Editing Kiss (section)

===Romantic kiss===
[[File:Amor, te quiero.jpg|thumb|A couple kissing]]
[[File:Men kissing2.jpg|thumb|A gay couple kissing]]
[[File:Two girls kiss in Strathcona Park, during the annual 2018 Edmonton Pride Festival.jpg|thumb|A lesbian couple kissing]]
In many cultures, it is considered a harmless custom for [[teenagers]] to kiss on a [[dating|date]] or to engage in [[party games|kissing games]] with friends. These games serve as icebreakers at parties and may be some participants' first exposure to sexuality. There are many such games, including [[Truth or dare?|truth or dare]], [[seven minutes in heaven]] (or the variation "two minutes in the closet"), [[spin the bottle]], [[Post Office (game)|post office]], and wink.
The psychologist William Cane notes that kissing in [[Western world|Western]] society is often a romantic act and describes a few of its attributes:
{{blockquote|It's not hard to tell when two people are in love. Maybe they're trying to hide it from the world, still they cannot conceal their inner excitement. Men will give themselves away by a certain excited trembling in the muscles of the lower jaw upon seeing their beloved. Women will often turn pale immediately of seeing their lover and then get slightly red in the face as their sweetheart draws near. This is the effect of physical closeness upon two people who are in love.<ref name=Cane>Cane, William. ''The Art of Kissing'', Macmillan (1991)</ref>{{Rp|9}}}}Romantic kissing in Western cultures is a fairly recent development and is rarely mentioned even in ancient Greek literature. In the Middle Ages it became a social gesture and was considered a sign of refinement of the upper classes.<ref name=Brayer>Brayer, Menachem M. ''The Jewish Woman in Rabbinic Literature'', KTAV Publishing House (1986)</ref>{{Rp|150–151}} Other cultures have different definitions and uses of kissing, notes Brayer. In [[China]], for example, a similar expression of affection consists of rubbing one's nose against the cheek of another person. In other [[Eastern Culture|Eastern cultures]] kissing is not common. In South East Asian countries the "sniff kiss" is the most common form of affection and Western [[Human mouth|mouth]] to mouth kissing is often reserved for sexual foreplay.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hopkins |first1=E. Washbun |title=The Sniff-Kiss in Ancient India |journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society |year=1907 |volume=28 |pages=120–134 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/592764 |publisher=American Oriental Society |doi=10.2307/592764 |jstor=592764 |access-date=25 January 2021}}</ref>

The kiss can be an important expression of love and [[eroticism|erotic]] emotions. In his book ''The Kiss and its History'', Kristoffer Nyrop describes the kiss of love as an "exultant message of the longing of love, love eternally young, the burning prayer of hot desire, which is born on the lovers' lips, and 'rises,' as Charles Fuster has said, 'up to the blue sky from the green plains,' like a tender, trembling thank-offering." Nyrop adds that the love kiss, "rich in promise, bestows an intoxicating feeling of infinite happiness, courage, and youth, and therefore surpasses all other earthly joys in sublimity."<ref name=Nyrop />{{Rp|30}} He also compares it to achievements in life: "Thus even the highest work of art, yet, the loftiest reputation, is nothing in comparison with the passionate kiss of a woman one loves."<ref name=Nyrop />{{Rp|31}}

The power of a kiss is not minimized when he writes that "we all yearn for kisses and we all seek them; it is idle to struggle against this passion. No one can evade the omnipotence of the kiss ..." Kissing, he implies, can lead one to maturity: "It is through kisses that a knowledge of life and happiness first comes to us. Runeberg says that the angels rejoice over the first kiss exchanged by lovers," and can keep one feeling young: "It carries life with it; it even bestows the gift of eternal youth." The importance of the lover's kiss can also be significant, he notes: "In the case of lovers a kiss is everything; that is the reason why a man stakes his all for a kiss," and "man craves for it as his noblest reward."<ref name=Nyrop />{{Rp|37}}

As a result, kissing as an expression of love is contained in much of literature, old and new. Nyrop gives a vivid example in the classic love story of [[Daphnis and Chloe]]. As a reward "Chloe has bestowed a kiss on Daphnis—an innocent young-maid's kiss, but it has on him the effect of an electrical shock":<ref name=Nyrop />{{Rp|47}}
{{blockquote|Ye gods, what are my feelings. Her lips are softer than the rose's leaf, her mouth is sweet as honey, and her kiss inflicts on me more pain than a bee's sting. I have often kissed my kids, I have often kissed my lambs, but never have I known aught like this. My pulse is beating fast, my heart throbs, it is as if I were about to suffocate, yet, nevertheless, I want to have another kiss. Strange, never-suspected pain! Has Chloe, I wonder, drunk some poisonous draught ere she kissed me? How comes it that she herself has not died of it?}}
Romantic kissing "requires more than simple proximity," notes Cane. It also needs "some degree of intimacy or privacy, ... which is why you'll see lovers stepping to the side of a busy street or sidewalk."<ref name=Cane /> Psychologist [[Wilhelm Reich]] "lashed out at society" for not giving young lovers enough privacy and making it difficult to be alone.<ref name=Cane /> However, Cane describes how many lovers manage to attain romantic privacy despite being in a public setting, as they "lock their minds together" and thereby create an invisible sense of "psychological privacy." He adds, "In this way they can kiss in public even in a crowded plaza and keep it romantic."<ref name=Cane />{{Rp|10}} Nonetheless, when Cane asked people to describe the most romantic places they ever kissed, "their answers almost always referred to this ends-of-the-earth isolation, ... they mentioned an apple orchard, a beach, out in a field looking at the stars, or at a pond in a secluded area ..."<ref name=Cane />{{Rp|10}}