Bryanne Salazar met her husband twenty years ago, and at first, their relationship was full of passion.

“We made out EVERYWHERE,” she recalled. “There wasn’t a bus stop, movie theater, taco stand or gas station within 50 miles that didn’t have a sweeping view of us feverishly swapping spit.”

After they got married and had children, however, things slowed down for Bryanne and her husband in the romance department, just as it does for most couples.

“Eventually our kisses got shorter (and drier), to the point where the only kissing we shared was a simple smooch on the lips, which has about as much romance as a monkey picking parasites from another’s back,” she said. “Sure, it’s comforting, but all that pent-up teenage passion might as well have been a helium balloon — it had to fall flat at some point.”

Bryanne began to wonder exactly why she and her husband had stopped French kissing, so she came up with an idea.

“Whatever the cause, it became apparent that an intervention was long overdue. I decided to try a little experiment, unbeknownst to my husband, to see what would happen if I exchanged our everyday kisses for full-on Frenchies,” she said. “That’s right — without telling my husband why, I started French-kissing him every time we locked lips.”

At first, Bryanne’s husband was confused when she started French kissing him every time they locked lips. He had no idea what was going on!

“All my husband did was laugh and shake his head in confusion, but never once did he ask what I was doing,” she said of the first few times. “By the third day of this, my husband slowly got used to my new kissing style. At first, he seemed surprised, but eventually he started kissing me back, and within a few days, he would open his mouth first! Persistence pays off.”

Over the next few days, Bryanne started to notice more results.

“I noticed something started to happen over the course of the experiment,” she said. “Our kisses lasted longer and I felt more connected with my husband. Where before our kisses had been perfunctory pecks of acknowledgement, the new way of kissing made us both feel slightly more romantic. It reminded me that I am still very much in love with this man and happy to be the one he loves in return.”

“On the sixth day of my secret kissing experiment, my husband walked toward me and kissed me passionately. I was happily surprised,” she added. “While not once did our kissing ever lapse back into teenage necking (and thankfully no one got a hickey), they were lovely moments. I kept wondering why we didn’t kiss this way more often.”

On the night of the seventh day, Bryanne finally told her husband about her experiment.

“Babe,” Bryanne told him, “a week ago I decided to start an experiment with you. I wanted to see what would happen if every time I kissed you, I used my tongue.”

“Oh!” he replied. “I wondered what you were doing. You know, I thought about it at first and said to myself ‘what is she up to?’ I wondered if you were doing one of your crazy experiments. But then I thought, ‘maybe not everything is just an experiment.'”

This made Bryanne’s heart sing.

“I didn’t realize how much the kisses had meant to my husband,” Bryanne said. “Every laugh, every confused look on his face was him trying to decide if I really meant those kisses or not. Of course I did.”

Since the experiment, Bryanne said that she and her husband have been French kissing more often.

“We don’t use our tongues every time we kiss, but on average, about once a day and we both enjoy it,” Bryanne concluded. “This covert kissing operation taught me that not everything we did as kids was silly, and that sometimes, we have to be willing to find the magic in the little moments. Kissing my husband is still magic, even after 20 years.”