Valentine’s Day is coming! Put PASSION back in your life!

Hey ladies.....guys...you too.  Has the "passion" kind of left your marriage/relationship?  It seems to happen to everybody.  With Valentine's Day just around the corner, wouldn't you like to get it back?  Kind of "steam up" your relationship again and put a little "zing" in your step?

There does seem to be a very simple...very inexpensive, secret.  You don't need flowers, candy, dinner,  Just KISS...REALLY... it's as simple at a KISS!

Ayana Byrd writes on msn.com that there is help for all of us!

Have you ever wondered why we kiss? It's actually a strange way to spend your time — lips smooshed together, breath (good or bad) mingling, and let's not even get into the tongue action. Yet we love it. We cheer when movie characters seal their happily-ever-afters with a smooch. A bodies-pressed-together kiss can make you remember why you adore the man who was annoying you just a minute ago. Why is that?

"For some women, kissing is even more intimate than intercourse," says REDBOOK contributing editor and ob/gyn Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., who devoted a whole chapter to the importance of kissing in her book What Your Mother Never Told You About S-E-X. "That deep level of connection you get when you lock lips and tongues is important." Hutcherson isn't just being a romantic — there's science behind the power of kissing: It causes our bodies to release endorphins and oxytocin, hormones that help us feel happy and more attached.

So it worries Hutcherson and other experts that kissing is one of the first things to dwindle when couples hit the long-term. In a recent REDBOOK poll, 79 percent of readers said they don't kiss their husbands nearly as much as they'd like; 14 percent said they're lucky to do it once a day. Alise, a 41-year-old mother of two, admits that for months, "we were down to a peck in the morning, maybe not even that." It wasn't until she tried to figure out why the usual zing was missing from her marriage that she realized nothing had changed except that life had gotten in the way of their kissing.

Hutcherson often prescribes smooches to patients like Alise, who are having sexual or relationship problems. "Getting back into the daily habit of kissing can rekindle a couple's intimate connection," she says. We rounded up some women to test her theory; Alise's assignment was to plant a big fat one on her hubby at least once a day. "We'd been off it for so long that I was nervous about how he'd react," she says. But after a week of making out more than they had since the honeymoon, she reports, "I swear we're as giggly and as turned on as when we first met." Read on for five more experiments — and get ready to relearn the power of a kiss.

+++

58 percent of readers...
Don't smooch their husbands as much as they used to

24 percent ...
Say they only kiss their partner as a lead-up to sex

+++

Experiment No. 1: A Total Kissing Switcheroo
"I pride myself on being adventurous and creative in bed, but my kissing routine is, I have to admit, pretty boring," Malikh, 29, told REDBOOK. "After four years of the same thing, I wondered if my husband was in the mood for something different." She followed this advice from William Cane, author of The Art of Kissing,to shake things up. "Slide your mouth to his cheek and then his ear, then back to his mouth," Cane said. "Also try different things with your hands, like rubbing his back, so it becomes a full-body experience." Bingo! "My husband immediately went from his just-getting-home-from-work mood to being ready for action. Now I have it in my bag of tricks for when I want to initiate intimacy without just saying, 'Hey, want to have sex?'"

Experiment No. 2: Making Over His Smooch Style
Twenty-five percent of women in our poll said they've successfully made over a guy's kissing style. That was welcome news for Zora,* 35. "My fiancé kisses like a junior high kid," she said when we first spoke to her. "It's lots of aggressive tongue-swirling, and I'm always wet around my mouth afterward — blech." Sheril Kirshenbaum, author of the upcoming book The Science of Kissing, says that might be chalked up to man kissing versus woman kissing.

"Research suggests that men may have an unconscious tendency to swap lots of spit because they transfer testosterone (which raises libido over time) to their mate through their saliva." An interesting explanation, but it obviously wasn't working for Zora. So to gently redirect her fiancé's style, Cane suggested this fix: "Ask him to stand still and not kiss you back for one full minute while you kiss him the way you want to be kissed." When Zora did, she couldn't believe how quickly things improved. "I planted a slow, dry one with minimal tongue on him. Then I asked him to try to do the same back to me and, A-plus! He knows I adore him, so luckily his feelings weren't hurt — and he hasn't returned to his old ways."

Experiment No. 3: All Kissing (No Sex!) for a Week
Kissing had become a novelty for Audrey, 43, and her husband. "We're affectionate but rarely kiss, even when we have sex," she said. Bad move, Kirshenbaum says: "Whether a couple has been together for four months or 40 years, kissing promotes feelings of intimacy and security." Did more kissing but no ba-da-bing make Audrey and her husband feel even closer? "On the first day we kissed big time, and it was hard not to jump in the sack, but surprisingly there was only one slip-up the whole week — our eighth anniversary came four days after I started the experiment, and I fell off the wagon. The sex was amazing, and it was hard to go back to abstinence after that. But doing this reminded us how much we love kissing, and the payoff was hot."

Experiment No. 4: A Very Public Display of Affection
"My husband always wants to make out in public — on the subway, in line at the market. What are we, teenagers?" says Sunny, 34. "It feels wrong to have people witnessing an intimate moment." Cane's advice: "The shared adrenaline rush that comes from an unexpected kiss can make a couple feel more bonded. Why not try it?" Sunny psyched herself up and did just that after a dinner date one night. "We stopped on a bench in Central Park and, surrounded by tons of people, I turned my properness meter off and open-mouth kissed him. I enjoyed it and realize now how many opportunities to be affectionate with him I'd been missing. I did, however, have to clarify my boundaries. After our little make-out session, he admitted that he'd almost grabbed my boob! Kissing, yes; groping, no."

Experiment No. 5: Kissing More. WAY More.
"My husband and I average one peck per week," says Tara, 25. "First we had our daughter. Then we had our son. Kissing over. I miss those hourlong sessions we used to have." But even one good smooch a day can "make you feel an elevated sense of well-being and closeness with your partner for hours," Cane says. Tara put herself on a kiss-a-day diet to see if it would work and reported back.