Last night, I went out for coffee with one of my best friends.  We went intending to sit and read at the coffee shop, but (inevitably) ended up chatting about life.  Somehow, we got to talking about relationships, and my friend told me about a conversation she’d overheard where two girls were talking about how sad it is, at our age, to have never been kissed.

I think a lot of people our age feel that way.  Not having been kissed can make us feel left out and undesirable.  Especially as we get older, it becomes a point of insecurity, and many people hide the fact so they won’t be stereotyped as inexperienced or prudish.  We think potential partners don’t want the “responsibility” of being someone’s first, or that we’ll be bad at it when we finally do kiss someone, or that our friends will secretly judge or pity us (which is exactly what those girls were doing, if obliviously).

There Are Other Things in Life Besides Kissing

I definitely understand all those concerns, because I’ve been there.  But I also don’t think that not having been kissed should be something to be sad or insecure about at all.  Kissing and physical intimacy are great, but there are also a whole lot of other great things in this world that we can get excited about.  Putting a lot of emphasis on a person’s kissed-status implies that their sexuality and sexual experience are more important than their thoughts, opinions, hobbies, skills, talents, interests, and the myriad of other things that make people awesome, and that’s just wrong.

When I meet someone new, I couldn’t care less whether they’ve been kissed or not.  I’d rather learn what they’re interested in, what they’re good at, and what they want to do in the future.  Teachers care about whether you’ll be a good learner.  Employers care about what you can bring to their company.  Even potential partners should care more about whether you two will get along than your sexual experience or lack thereof.  (Obviously, in a serious relationship sexual pasts are something that should be discussed, and sex and kissing are very different.  But I’m talking about kissing, and whether you have or haven’t been kissed shouldn’t be an initial deal breaker (if it is, get away from that shallow human!).)

Not Having Been Kissed Can Be By Choice

Although it may seem a foreign concept to some, sometimes people have had opportunities to have their first kiss and have (gasp!) passed them up.  A lot of times, this is for religious reasons — I know several people who want to save their first kiss for their wedding day.  Some people know that kissing and physical intimacy will distract them from their goals, so they avoid it altogether.  Some people don’t want to date for whatever reason, so they don’t kiss anyone, either.  Some people wait for a partner they know will be lifelong.  Not ever having been kissed isn’t always because you can’t get a date.

Never Having Been Kissed Doesn’t Equal Inexperience

So, we’ve established the fact that kissed-status has nothing to do with a person or how awesome they are.  That said, not having been kissed doesn’t necessarily equal sexual inexperience or naivety.  We live in the age of the Internet, and that means people have access to porn (which, to be clear, I’m neither condoning nor condemning at this moment).  While porn may not be (and probably isn’t) the best teacher for sex stuff, the availability of it means that many people are exposed to sex and physical intimacy long before they ever touch anyone sexually.  (We can discuss the consequences of that later.)  And even if porn isn’t accessible, our media and our culture are so overrun with sex-related topics that it’s really not hard to figure out what’s going on.

Also, people are natural explorers.  Just because someone has never been kissed doesn’t mean that they don’t know what pleases them or turns them on, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t have ideas for what they might like to try with a partner in the future.  And it definitely doesn’t mean that they don’t or can’t have a good sex life all on their own.

Unfortunately, too, some real assholes exist in our world, so not having been kissed romantically doesn’t mean that someone has never been touched sexually.  It may just mean that that person had a terrible experience before they ever got to experience a romantic kiss, and perhaps now they just want to be not be touched like that ever again.  You just don’t ever know someone’s background or what they may have gone through.

Not Having Been Kissed is Not Sad

Kissing is an important and awesome part of life.  Physical intimacy is one of the things that makes us human, and we know that humans need love and physical contact in order to develop properly and feel connected and happy.  But people can live and thrive without kisses.  What we can’t live without is love from friends and family.  It’s sad that there are babies who grow up in overcrowded orphanages and never get held, ever.  That is a tragedy.  What’s not a tragedy is someone who hasn’t been kissed.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

TL;DR:

1. Just because someone hasn’t been kissed doesn’t mean it’s because they’re undesirable.
2. Why are we still putting so much importance on what a person has or hasn’t done sexually?  There are so many more things that make people people, and that’s what we should focus on.