Talking about kissing

A couple of days after I came home from visiting Debbie, we talked over Zoom. Of course there wasn't a lot of news to talk about after just a day or two. But then Debbie asked if we could practice Beginning Anew.

Beginning Anew is a practice from the Plum Village tradition of Buddhism. The point is to practice it when somebody has hurt you, so that you can get back into a good state with him. (You can find information about it online, for example here, here, or here.)

Of course I said that would be fine, but I was a little concerned. Had I done something to upset her?

So we began. The first step in Beginning Anew is "flower watering." Each of you describes things about the other that you love, value, or respect. So we did. Then each of you expresses any regrets you have in the relationship. And each of us came up with something that we (respectively) had done badly or unskillfully in the last week.

The third and fourth steps are to express hurts and ask for help. And Debbie said she was uncomfortable with the way we kiss, because we still sometimes kiss on the mouth.

Whoops.

Of course we do—I mean, we have been, ever since we got back in touch with each other after taking a break for a couple of years. I noted at the time that our kisses were "perfectly chaste" except that our lips touched. I think I've remarked on it since then, too. And I guarantee it hasn't all been at my initiative. When I was joking with Debbie in Glencoe, Scotland, and she caught me around the waist for a kiss, she certainly aimed for my lips. This is part of what gives our relationship the frisson that it has, that makes it feel like I have two girlfriends and not just one.

At the same time, Debbie has expressed reservations about it before. (See, for example, here.) She worries that we are doing something behind Marie's back. She worries that she is encouraging me to philander. I don't see it that way, and I have told her so before. I also recognize that if she weren't so conscientious on this specific point, she would probably be sloppier than she is about other ethical issues as well, and I wouldn't love her so much. So I don't argue with her or complain about her point of view. It simply is what it is.

What I told her in real time is that I had never meant to make her uncomfortable, and that I drew the line between romantic kissing and the other kind in a slightly different place: viz., on whether the kiss involved open mouths or closed ones. I joked that this meant no more than that I had calibrated the topic a quarter inch to the left of where she calibrated it. But now that I understand that touching lips makes her uncomfortable, of course I'll stop. 

Sigh.  

It was delightful while it lasted.