My Ah Ha Moment

So I was on the phone with a close friend today and I had an Ah Ha Moment.. or maybe I've seen too many of those commercials lately. Either way, it was suggested that I suffer, not from full-blown Scarlet O'Hara Disorder (Jeepers! I would HATE to be just like her), but from some sort of mild syndrome.

Among the many memorable quotes from this movie is one from Rhett Butler. He holds Scarlet inches from his face. She closes her eyes, puckers her lips, and Rhett stops. He holds her further away, tells her to open her eyes and says, "No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."

So there it is. My Scarlet syndrome. Some women make dresses out of curtains, some women marry for money, some women are obsessed with their waist measurements, and I am among those cursed with the constant need to be kissed--not just kissed, but kissed often and well.
I protested the theory and explained it away with claims that kisses came with love and love makes people happy or the sheer enjoyment involved in being so close to someone on other levels that let to kisses. Anything sounded better than the idea that everything that was wrong with me could be fixed with the simple, unattached act of being kissed by someone who knew how.

It's been my own personal experience that the only men who have truly known how to kiss me were also in love with me and I still can't separate love from the best kisses of my life. I still argue that love is part of the cure--not just kisses.
So I did a little research. Scientifically kisses both connected to love, as well as those unconnected, have medical and psychological benefits.

Here are some of my favorites:
1. The extra saliva produced by kissing washes bacteria off your teeth, which can help break down oral plaque, says Mathew Messina, DDS, a private practice dentist in Fairview Park, Ohio, and consumer advisor for the American Dental Association.
2. Bryant Stamford, PhD, professor and director of the health promotion center at the University of Louisville said, "During a really, really passionate kiss, you might burn two calories a minute -- double your metabolic rate." (This compares to 11.2 calories per minute you burn jogging on a treadmill.)
3. Tension Relief/Meditation: Joy Davidson, PhD, psychologist and clinical sexologist in Seattle said that kissing is also "a sensual meditation. It stops the buzz in your mind, it quells anxiety, and it heightens the experience of being present in the moment. It actually produces a lot of the physiological changes that meditation produces."
4. Kissing involves extreme invasions of personal space which build feelings of trust and safety.
5. Sharing germs adds to your internal defenses
6. I even read somewhere that "The endorphins produced by kissing are 200 times more powerful than morphine. "
7. Studies have shown that those who kiss their spouse goodbye every morning live 5 years longer than those who don't.

There were a lot more, but I thought those were interesting. Maybe I am better off getting kissed all the time. But I still refuse to believe it's my cure. I will admit that I'm a person who loves physical interaction with people. Isolation would be torturous for me. I like being hugged, snuggling is the best thing in the world, I melt if someone plays with my hair--I think you get the picture. I like to be touched. It makes me feel appreciated and liked and a million other things.

Huggers are known to have lower blood pressures and heart rates. Tickling leads to laughter which is also good for your heart and acts as an abdominal workout. MRI's have shown that stress in women is reduced when someone holds their hands.

So maybe Rhett was just ahead of science. Maybe Scarlet had blood pressure issues--Goodness knows she was stressed during the Civil War! I still think it's more beneficial and less stressful to have these interactions within a relationship, but the research is starting to convince me that I need kissing, often and badly, from someone who knows how. Then maybe I won't be so crazy?