Are you a good eye kisser? Have you had memorable eye kisses? I don’t mean kisses with lips on eyes, but kisses with your eyes, briefly or for extended moments.
Eye kisses can be at least as complicated as lip kisses and more subtle. They aren’t necessarily sexual, as lip-to-lip kisses tend to be. So to be a good eye kisser requires even more regard for the other person than to be a good lip kisser. It’s all about the give and take of invitation, response, awareness of limits, and pleasure — a wordless message that, when shared, is a mutual affirmation. It translates roughly as “I like you, I recognize you as a companion in this mystery of being human, and I hope you are enjoying this brief time we have together as much as I am. If we never meet again, I wish you a happy life.”
I have only become a good eye kisser later in life. My experience has grown during English country dances, where extended eye contact is encouraged and we change partners frequently. I am in a committed, monogamous relationship, but I know my life partner is a good eye kisser, too, and she enjoys such brief encounters as much as I do. We don’t discuss them, but they deepen our own relationship rather than threatening it, because they independently reaffirm our worth as human beings.
Although eye kisses can be flirtatious invitations to other things, they needn’t be. When shared in a mutually limited…
