moreha tekor akhe: People Kissing On The Beach

##title##

Depending on the culture, relationship and context, a person may kiss another on their lips, cheek, head, hand and each of these gestures may carry a different social significance.
Kissing on the lips is a physical expression of affection or love between two people, in which the sensations of touch, taste, and smell are involved. According to psychologist Menachem Brayer, although many "mammals, birds, and insects exchange caresses" which appear to be kisses of affection (e.g. lovebirds), they are not kisses as humans consider them. Psychologist William Cane notes that kissing in Western society is most often a romantic act and describes a few of its attributes:
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.:9

old joke about how men and

Something to spice up the

couple kissing at beach

Tel Aviv beach kissing

of people are choosing the

Kissing in Western cultures is a fairly recent development and is rarely mentioned even in Greek literature. In the Middle Ages it became a social gesture and was considered a sign of refinement of the upper classes.: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 cultures kissing is not commonly done. In South East Asian countries the "sniff kiss" is the most common form of affection and Western mouth to mouth kissing is reserved for sexual foreplay. In some tribal cultures the "equivalent for our 'kiss me' is 'smell me.'"[citation needed]

Hough kissing on a beach

Posing for a kiss. How sweet!

religiously followed.

Picture: Lovers Kissing at the

loving people kissing at

The origins of the kiss were studied in the early 20th century by natural historian Ernest Crawley. He wrote that kissing was "a universal expression in the social life of the higher civilizations of the feelings of affection, love (sexual, parental, and filial), and veneration." According to Crawley, touch is "the mother of the senses," and the kiss was a tactile and specialized form of intimate contact.:113 However, he notes that the act of kissing was very rare among the "lower and semi-civilized races," but was "fully established as instinctive in the higher societies." Yet even among higher civilizations Crawley saw differences: while the kiss seems to have been unknown to ancient Egypt, it was well established in early Greece, Assyria, and India.:113
The kiss of lovers, according to 19th-century anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, originated and evolved from the maternal kiss. Crawley supports this view by noting that Japanese society, before the 20th century, was "ignorant of the kiss except as applied by a mother to her infant," while in Africa and "other uncivilized regions," it was commonly observed that neither husbands and wives, or lovers, kissed one another.:117 However, kissing was common among the Greeks and Romans as when parents kissed their children, or when lovers and married persons kissed. The kiss in Western societies was also used in various religious and ceremonial acts, as where the kiss had a sacramental value. Crawley concludes that generally, although kissing was prevalent in some form since primitive times, it "received its chief development in Western culture.":119

Stock Photo Index - People

old reunited couple kissing on

Two people kissing on a beach

Two people kissing on the

Then we went to Rockaway beach

In modern times, scientists have done brain scans on people when a romantic relationship progresses. Some studies found that after that "first magical meeting or perfect first date," a complex system in the brain is activated that is essentially "the same thing that happens when a person takes cocaine." In studies of affection between lovers, when participants viewed images of their partners, their brains' ventral tegmental area, which houses the reward and motivation systems, was flooded with dopamine, an internal chemical that is "released when you're doing something highly pleasurable ..." Kristoffer Nyrop has identified a number of types of kisses, such as kisses of love, affection, peace, respect and friendship. He notes, however, that the categories were somewhat contrived and overlapping, and other cultures often had more kinds, including the French, with twenty and the Germans with thirty. In many cultures, it is considered harmless growing up customs for teenagers to kiss on a date or to engage in kissing games with friends. These games act as icebreakers at parties and for some participants they may be their first interaction with the opposite sex. There are many such games, including Truth or Dare?, Seven Minutes in Heaven (or the variation "Two Minutes in the Closet"), Spin the Bottle, Post Office, and Wink.