Em’s Guide to Kissing: Part 1
The comprehensive guide you’ve all been waiting for!
My first date began with a 16-year-old boy dressed head to toe in a banana suit. Let me explain.
At my high school, we all made a big deal about asking people out to the school dances. To either ask someone out or respond to their request, we’d come up with elaborate displays to drop off at their doorstep, then we’d knock and run away at top speeds before they could answer the door.
It was all very good fun, like the time a boy left me a small fish tank with an actual beta fish swimming around and a note that said, “Of all the fish in the sea, will you go to prom with me?” I then had to scoop out rocks from the tank with little letters on them to figure out who had asked me to the prom. Or one of my other favorites was when a boy responded to my request to come with me to the winter formal by dropping off a blizzard from Dairy Queen with a note that said, “If snowflakes meant yes, I’d send you a blizzard.” My teenage heart EXPLODED.
Certainly all of this was a lot more work than just walking up and asking someone out, but this was high school, so everything was extra.
I turned the long-awaited age of 16 a few weeks before the homecoming dance. Most of my friends had turned 16 the year before, so I was immensely that it was finally my turn to get all dressed up. So when an unexpected knock came to our front door one evening a few weeks before the dance, I made a beeline for the doorknob.
This could be it!!
As I ran down from my room upstairs, I was hoping against hope that this was the moment the magical, sparkly, dreamy, everything-covered-in-a-pink-haze world of dating was about to open to me.
Well, sure enough, there was a surprise waiting for me at the doorstep.
And it was an invitation to homecoming.
But I can’t quite honestly say it was dreamy.
On our porch lay one bunch of yellow bananas and a white envelope with my name sitting on top of them. Bananas may not be the most romantic of foods, but I snatched up my token of affection and hurried it inside to figure out who this prince charming was going to be. Inside the white envelope I found pieces of cut up paper that I had to put back together like a puzzle.
With my little sisters buzzing around me wanting to help, I put each piece into place until a picture of my prince charming appeared. To my slight disappointment, he wasn’t wearing a suit of armor while upon his trusty steed, but in an aggressively yellow full body banana suit, striking a silly pose. Across the top of the now assembled photo was the line, “I’d go bananas if you went to homecoming with me!” With my friend Harrison’s face smiling out from under the banana suit.
So not the most romantic start. But it was still a start. Dating had finally begun and I was sure it could only get more like a fairy tale from here on out.
Ten years of experience later, however, and I knew that dating could have fairy-tale moments, but I also had my dose of moments of looking around and thinking, What is even going on? Like the time a restaurant was too busy to seat us, so my date (who was in his late twenties) excitedly suggested that instead of eating as planned, we could sit in his car in the parking lot and make boondoggles for two hours. I could only stare back blankly in reply. If you aren’t familiar with boondoggles, you basically weave together thin strips of plastic into various designs to make key chains. Maybe some of you are into those, and that’s great, but to me they belonged with the nerds from Napoleon Dynamite.
Dating can certainly be a wild ride, and if you’re like me, you often feel life you are without a map or a guide to help you make it through. At best, dating is an enormously fun and meaningful experience. You learn more about yourself while also seeing the beauty of someone else; it is a privilege to draw close to another human and learn what they love, what they fear, and what they most hope for. At worst, however, dating can be the cause of anxiety, low self-confidence, and that yucky feeling of being out of control. But I believe that with Jesus at our side, we can navigate our way through it safely and come out wiser, more compassionate women. With Christ “all these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good.”
In the following chapter, I tried to show how Jesus and His gospel are so richly applicable to dating.
We will talk about breakups, kissing, what love is, how to stay hopeful, ways to make dating easier—basically everything that I wish someone would have told me before that bunch of bananas appeared on my door. These are gospel principles, practices, and commandments that I saw the need for more clearly because of dating, especially once I came home from my mission and dating felt more “for reals” but yet also more impossible than I thought. The truth, though, was that it was never impossible, I just had a lot to learn. Now I can see that dating gives us opportunities to see more of who Jesus is if we know where to look.
So girls, let’s talk about the ups and downs and ins and outs of dating and love like the besties we all are. And let’s start with what I’ve affectionately called, Em’s Guide to Kissing.
Where It All Began
My five college roommates and I had perhaps the best tradition ever: Every time one of us kissed a new boy, we bought a gallon of ice cream for the whole apartment to share. But not just any ice cream—we picked a flavor to describe the kiss. We enjoyed chocolate (the kiss had been simple and sweet), slow-churned vanilla (the kiss took too long to happen and then was a little boring), and cookie dough (sweet, but not as simple). Usually the girl who’d done the kissing would casually put the ice cream in the freezer and then wait for someone to notice. Inevitably a gasp would arise from the kitchen and then everyone would gather to get all caught up on the tea.
The whole ritual was quite fun. And delicious.
In fact, kissing as a whole is quite fun. My first kiss happened when I was 21 years old at the base of a hill near the Logan Utah Temple. It was definitely a sweet-and-simple-chocolate kiss, and to me it was sparkly and magical and everything I’d hoped for. After the boy dropped me off at home, I practically skipped inside, both elated and a little relieved to have had my first kiss.
But, honestly, those sparkly magic kiss feelings didn’t last very long. I bought my roommates ice cream (s’mores flavored because it was sweet and I wanted “some more”) and we giggled and had our fun. Then later that week I went on another date with that boy. After going to dinner we ended up back at his apartment where the kissing was a little more than simple chocolate, if you know what I mean.
It wasn’t that I felt guilty over kissing this boy, but just that the experience sent my mind racing with questions. When he dropped me off at home that night, I walked inside with my eyes wide. Mixed in with the sparkles was now a dose of confusion.
What had just happened? Was this going to be the norm between us now?
I had known this boy for a few months but we weren’t exclusively dating, but now that we’d kissed, should we be? Did his kissing me like that mean he wants to be more serious about dating me? How often and for how long should we kiss?
Kissing was definitely fun and exciting in the moment, but it did sometimes leave me feeling a little vulnerable and anxious to do the right thing for a relationship that I didn’t want to lose. The whole experience was totally uncharted territory. Now my mind felt like playdough ice cream: still a sweet experience, but all of the colors were questions swirling around in my head, not giving me a clear picture of how I felt or what to do next.
I wanted someone to tell me how to handle this right; how to feel totally relaxed and sparkly again. But I wasn’t sure how to do that or who to ask for advice. I went through mental gymnastics telling myself to just have fun and not worry about it, but then also wanting to be responsible and build a relationship—and a life—on a foundation that would bring me joy. How could I make sure kissing was helping our relationship, not dominating or defining it? What was I comfortable with and when and how much?
When I look back at my 21-year-old self with all those questions, I have to smile. My desires were as pure as chocolate: I wanted a healthy relationship and to one day (sooner rather than later) be sealed to someone I loved in the temple. Because I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that dream, I felt a little desperate for clear instructions on how to not mess it up. Well, after a few more years of dating, I learned there aren’t necessarily clear instructions. Of course, we have the law of chastity as a precious guideline, but it doesn’t tell you how or when or how much to kiss someone. To some degree we are all just doing our best to figure this out and create a happily ever after.
But in the past five years since that first kiss, I have learned a few things that I really wish someone would’ve told me earlier. And luckily for you, I’ve compiled them into a handy little list for you to read while enjoying your next bowl of ice cream. These are my ah-ha moments I’ve come to live by after a few more years of experience and bowls of ice cream.
I’ve adopted these practices based on some of my happiest dating experiences; times when I’ve felt very connected to and safe with a boy and wanted to pinpoint what helped me feel that way. And these rules have also come from moments of resolve after crying heartbroken on my bathroom floor late at night, promising myself I would never do something again.
None of us are going to be perfect when it comes to dating and kissing. This is one of those magical but frustrating areas of life that I think is really only figured out by experience, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be talking about it. We should be trying to help a sister out where we can. So, scoop yourself a big bowl of your favorite flavor, and pretend you and I are sitting on a comfy couch chatting in the dim glow of the credits of our favorite chick flick.
Ladies, I present to you the kissing rules.
Beware the Illusion
I am aware that “beware the illusion” sounds like the beginning of a ghost story. Don’t worry, though, I hate all things creepy, that title is just too perfect to pass up. Let me explain what I mean by “beware the illusion” by taking you back to a summer fling I had right after college graduation. Buckle up ladies, and please don’t judge my emotional trip.
I was living in Logan, Utah, in an apartment with my younger sister. This was the summer of 2020 right as the pandemic was in full swing. With nearly all social events canceled, dating was at stand still. I liked to joke that instead of love, COVID-19 was the only thing “in the air.”
I had been casually using a dating app for several months. One day, I had a message from a guy named Jordan. Soon enough we set up a date, which was enough fun to lead to another date the next week. Then for our third date we kayaked down the Oneida River, a gentle river popular in the area. The whole day was so much fun, even when we accidently popped part of his blow-up kayak and had to fumble our way through the last bit of the river.
When he walked up to my door after the river adventure, Jordan hugged me and then pulled back slowly and looked right at my eyes before his eyes did what I call the flicker: the boy looks from your eyes then to your lips and then back up to your eyes again—a sure fire sign of what’s on his mind.
I was surprised. Jordan and I had only known each other for two weeks and he was ready to kiss me? I’m aware that everyone has their own ideas about when is the right time to kiss someone, but to me this was too fast. From what I knew so far Jordan was a great guy—he was in master’s program, I’d heard him talk about how active he was in his ward, and he had been nothing but respectful and fun. But I felt weird about kissing him. So I ignored the flicker, thanked him for the fun, and went inside.
I kept thinking about the flicker after that date, however, and I convinced myself that maybe I should’ve kissed Jordan. In my last relationship, I’d moved what some might call very slowly, going on dates with the guy for two months before kissing him. Really getting to know someone, feeling a closeness to them to some degree before kissing was important to me. But seeing how that last relationship had crashed and burned, I thought I’d try a new strategy with Jordan. So, the next time Jordan and I went out, I kissed him at the doorstep, and it wasn’t, well… short. And thus began three weeks of Jordan mayhem.
We saw each other all the time and kissed all the time. And while at times it was really fun, if I’m honest with myself, in quiet moments I felt weird about it. But I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle this, that I was in control and could enjoy a summer fling with no emotional consequences.
* Shakes head in pity at past-self’s delusion.*
After three weeks, I was feeling really weird about the whole situation. Jordan and I joked around and had fun, but we never talked about what was really important to us. I didn’t really know much about him besides what was fairly obvious.
But the kissing was always there.
I eventually felt stressed enough about the situation that I brought it up to him. I basically said that we needed to slow down a lot on the kissing and talk to each more. I also told him I wanted to know what he thought about actually dating me. He fumbled through some response that I honestly don’t even remember. But I totally remember his next move.
The day after that conversation, we were supposed to meet friends at a park for a picnic and some volleyball. An hour before we were set to meet up, my phone rang. It was Jordan. I answered and he launched into a speech about how I was “way more into him” than he was into me and because of that we should stop seeing each other. I didn’t say much back and then sat on my bed a little stunned.
Now, before I go on, I want to point out that I’ll never know what was really going on in Jordan's life at that point. I don’t know for sure why he broke it off our relationship so abruptly, but I do know that it stung.
It stung sharply that the day after I said I wasn’t kissing so much anymore he said he didn’t want to see me again.
I felt used. I’d hoped that all of our fun together was building up to something deeper. I wanted him to be impressed by who I was. For several days after that phone call I lay awake at night, staring at my ceiling and trying to force out intruding thoughts that I wasn’t ever going to be good enough for anyone. Jordan’s words ran through my mind over and over like an unwelcome anxiety parade. After crying a bit and adding the experience with Jordan to my looming pile of evidence as to why dating is the worst and I’m going to die alone (without even cats for company because I’m allergic to them) I slowly began to realize why this very simple breakup after a very short relationship was taking me on such an emotional trip: kissing Jordan had created an illusion of emotional closeness.
Like all the other humans on this planet, I craved feeling accepted and loved, especially by a significant other. Kissing had put me under the illusion that Jordan wanted to give that and receive that from me. But he didn’t. And that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person, but it did leave me feeling very empty when our physical closeness had nothing emotional to back it up. It felt like my fondest dreams of a happy family had been mocked. The goodness that I was trying to cultivate in my lifestyle had been dismissed as nothing. And that stung.
I realized that I wasn’t sad because I was madly in love with Jordan (I definitely wasn’t), but because I wanted so much for all the kissing to represent something deeper. Having him abruptly pull back the curtain and reveal a totally empty stage was disheartening to say the least.
So ladies, please be aware that physical connection can create the illusion of emotional connection. Rushing straight into kissing might legitimately sound fun and like a way to really live up your 20s, but I promise it isn’t worth it. Why? Because there is something so, so much better. So much sweeter: real emotional connection with someone you love. That is the safest, happiest feeling in the world. Physical touch should be an expression of already existing love or affection, not an attempt to create it.
So how do we get to a point of real connection? Of course I won’t claim to know the perfect answer (I don’t really think there is one). But I do have a suggestion that is fairly simple and fairly easy to implement after a couple of tries. So wiggle deeper into your couch and let’s go on …
Phew, thanks for reading all of that! Part 2 next week :)