19 thoughts on “Kissing Poll”

  1. wow.

    per­haps i’m old fash­ioned, despite being extreme­ly lib­er­al. i can hon­est­ly say that i’m not inter­est­ed in a kiss on the first date. back in the day, when i dat­ed ALOT, i did­n’t want that pres­sure, for myself or for the oth­er per­son, even if i real­ly felt a strong sense of attrac­tion. if there’s an obvi­ous con­nec­tion, the kiss will come in time. there’s no need to make it hap­pen just because it’s the ‘first date.’ i’d want it to hap­pen because we both felt the desire for it, not because it fits into some set ‘how to’ stan­dard. if there was a kiss, i nev­er freaked out. but i do con­sid­er kiss­ing to be as inti­mate and as sen­su­al as sex, so i real­ly want there to be an understood/discussed con­nec­tion before i share it. gen­er­al­ly that’s not devel­oped yet on a first date. this is just one opin­ion. every girl is dif­fer­ent. what kind of girl would you want, adam?

  2. It’s true, this dif­fers girl to girl, but I don’t think the kiss is “pres­sure” on either par­ties. A kiss, to the girls I’ve dat­ed at least, as well as myself, is not an inti­mate as sex. I’ve kissed girls I’ve nev­er slept with (I would hope most peo­ple have 😉 To me, it’s a whole dif­fer­ent realm. But, again, this does dif­fer per­son to per­son.

    From my own expe­ri­ence, the girls that I did not show inter­est in (which, to be hon­est, were usu­al­ly the girls I was not inter­est­ed in), by either kiss­ing or show­ing some sort of phys­i­cal affec­tion. Well, they thought I was gay. It’s fun­ny and I joke about it, but it’s true.

    In my opin­ion, there’s no quick­er way to get the “I think of you as just a friend” oth­er than to act just like one.

  3. I also kind of resent the whole “old fash­ioned” com­par­i­son.
    Like kiss­ing some­one on the first date is some­how *new*.

    Shit, my grand­ma brags about the fact she did­n’t *sleep with* my grand­pa on the first date.

  4. per­haps i should­n’t have said as inti­mate as sex. they are defi­nate­ly two dif­fer­ent realms there. i guess i also have kissed so many peo­ple grow­ing up, that when i final­ly found some­one who i want­ed to spend my life with, kiss­ing became some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, and i held it much more deeply than i had ever before. per­haps this all changes now being sin­gle again? as i said, i think it comes down to every girl is dif­fer­ent adam, and i’d just trust your gut in the moment. if she’s already dig­ging you, she’ll dig you more if you’re some­one who has a great sense of your­self and fol­lows your gut, what­ev­er that might mean…as long as fol­low­ing your gut does not mean ask­ing to smell her panties. 😉

  5. I don’t think there’s “rules”. And “kiss” means many things oth­er than “lin­ger­ing, inti­mate, open mouthed kiss”. What I was try­ing to get accross was that to dif­fer­en­ti­ate a date from just going out to din­ner with a friend, there has to be *some­thing*. If not a kiss, then hold­ing hands, putting your arm around some­one — some­thing to indi­cate that you are attract­ed to each oth­er. I don’t think it’s a pres­sure thing — kiss­ing some­one on the lips for a sec­ond as you say good­bye is in no way say­ing “let’s hop in the sack”. And if the dat’e going bad­ly and there’s no chem­istry, both par­ties will know it by then and there’s pret­ty def­i­nite body lan­guage sig­nals that say “don’t touch me”.

  6. Well I actu­al­ly DON’T kiss on the first date. I see noth­ing wrong with tak­ing your time with those things. I don’t think if a guy did­n’t try to make a move that I would think he was gay or not inter­est­ed. Because if he was either one of those he would­n’t be on a date with me. I think it’s dis­turb­ing how men have for­got­ten how to be gen­tle­man these days. Like it’s a for­eign con­cept. On my mom and step dad’s first date, he ASKED if he could hold her hand. I think that’s classy. I view kiss­ing as an inti­mate thing and not some­thing to be done just because it’s expect­ed.

  7. Not kiss­ing on a first date does not= being a gen­tle­man. Sure, it can be a sign of it, but it can equal­ly cause the oth­er to ask if the oth­er per­son was real­ly inter­est­ed in them.

    Nei­ther of us are say­ing that you HAVE TO kiss some­one on the first date. But, we’re say­ing it’s, in this day and age, per­fect­ly accept­able and not in any way/shape/form out of the ordi­nary.

  8. Now on a sec­ond date? It should come more nat­u­ral­ly at that point. I would have to agree with Mau­ra on this though. The impor­tance of tak­ing your time and mak­ing it spe­cial has been lost these days. It a soci­ety where sex itself has been deemed some­thing that can be “casu­al” kiss­ing has lost it’s inti­ma­cy. And kissing,especially that first kiss,can be real­ly mem­o­rable and spe­cial.

  9. Of course if you don’t kiss on the first date you’re not auto­mat­i­cal­ly a gen­tle­man. But you can also tell if a guy is not inter­est­ed in you so the whole kiss­ing thing would not be an issue. A guy sim­ply would­n’t go on a date with you if he was­n’t inter­est­ed. And it would­n’t be out of the ordi­nary if a guy at least tried to make a move. But if he EXPECTED it? Well let’s just say I have a good right hook.

  10. I think the prob­lem occurs when you don’t know if it is a date to begin with. Most peo­ple do not go “Do you want to Date me?” they ask some­one to cof­fee or to din­ner. I’ve invit­ed Adam to din­ner before, that does­n’t mean I expect him to put out. You can often not know if some­one ins inter­est­ed in you as a friend or more. Just because you’re going out togeth­er does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean any­thing.

  11. For me, the kiss at the end of the date isn’t as indica­tive as whether or not he calls when he says he will (Ususal­ly, the next day).

    Peo­ple kiss peo­ple all the time, regard­less of their true feel­ings. Heck, some peo­ple even sleep with peo­ple they aren’t the lease bit inter­est­ed in.

    Even if the date goes well (and I feel a con­nec­tion) and some­one kiss­es me at the end of it, I still don’t ful­ly believe thi­er word until they keep their promise to call.

  12. Well first off,I think Adam WOULD put out for you,let’s be hon­est here. You’re a catch! Also,maybe it’s because I’ve dat­ed more than you (I’m not say­ing that like I’m cool..really it’s depress­ing) but I KNOW if some­one is inter­est­ed when they ask me out. It’s just some­thing I can tell. Maybe it’s the look in the eyes,or the tone of voice…I don’t know. But I guess my point is,at least for ME there is nev­er a ques­tion of are they inter­est­ed or not. You know who is a friend and who is attract­ed to you. So the kiss is always my call, and me being the girl I can say that. So there :)~

  13. If it was a stranger or near stranger fix­up, I’d kiss if I felt sparky and want­ed to see him again. If it was more of a friends-see­ing-if-there-is- some­thing-more thing, of course I’d kiss! Good grief, that’s the point of going out on a date!

  15. I would inter­pret it as he actu­al­ly liked me and want­ed to take things slow, espe­cial­ly if he asked for anoth­er date or seemed inter­est­ed in hang­ing out more.

  16. I think if you don’t SHAG on the first date, it’s an indi­ca­tor that the rela­tion­ship will not progress and will just end up turn­ing sour.

    Kiss­ing’s for pan­sies.

  17. Ok, so why not get it over with right up front? A quick peck on the cheek as a greet­ing on the first date? Some­thing sim­ple, quick to relieve some of the pres­sure of this whole kiss­ing thing? Then at the end of the night when a sim­i­lar farewell may be ven­tured, it could be come more if both par­ties were inter­est­ed?

  18. I would inter­pret it in the fol­low­ing ways.

    #1 in my mind would be that I thought he was­n’t inter­est­ed in me / only liked me as a friend / thought kiss­ing me would be like kiss­ing his sis­ter.

    The sec­ondary thoughts would be “is he gay?”, “is he celi­bate?”, and then most like­ly I would con­clude that if it was­n’t #1, and he did like me, then he mist be very old-fash­ioned (re — Vic­to­ri­an) and/or sub­scribe to a very strict John Ashcroft type of puri­tanism where-in pre-mar­i­tal kiss­ing and danc­ing and such are mor­tal sins.

    Not engag­ing in heavy mak­ing-out and not sleep­ing with some­one on a first date can be charm­ing and indi­cates that a guy is real­ly not a sleaze (how­ev­er, the oppo­site does­n’t mean he is a sleaze either, just increas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty). How­ev­er, at least a good night kiss (even just a short closed-mouth kiss on the lips) is to be expect­ed if it is real­ly a date and not just friends hang­ing out togeth­er.

  19. I sup­pose now would be a good time to explain myself. If I’m on a first date, I’m a pret­ty for­mal per­son. I try to keep my eti­quette impec­ca­ble as a ges­ture of respect to the girl I’m with. A kiss at the end of the night to me is not a nec­es­sary thing on a first date. I might want one, but I won’t take it, because I’m not com­fort­able doing so.

    Read­ing the respons­es on here and on Ask MetaFil­ter lead me to believe that it boils down to expec­ta­tions. Since I am a per­son who tries to have as few expec­ta­tions and assump­tions and judg­ments about oth­er peo­ple as pos­si­ble, I think I have absorbed that mind­set to such a point that I assume [oh the irony] that if I am on a first date, the girl has just as few expec­ta­tions as I have. So, a no-kiss end to the evening, while com­fort­able to me, seems to send lots of strange [to me] mes­sages to the girl. It seems, in most cas­es, to be an expect­ed thing to do. I just don’t fit the mold.

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