Bite me!

All about bite play

Biting – also called bite play – isn’t all about vampire fangs and sinking your teeth into someone. Playful nibbling, gentle biting, and passionate “love bites” (that’s gonna leave a mark) are all about exploring sensations and experimenting with your self-control in the heat of passion.

Love bites

When you just can’t resist marking your territory. You might be so caught up in the moment that you don’t even realise you’re doing it, or you might be deliberately leaving a little souvenir on their neck, shoulder, inner thigh... Wherever you leave it, it’s essentially a bruise that’s caused by hard kissing, sucking, or biting the skin with enough pressure that you break the small blood vessels beneath the surface.

A love bite is usually a result of passionate or intense kissing and are considered to be a form of affection or intimacy – many people wear their love bites with pride, or cover them with concealer and blush with the memories. They can be accidental or unintended, though, and you might feel embarrassed to have one – or to have given one to your partner without meaning to.

Love bites aren’t generally harmful, and should fade and heal like a regular bruise. If you have a love bite and you want to try to speed up its healing, you could try using a cold compress or arnica cream, but truthfully, the best healer is just time and patience.

Bite play

Bite play is a more deliberate and adventurous cousin of love bites. Bite play takes the idea of affectionate nibbling and cranks it up a notch (or several notches). The focus isn't just on leaving marks; it's about exploring sensations and boundaries. Some people enjoy gentle nibbling, while others prefer a more intense experience. It's all about personal preferences and finding the right balance – a bit like Goldilocks searching for the perfect porridge, but with more teeth (and less bears) involved.

Bite play requires some finesse; you can't just go chomping down like a famished vampire. It's all about gentle suction and a touch of nibbling. Your partner’s skin is delicate, and you want to treat it with gentleness. Remember, not everyone appreciates love bites or bite play, so make sure your partner is on board and ready for some playful nibbling (and if they communicate that it’s not something they’re into, respect their “no” and resist the urge).

You’re so cute I want to eat you

Here’s a phrase you may never have heard of before: Cute aggression. Have you ever had the sense that you want to bite your cat because he’s just so damn adorable? (Have you done just that and got a mouthful of fur and bite in return? Right. Us neither.) Cute aggression is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when you feel an overwhelming feeling of affection or attraction toward something or someone, well, cute, and you’ve got the urge to express your affection toward them by biting, pinching, squeezing – sometimes quite aggressively. It might sound weird to associate aggression with cuteness, but research says that it might be linked to your brain’s emotional regulation mechanisms. When we encounter something cute, our brains might experience an overload of positive emotions, leading to a need to balance these intense feelings with a physical response such as biting, squeezing, or pinching. This response, oddly, helps us to regulate the emotional experience and not become too overwhelmed by the positive emotions. It’s a normal reaction, and doesn’t mean that you actually want to harm someone (or bite your cat’s head off).

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