-term relationship, such as honesty, financial responsibility, the emotional ability to commit KNOWING that there will be "dry spells," and compatible life visions (e.g. personal goals, religion/philosophy/values, the decision whether or not to procreate and how to raise the products thereof)?
Are you saying, Razor, that all sexless or "sex-poor" marriages are inherently without values? Or -- let's make this REAL personal -- are you telling me you'd trade a good LIFE for a good kiss?!
I gotta quit reading this column...sigh... Aside from a few major blind spots, entirely attributable to her own state of never-married and never-a-custodial-mother, Amy herself makes SO much sense. But with all due respect quite a few of y'all fellow Constant Readers need to have opened up on ya not a great big can of whup-ass, but rather a great big can of GROW-up,-you-ass!
I'd bet a month's income that NONE of y'all now bitching about kissing skills ever got sent to bed without dinner to meditate upon the error of your ways in general and your superficial values in particular. IMO, these days such an old-fashioned remedy is far more appropriate for whiny, self-indulgent adults WHO ARE CAPABLE OF KNOWING BETTER(!) than it is for children whose only "sin" is not yet having acquired RESPONSIBLE adults (parents and parent-approved Significant Adult Others such as teachers, coaches, and spiritual advisors) to teach them that Real Life On This Planet is a constantly shifting balance of trade-offs, and that life's winners are DISPROPORTIONATELY comprised of those who can pick their battles and/or delay gratification.
Spikeygrrl at September 15, 2010 6:17 PM
Spikeygrrl, settle down lass. All Razor said was to give it another go just to see and then, if it's a bit luke warm, leave it at that. You are making inferences from Razor's post that aren't necessarily there.
Why are you so offended by the idea that good sex is an important part of a relationship?
Some people may not care that much if their relationship is asexual or "sex-poor," but most people do want a satisfying sex life as part of the deal, otherwise you might as well have a room mate.
Thag Jones at September 15, 2010 6:55 PM
I am not a kissing expert, but I have learned that a person can have a bad day.
The first time I went out with a guy, it was magic. I was lost in his kisses. The second time, He seemed to be distracted and in a rush. He kissed me anyway, but I guess that he could feel my tension. He kept asking me to relax my lips. It was all but impossible. I guess that I was a very bad kisser.
Give him another chance, and tell him what you want. If things are still difficult even after a bit of practice, it may not be worth it. Some people just have more chemistry together than others.
It's not fun to have to explain every little thing. It's much more fun to be with some-one that just "gets you" and can read your body language and you find that you both adapt easily and naturally.
Jen at September 15, 2010 8:14 PM
This reminds me of learning all this in the first place with my first girlfriend - it was the first of everything for both of us at 15/16.
My god we were bad. We had no idea what we were doing. We didn't know how to kiss, and we were just working that out when we realised we didn't know anything about sex either, and damn that hurt! For both of us.
But the good news is that practice makes perfect, and spending the next six years working out the details was wonderful. And I've never had any problem since (not only no problems but a lot of compliments!)
I'm curious too as to how old the LW and her man are. If they're young, she needs to train him a bit - I was lucky I had an equally inexperienced partner to work it out with but that doesn't always happen, and patience is the key. If they're older, that's harder to fix, or maybe the chemistry just isn't right between them and that's making it awkward. Not enough information.
Ltw at September 16, 2010 5:53 AM
The 'dealbreaker' women think of men as accessories, that exist for their enjoyment, that they have the right to control. Anytime men do the slightest thing they don't like, they break up with them to make them suffer, in the hopes that the guy will come crawling back, and they will always have the upper hand. It's all motivated by fear and an inability to trust.
Chrissy at September 16, 2010 12:07 PM
right on Tina...!
"dealbreaker" girlfrinds who break up with the guy for some little reason and make him crawl back are the same ones who get married and divorce their husbands because they are "bored" or "I just want to be single" or because they think Rico Suave next door might be any better...
never satisfied...
mike at September 16, 2010 1:46 PM
Well, everyone has a few big-deal things, such as smoking, kids, employment. But there's a big difference between screening potential mates based on your few most-important criteria, and having a list of hundreds of trivial dealbreakers. And at the risk of getting myself in some trouble here, I will say this: although I do know of some men who have a wildly inflated idea of where they are in the attractiveness hierarchy, the long-list-of-must-haves seems to be exclusively a female thing.
Cousin Dave at September 16, 2010 6:40 PM
1) I said in "my experience" that someone who doesn't kiss well is not very good in the sack. Considering that it's MY EXPERIENCE and I can judge what I think to be good or not good to me in the sack, so far I have 100% accuracy.
2) Like your other points, good, healthy sex is truly vital to the long-term survival of a relationship. Bad/mediocre sex almost without fail = stress, arguments, infidelity.
3) No, I'm not saying that sexless or "sex-poor" marriages are inherently without values. In fact, I believe I actually said that making a judgment on one kiss was stupid and that she should give it another go. However, I DO think that she should ultimately trust her own judgment and not start off a relationship with someone already having to deny her own desires, or think the mate has problems that can eventually be "fixed."
4) In addition to not reading the column anymore—perhaps you should lighten the fuck up. And as far as being superficial, I've dated smokers, overweight men, men with horrible financial problems, men who were still in the closet, men who were emotional children and so forth. My current partner has HIV. Don't you even dare presume to tell me I'm superficial in my taste of what's right or what's not right for me. After all, the most important thing in REAL LIFE ON THIS PLANET is that it's MY REAL LIFE, and neither I or my relationships exist to please SOME WHINY, SHRILL COMPLETE STRANGER.
Razor at September 16, 2010 8:01 PM
And judging from comments left on the other column board—I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that someone is or has been in a sex-poor relationship and doesn't understand why it isn't working.
Razor at September 16, 2010 8:11 PM
Wrong. I was married for five years to a guy I thought I could "teach" - at the end of the marriage he was still ramming his tongue down my throat even with instructions. Some guys just do not have *it*.
tasha at September 16, 2010 10:28 PM
When I listen to women, it is guys don't know how to kiss. When I listen to guys, it is women don't know how to give a good blow job (there is truth in the latter, especially if you are well-endowed--I have had skin removed).
Based on experience, only about one in 10 women know how to give a good blow job. The stuff guys put up with....
BOTU at September 19, 2010 1:12 PM
Sad to say but it's not only women who's friends try to sabotage relationships. I once was very attracted to this guy and when we were alone we were very compatible. I really fell hard for him BUT he had these nerdy computer geek friends that were so jealous that he was getting some that they constantly put doubts into his head so he would push me away until he was lonely, then he'd want to go out again. If his friends found out we had a date they'd put pressure on him to go do something "with the guys" that day! I am so glad I found a better more emotionally mature man to be with who is a lot hotter AND has mature friends who are too busy with their own girlfriends or wives to "cock block".
I know that somewhere there are all these lonely bitter people wondering why not only can they not get a date but why their friends finally got wise and stopped talking to them about their relationships.
D at September 27, 2010 9:33 AM
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