Why Couples Who Groom Together Stay Together

About Lee Kynaston
Grooming Guru Lee Kynaston is one of the UK’s best-known and most knowledgeable male beauty experts, with over 20 years experience of writing about men's skincare, haircare and fragrance. 

If you’ve ever watched a nature programme featuring monkeys you’ll know how fond our distant cousins are of a little mutual grooming. But all that attentive nit-picking isn’t just about removing lice – it also helps foster intimacy and cement relationships. According to a study of male macaque monkeys, social grooming like this may even be rewarded with sex, with males who dedicate time and effort attending to females’ fur receiving more than the average amount of sex in return. Which certainly adds a whole new meaning to monkey business.

We’re not macaques, of course, but we haven’t quite lost that primate desire for mutual grooming. Those ancient instincts die hard – especially since skin has been described as a ‘social organ’, one designed to be touched, stroked and stimulated.

We humans actually indulge in social grooming (or ‘allogrooming’ as it’s known) all the time. Brushing a kid’s hair before school or checking for head lice are obvious examples but so is your hairdresser massaging your scalp with shampoo. Unconsciously running your fingers through a partner’s hair while you watch Netflix is another, as is slathering sunscreen on a friend or partner’s back while they return the favour so neither of your get burnt. Hell, the spa industry has created an entire menu of treatments based around the instinctive need to have another human’s hands on your body.

This kind of mutual grooming isn’t just practical, allowing you to groom parts of the body you can’t reach yourself, it’s also been shown to reduce stress, with the very act of being stroked, massaged and scrubbed releasing feel good hormones like oxytocin and beta-endorphins, which lower heart rate and make us feel chilled. No wonder it’s so pleasurable.

But there’s another benefit to a spot of mutual grooming, one crucial to couples: it actually helps cement romantic relationships. In fact, a US study showed it boosts pair-bonding, increases trust and improves overall relationship satisfaction. In short, couples who groom together have a better chance of staying together.

So, whether you’re in the early stages of a romance and want to solidify it or are some years in and want to rekindle a little lost passion, why not try the simple mutual grooming exercises below? Who knows? Like those attentive little macaques, you might even be ‘rewarded’ for your efforts.

Shower each other with affection

Sharing a bath might be fun but for real eroticism showers are, quite literally, the steamier option. “The shower is basically a natural sex toy,” says Anne Hooper in her book Great Sex Games. ”It combines heat, pressure, moisture and friction all in one device.” Little wonder then, that you don’t have to be a water sign to enjoy this particular form of manual stimulation.

Simply lure your partner in the shower, work them up into a lather with a soft sponge and a lavender shower gel or body bar (the lavender bit’s because research by The Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago found it to be one of the scents that increases blood flow to the penis).

Then get to work with the shower head, gently alternating between hot and cold water blasts on different parts of the body, varying the sensation by altering the distance of the showerhead from the skin. When you come to the downstairs bits, use circular motions and speed up your “nearer-then-farther” technique. According to Hooper, introducing a pleasure/punishment element can be fun too. “Pleasure might mean warm water directed at the genitals. Punishment is a blast of cold water on the back,” she says.

What to use: Showerhead; John Masters Organics Face & Body Bar with Lavender & Ylang Ylang; your imagination.

Make shaving sexy

As men we’re so used to shaving ourselves that having someone else to do it (someone who isn’t your barber anyway) can turn a boring chore into an erotic act. You’re totally in another person’s hands (feeling nervous yet?) and as your partner applies shave cream and begins to shave you they’ll get to discover every contour of your face in intimate detail while you get the pleasurable sensation of their fingertips on the surface of your skin.

Don’t believe me? Just re-watch the famous scene in Skyfall where Moneypenny shaves a near naked Bond with a cut-throat razor – a scene that crackles with sexual tension. (Having one partner clothed while the other isn’t increases the frisson as 007 discovered.) And bear in mind that hair removal doesn’t have to stop at the chin. Goon, give it a try – it’s more fun than you think.

What to use: Murdock London Shaving Cream, Bolin Webb Razor X1 Cooper Red; Daimon Barber Cooling Post Shave Balm.

Totally nail it

If you’ve ever seen late eighties rom-com Bull Durham, you might remember the bit where Kevin Costner flirtatiously paints Susan Sarandon's toe – my femail friends certainly do. A fairly tame act in itself, it still manages to be loaded with pent up passion and sensuality. It probably works because painting someone else’s nails demands your full attention, your nerves are heightened because it’s a job that’s easily botched and because fingers and toes are so responsive to touch. Fingers, especially, are usually integral to love making too.

A guy on Quora perfectly sums up the erotic benefits of painting a partner’s nails when he admits it’s something he does regularly to ‘keep the fires burning’. “I don’t think that you need to have a foot fetish for painting your wife or girlfriend’s toenails to be a meaningful experience,” he writes. “Painting her nails is a way to show her that you care for her and want to pamper her. It is a way to share physical closeness…it’s one small way for you to say ‘I love you’."

And, remember, nail polish isn’t just for women. On a man it’s still seen as being slightly transgressive so there’s an extra frisson when a guy has his nails painted in a bedroom context. If you’re nervous about having your fingernails done because they’ll be on show – get your partner to paint your toenails instead and have it as ‘your little secret’.

What to use: BUG for Men’s Limitless® Nail Ink in Raven black.

Rub each other up the right way

There a reason back rubs, back scrubs and ‘back facials’ are one of the most popular spa treatments with men: not only do they feel good and help release those feel good endorphins, they also serve a very practical purpose too, decongesting an area that’s hard for you to reach on your own, removing dead skin and minimize the risk of the dreaded ‘bacne’. They also help keep skin soft and stroke-able. In some ways they’re the perfect example of the benefits of mutual grooming, especially if you take a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ approach.

Start by grabbing some body scrub and getting into the bath together. Begin by gently massaging your partner’s back before applying a littles crub, working it in with gentle circular motions, moving all the way upto the shoulders and down to the base of the spine. Be conscious throughout of your fingertips on their skin and vary the pressure of your strokes.

For a spa-like experience, rinse with cool water, pat dry and then apply a purifying clay mask (you can use a face mask for this),leaving it on while you move your fingers towards the scalp, giving your partner a sensual scalp massage. After the mask has been on for the allotted time, rise off and swap places, allowing your partner to do the same treatment for you. You can also do this without a bath (just lie of a towel on the floor or bed and use damp hand towels to remove the scrub and mask) but it’s much more fun in the tub.

If things then move from bathroom to bedroom (well, they might) why not continue the spa vibe with a relaxing all-over massage? You can use massage oil for this, of course, but if you really want to spice things up a bit try YESforLOV’s Massage Candle. Designed to melt at a low temperature, it can be used as a therapeutic massage oil aswell as a room fragrance to set the mood. Simply, light the candle, melt the wax and put a little onto your hands – or allow a few drops to drip onto each other’s skin before massaging in. Mutual grooming will never be more fun.

What to use: PATRICKS FS1 Face Scrub; The Brighton Beard Company Purifying Eucalyptus Clay Mask; YESforLOV’s Massage Candle; YESforLOV Massage Oil Titillating Scent