This year, give a St. Valentine’s Day gift, and by that, I mean a kiss, like a man. Just don’t give a St. Valentine’s Day gift, again I mean kiss, to Jenny McCarthy or Amanda Bynes because you might get a nasty surprise in return.
We know you’re thinking about sex; but a kiss opens the door to making love. You can’t enter the temple without going up the first step. A kiss is the threshold to romance; the closest thing sex has to a gateway drug. Kissing declares you’ve proudly crossed the border from the friend zone to enter a more enchanted place of potential sensuality.
However, it doesn’t have the same meaning for everybody. I’ve had a few dates where the woman vigorously made out with me after I made the move for some time, yet she didn’t even return my phone calls afterward.
It took me years to get anything resembling a straight answer out of a woman explaining this; and the most coherent thing I heard was “she probably thinks you expect that again – or more – on the next date; and she isn’t ready to go there or changed her mind about going there.”
Somewhere in the 1990s, too many men became emasculated, and relationships lost their boundaries and definition. I blame Ross and Rachel from “Friends,” ice-blended mocha drinks and “Dawson’s Creek.” A new generation of guys thought it a good idea to ask a girl first if they could kiss her, and sometimes even wait it out in the friend zone for months, or years before going for it. The Hemingwayesque man’s man of earlier generations was becoming an endangered species.
Asking a girl if you can kiss her is the least confident and most unsexy thing a man can do.
If you have to ponder very long her response, the answer is likely “no.” Sir Winston Churchill famously said, “One of the hardest things to do in life is kiss a girl that leans away.” But man up, guys; sometimes she will turn her head on you, and then get herself away from you. It didn’t work out – too bad. Like Jay-Z says, “On to the next one.” At least you had the cajones to act the correct/traditional way.
Almost all men are mentally challenged when it comes to interacting with women. Growing up, I had three older sisters and no brothers; so I’m only slightly less mentally challenged.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, a Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Fox Sports, MSN, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Chicago Now
A Fulbright scholar, published author and MBA, Banks has appeared on live radio all over the world; he’s also a member of the Football Writers Association of America, U.S. Basketball Writers Association, and Society of Professional Journalists. The President of the United States follows him on Twitter (@Paul_M_BanksTSB) You should too.