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I think I need a friend today. I am really emotional with what is going on in the world, and makes me get more, and more triggers. But I was reading something someone put on Instagram about how a kiss is more intimate than sex. So then it sent me in a spiral thinking my husband committed the most intimate act. Not once but twice. So here I am low again with everything. I just need good clear help. I have been doing so good lately. But feeling the spiral today. 😔

I think everybody has their own idea of what's intimate. My WH sat in a car in a dark parking lot and kissed somebody. I don't think that was intimate at all. It was rushed, sordid, no real emotional connection, etc. Then they quickly parted ways and went back to their spouses. Where's the intimacy in that?

Intimacy doesn't have to equal physical. There's a lot more to it than that in my opinion.

There's a scene in Pretty Woman where the two hookers are talking and they say "never kiss on the mouth because it's too intimate."

I'm so sorry. My WH actually told me he f*cked them but didn't kiss them because "it was too personal." Like he's Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or something. SMH. The truth was he kissed allll of them (and he cheated 100+ plus times in less than a year and a half.)

I think it's physical cheating. Kissing, sex, whatever. Intimacy is the connection between two people, the closeness, the sharing, etc. In your case, I think his kissing is cheating, but we wasn't being "intimate" with her/them.

I'm so sorry you're facing so many triggers. I totally get it.

So down below I list a ONS. My W got drunk at a conference and went back to a guys room. She was drunk and laid on his bed half passed out. He started kissing her (clothes on) and she consented as they made out he ran his hands down and she stopped him, she told him “I’m married I can’t do this”. He walked her back to her room crying, her roommate confirmed this. In my opinion going to a Man’s room and making out is cheating and it constitutes a ONS in my book.

I couldn’t kiss my STBXWH especially after DDAY.

During fake reconciliation he we tried kissing, but I had to stop him. At some point I felt revulsion that he had done that with the exAP.

Kissing is more intimate.

I couldn’t get past thinking about where his mouth had been.

Yes, I ran to the bathroom and was physically sick when the realisation hit me.

His TT oozed out through that mouth.

Until only a month ago, WH was starting to see it through my eyes and feeling through my heart.

He admitted that he wouldn’t be able to get past that had I done that with another man.

Regaining intimacy was becoming impossible. The closer We tried Getting, the more triggers I had. I couldn’t even hold his hand anymore without having a panic attack.

There's a scene in Pretty Woman where the two hookers are talking and they say "never kiss on the mouth because it's too intimate."

Not that it matters, but she actually she says it's too personal, not intimate. I guess you could argue that intimate and personal are the same thing, but I would say that's not true. I can get personal with a work associate, share a personal story. I don't see that the same as being intimate. Intimacy is much deeper.

I think this is a personal thing for everyone. I agree with your H (well, what he said anyway), I find kissing to be more intimate than sex. I'd have sex with people I wouldn't kiss, for example. However, that said, it's often part of the package for sex, so I've certainly "sucked it up" before and kissed someone I didn't really want to because it was a precursor to sex.

So, yes, if it were me, and I really wanted to kiss someone else, that would tell you a lot more about my interest/connection in them than wanting to sleep with them.

Yes OP, I get it.

WH keeps asking me to have sex because he “misses the intimacy”. I tell him that intimacy must not mean very much if he tried so hard to get it from other guys’ wives

Kissing him made me squeamish too, considering the fig lies he kissed during his cheating fun

I feel that kissing is NOT more intimate than sex. But when people say it is it eats at me for some reason. Maybe I would not have been so weird for years if she wasn’t my friend. Maybe it would have been better if the OP was a stranger? I don’t know..

For me kissing is where the physical and emotional parts of love meet and often where they meet for the first time.

The way a woman tastes the first time I kiss her is a memory which I don't forget.

I also view a lack of passionate kissing as a sign of a dead, dying or utilitarian relationship.

Many posters are crushed to find out their WWs were kissing passionately with the OM, when they were told their WWs weren't into kissing or were past that sort of thing.

Perhaps it has something to do with childhood sexual experiences, mine always began with kissing , my W had some which began with sex.