Erotic kissing contributes to the body's health

In Friday's Sexpert column for The Daily Colonial, Merry Jessica Fuerst answers a question about kissing and libido. She writes:

"The connection between our libido and kissing is pretty obvious. We all acknowledge that the first kiss can be important, and we often take it as a first sign of compatibility or sexual prowess, but once our sexual repertoire expands it seems we begin to discount the significance of kissing. After all, sex scenes may be scintillating, but it is the kissing scenes that make us ooh and ahh at the TV screen. To quote Thomas Moore from his book The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love, "The pleasures we may find in sex - sweet sex, aggressive sex, inventive and explorative sex, sadomasochistic games, dressing and undressing, body parts and kinds of kissing, places and settings - all of these preferences tie so closely to passion, and show us who we are, where our soul wants to lead us, and what our inhibitions look like. In sex we see private parts of the soul, with all its particulars."

Fuerst then talks about the origins of kissing and the influence of hormones on arousal and energy.