The subject of kissing, or actually the lack of it, has recently come up in party conversations. People were complaining not just about the lack of kissing, but about the increase in bad kissers in recent years. This sent me on a journey to get feedback from other people on whether they had noticed anything, and the responses were interesting.

Marah Fellicce of Red Bank, New Jersey, said she, too, has noticed that “the world of kissing has shrunk significantly. Kissing can be a wonderful, intimate experience, rivaling the main event in some cases.” She says there’s “an overly sensual experience between two people and a built-in desire to hurry, but what do you expect in an age of instant popcorn?” Franklin Riga, who emphasized the fact that he was a straight man, agrees: “I think maybe kissing is becoming a lost art.”

Romance novelist Kathy Newburn says that kissing is “totally sensory—all five, in fact. You’ll feel, hear, smell, see, and taste—all factors that create desire and pleasure. So stick around and enjoy, and finally practice mastering the art of the kiss.”

“Kissing and Cooking for Couples” author Kim Reutzel says she believes “kissing is a way to stay and connect in more ways than one. Touch allows the physical juices to flow creating a soul-connecting experience that can rekindle the fire within.”

What the Beverly Hills psychiatrist, relationship expert and author of the best-selling book “Bad Boys: Why We Love Them, How to Live with Them and When to Leave Them” has to say about the recent decline in kissing explains a lot. “The decline in kissing is due in part to our ever-growing ‘to-do’ lists and the steady decline in time.” He goes on to explain how kissing is actually “the most intimate part of a sexual encounter, as each partner’s true feelings are communicated to the other during this act. People may fake feelings during other aspects of sex, based on the desire for erections or even orgasms. But they can’t fake how they really feel toward their partner during a kiss. Men and women are increasingly afraid of intimacy. They don’t want to reveal their true feelings through a kiss because they are afraid of getting too close and then kissing.” get ripped off”.

Mary Jo Fay, author of several relationship books, echoes the thought: “People ARE jumping into sex so quickly that they’re missing out on the incredible intimacy, anticipation, and heightened awareness that spending more time kissing and not rushing the sex part can provide.”

“For starters, it’s very intimate and bonds you in the same way that sex does (at least you’re exchanging bodily fluids),” explains Alison Blackman, editor and writer for AdviceSisters Publications. “Maybe that’s why prostitutes don’t like to kiss either. A romantic kiss can mean anything from ‘I like you’ to ‘I adore you’ to ‘I just want hot sex and then I want to forget you’. “It’s an emotionally charged activity. And I think we spend so much time in front of our computer screens that physical connections of all kinds have diminished. It’s not a good thing, but it’s a sign of our times.”

But it’s not just the lack of kissing. The other part of the problem is bad kissing. One woman who asked not to be named because she did not want to hurt her husband’s feelings said: “I have been married for almost eight years and since the first month I have hated kissing him. He sticks his tongue in my mouth and moves it like a twitching worm.”

“It would be nice to kiss to break a deal,” says three-time married Jessie McCaskill. “Now I know that if someone can’t give in to the kiss, they are not naturally sensual people.” Dating expert Mary Jo Fay agrees, saying that she believes “bad kissing can be enough to tell someone NEXT without a second’s hesitation. Bad kissing usually makes me believe the sex won’t be good either.”

Marah Felliccee has even gone so far as to teach kissing classes across the US in New Orleans, Boston and soon New York City. But she is not alone. In fact, you can even go as far as getting a kissing certificate from sexologist and Loveology University founder Dr. Ava Cadell, who says she’s “made it a priority to educate people about the lost art of kissing with a certificate course.” There is even an entire website (www.kissing.com) dedicated to teaching people how to be better kissers and the various methods of doing so. “We all love it…but some of us just don’t know we love it until we’re taught it!” says Don Clarkson, a resident of Portland, Oregon.

Really, the easiest way to improve is to ask someone who is a really good kisser to teach you. And think how much fun that can be.

Perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps instead of being a driving force in the front seat of human sexuality, it has moved to a place in the back seat. And it’s conceivable that it hasn’t lost its appeal so much because of the way people think about sex. The kisses went from the hand, to the mouth and now to the genitals. It wasn’t that long ago that oral sex was considered something very intimate. Now it’s just another way to show affection, like kissing was years ago.

But Ann Keeler Evans, the Marriage Examiner columnist for the “Philadelphia Examiner,” doesn’t really think kissing has lost its place in intimacy. She takes this into account when she stated in one of her last columns that “kissing is an art. It is not the prelude to anything, it is the climax. It is not an appetizer, but a dessert! It is the chocolate soufflé of the desserts. It is the good wine that is savored not only with food but also alone”.

Kissing will never go out of style. Teens on dates are a good example of that. But as some of the people interviewed for this article say, couples who have been together for a while seem to lose interest. Ki Mirra of Burlington, Vermont said people “really enjoy the closeness that kissing fosters.”

And certainly, for many people, kissing is a truly unspoken form of communication. Architect Christine Leonard, who has to deal a lot with couples in her business, says she sees a lot of hello/goodbye kisses between these couples and feels that she can usually “see true love in a kiss.”

Hope sprouts eternal. For some, kissing sometimes replaces more intimate encounters. But for most people it’s not something they decide to give up. Just as a good painter always wants to improve, he practices the art for as long as it takes to become a master.

Ace McKay, author of “The Marriage Playbook”“ says she believes everyone should become a leader “to set the trend for the BIG comeback of kissing” by being willing to show affection for the person they love the most, even if it’s in public. In other words, lead by example by being the example.