Why Couples Stop Kissing (And How to Bring It Back)

Kissing fades in plenty of settled relationships, and the pattern I would check first is demotion: once kissing only happens on the way to sex, it has no occasion of its own, so it goes quiet whenever sex does. The repair is to give it back a slot of its own, with nothing owed at the end of it.

The episode, and who is on it

Amy Baldwin hosts Shameless Sex alongside April Lampert, and episode #506, "Pucker Up! Let's Talk Kissing," brings in guest Ashley Randall, whom the show's notes describe as a certified Sex, Intimacy and Kink Coach. The published topic list treats kissing as its own subject: styles and techniques, neck kissing and full-body kissing, learning what a partner likes, why kissing and making out can so often disappear from long-term relationships, and keeping it playful. The episode is here. Everything below works from its published notes, a description and a topic list with no transcript attached, so it tracks the ground the show states it covers.

What the episode gets right about the fade

The framing is where the episode earns its keep, and I have no quarrel with it. It calls kissing one of the most underrated parts of intimacy, and the disappearance of kissing and making out from long-term relationships is one of the topics it takes on directly. Sex gets the credit and the blame. Kissing just stops getting scheduled, and a mouth that once kept somebody up until two in the morning turns into a thing you aim at a cheek on the way out the door.

The practical advice on that list is learning what a partner likes. Learn the person. In practice that means pressure, pace, and where they want attention once you get past the mouth. The notes do not go that far. We say the same thing about toys: shop for the sensation you want and the category name stops mattering, because a drawer of near-misses is what shopping by category buys you.

Reviving it is on the list too, and the notes do not go much past wanting it playful again. Start at kissing, ahead of anything further along, because it asks the least of two people who are out of practice. Small and unhurried. Nobody has to ace it on the first try.

Why I would not read the fade as a symptom

Here is my own pushback, and it is aimed at the reader's ear rather than at the show. Hearing that kissing is the thing that disappears invites the next thought, which is that its absence must be a diagnosis. On the evidence of a fade alone, I would read a rhythm rather than a symptom, and a rhythm can be restarted on purpose. I would not hand anybody a verdict on their relationship on that evidence, and a reader who has just been handed one is not going to find the next kiss any easier.

The notes also want kissing kept playful, connected and exciting, which is the right target. Playful is not a set of directions, though. Telling somebody who has gone quiet about kissing to be playful about it describes the destination and leaves out the route.

Two situations sit outside all of this: kissing that stopped as part of a wider withdrawal from each other, and contact that started to hurt. Both belong with a couples therapist or a clinician rather than with an article.

Three ways back in

Give it a slot of its own

Start here. Once kissing only happens on the way to sex, it inherits every reason sex did not happen, and one tired Tuesday clears both off the table. So pick a window where sex is off the table by agreement, and kiss in it anyway. Ten minutes on the sofa with the television off and nothing scheduled after it. Kissing somebody for ten minutes with nothing owed at the end is a different act from kissing them as a question, and the small version is what survives a bad week.

Ask the specific question

The pressure-and-pace point only pays out if somebody says it out loud. Ask where they want to be kissed and how hard, then wait for the actual answer. Curiosity reads a partner. Familiarity guesses. A guess that has run unchecked for years has had plenty of time to drift, and asking is what corrects it.

Take it off the mouth

The neck is on the episode's topic list, and it is the right place to go. The mouth is the part carrying the am-I-doing-this-right question, and a neck does not come with that question attached. Work a collarbone, the hinge of a jaw, the back of a shoulder, slowly, and the whole thing stops being an examination. Full-body kissing is the long version of the same move, and it buys something the mouth cannot: time.

For that half of it the massage oils shelf is the right aisle, and I am deliberately not naming a bottle, because the bottle is the least important thing in the room.

Where a product earns its place, and where it does not

Mouth-on-mouth kissing does not need a product, and I will not invent a reason it does. Warm hands, an unhurried ten minutes and an actual question are the whole kit, and not one of the three is something a shop can sell you. Taste is the nearest thing to an exception, and that is me wandering off the show's topic list rather than them: oral is a different question, and if somebody has been self-conscious about how they taste, it is easier to pick a flavor together than to carry that worry alone. The flavored lubes shelf is there for that, and the couples collection is there for the rest of the evening.