No Kissing For Three Months: Why Some Relationship Coaches Swear By The Unconventional Dating Rule
With the rise of social media came the rise of "relationship gurus," who seemingly have all the answers on how you can be the mastermind in your own relationship. Countless tips on romance are geared toward every aspect of the dating process. These viral experts state their claims in minutes-long videos offering advice to singles, married couples, talking stage participants, and everyone in between pursuing love. But a new practice in the dating arena has left even the pros scrambling for answers.
On TikTok, Canadian dating coach Chantal Heide has shared details of this new trend in one of her self-help books, "No More A**holes." In the book, she introduces the three-month no-kissing rule that many experts swear by. But it garnered a lot of pushback. However, Heide says there is a method to the madness and she has spent months spreading her message on how this practice can encourage self-love, patience, and healthy partnership.
Do you want a good kisser or a good spouse?
So why should lip-locking be banned for three months? Well, on TikTok, dating expert Chantal Heide says that this allows relationship seekers to learn more about the person they are pursuing without being blinded by the act of intimacy. And she may just be on to something. A 2010 study from Brigham Young University found that couples who waited to have sex until marriage had 12% better communication. Now, this might be an extreme kind of constraint to delay sex until after the ceremony and is definitely not what Heide advocated in her kissing video. Nevertheless, the overall gist is the same: transitioning slowly into physicality could pay off well for couples in the long run.
As Heide put it, "It's a lot easier to teach a good man how to be a good kisser, how to be good in bed than it is to teach a toxic person who's a good kisser how to be a good man." She may have struck gold with that theory alone, which makes us consider how we've gone about choosing a mate throughout our dating lives.
Quality over quantity is the rule of thumb
Kissing has long been a way to test the waters, but can this send butterflies fluttering and cloud your judgment the same way intercourse can? Dating coach Chantal Heide believes so. One downside to this is that some people may not be pleased with waiting so they may not stick around. But Heide said the three-month rule is meant to weed out those people. Essentially, anyone unwilling to be patient is unsuitable for a relationship. The name of the game is quality over quantity, as also noted in a separate study conducted by Professor Sharon Sassler with Cornell University and published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Her data confirmed that early sexual involvement was associated with premature cohabitating, which plays a role in relationship decline.
Ultimately, dating is trial and error. Some people get it right, while others oftentimes find themselves in a never-ending cycle of first dates and new faces, so trying out the three-month method can't hurt, right?