Q: "I’m in 8th grade and most of my friends are getting their first kiss, but I haven’t had mine yet. I want to have mine, but I also want it to be at the right time with the right guy. Do you have any tips on having your first kiss and how to initiate it?"
- Anonymous
I’ve been saving this question in the back of my mind for a while. I think it’s probably something that’s top of mind for a good majority of my readers and I know first hand how complicated this feeling is… on one hand you’re a hopeless romantic who wants your first kiss to be special, natural, in the moment, and with a guy you really like; but on the other hand you are feeling very behind and want to just get it over with. You feel a pressure to catch up to where the rest of your friends or people in your grade are and are extremely insecure about the fact that you haven’t kissed anyone.
Here are some very very very important things to consider!!!!
1. Don’t plan your first kiss
In 9th grade, I thought I was going to have my first kiss at a football game with this kid… the plan fell through. In 10th grade, I thought I was going to have my first kiss with this mutual friend of a friend I had met once… it fell through. I didn’t actually like either of these guys and I knew deep down that it wasn’t what I wanted. Thank g-d they fell through. I was 15 and still hadn’t had my first kiss. I get it, it’s embarrassing but given that I go to a girls school and we’ve been living through a pandemic, I had to cut myself a little bit of slack. I’m definitely a believer that everything happens for a reason and I look back with no regrets. Just don’t plan your first kiss… both you and the other person will be too nervous. Things will work out if you let them play out naturally.
2. Don’t drop your standards
Don’t drop your standards for how you want it to go and who you want it to be with because of what your friends say. It always made me feel so yucky about myself when my friends would tell me my standards were too high and that I should lower my expectations. Sure, your first kiss is going to be awkward and I knew it wasn’t going to be anything out of a movie BUT like you, I wanted to be in the right setting and the right time. Second of all, you’re not going to enjoy kissing someone you don’t really like. That’s just a fact… and so it’s not a matter of dropping my standards to kiss a guy just to kiss. I really didn’t want to kiss a guy I didn’t like so guess my standards are just my standards and that’s that. Eventually it worked out and I realized I never had to drop my standards, it just took me a lot longer to have my first kiss than my friends.
3. Initiating
I’m sure you’ve watched youtube tutorials or asked your more experienced friends about kissing people. My friends gave me the full rundown on what to do and shared some tips. Long story short, please please please don’t worry about how to tilt your head or how the kiss is going to go. The other person will initiate it and just follow their lead. That’s all there is to it. As you get more experienced, there are plenty of little ways to initiate kissing or whatever, but for now, don’t get too ahead of yourself. I'll also add that your first kiss is most likely going to be awkward and bad... probably a peck that you will block out of your memory. However, my best friends and myself included only had our first kisses around 15 or 16 years old and they weren't awkward pecks. We all share a similar sentiment in which we were all scared that we wouldn't know what to do but within the first few second, we all managed to figure it out. You will too!
Because you guys are like my little sisters (and in a way these blog posts are notes to my younger self), you need to get this idea out of your head that you are in last place. The truth is that you’re always going to be chasing some target or marker of where you ‘should’ be if you keep thinking about shedding your innocence as a race. People will do plenty of things faster than you do and that just means they don’t get to enjoy the beauty of taking things slowly and moving at a pace that’s comfortable and appropriate for your age. Things WILL work out. They just will. Don’t worry too much and don’t let your feelings of desperation dictate what you choose to do with guys or how you view yourself.
WE got this,
Sophia