Outcast asks:
Lately my girlfriend told me she kissed her female friend. Her reason was that her friend was nice and she was curious to see how it felt kissing another girl. It’s been two weeks since she told me . But I think I lost that trust towards her, though most friends tell me it’s not a bad thing. I’m confused on how I should feel or act about this.
Hi Outcast –
Okay, let’s get this out of the way for starters: I love to kiss EVERYBODY! Men, women, boys, girls, all sorts of dogs, the sides of trees, hey I’ve even kissed a couple of cats in my day! So how you humans avoid kissing all of each other is just beyond me.
But I know that the sort of kissing you’re talking about isn’t the same as me running up and taking a big slurp on the side of someone’s face. Or if your girlfriend had kissed her grandmother. This was more of a romantic kiss, a sexual kiss. And she wanted to find out how it felt to do that with a girl, since she’d only tried it with boys before.
And you say you’re confused as to how you should feel or act. And I’m going to emphasize one word of that: you’re confused as to how you SHOULD feel or act.
And my answer to that is… no.
That there is no such thing as “Should” in this case.
Now there are some people who will tell you “What she did is wrong, and so you should break up with her.” But I’m not one of those. What they did was inquisitive and harmless, to my mind.
But maybe you feel horrified and disgusted and mistrusting, “If she would kiss that girl, then what else might she do, the next time she gets curious? Flirt with my dad? Make out with my best friend? Take her shirt off in church?!” And if that’s the case, then you clearly need to talk with her, and find out where her boundaries lie. What is “interesting” to her, and what’s “off limits.”
Or maybe you feel excited, “I hope she does it again so I can watch! Or maybe she and her friend would both make out with me at the same time!”
Or maybe you don’t really care all that much.
Now you say you’re feeling a loss of trust. But I think it’s really important to answer two big questions then. First, what is it you’re not trusting – that she kissed anyone, that she was willing to try kissing someone of the same sex, that she was even curious about it?
And secondly, how did she feel about it? Has she told you? Did she love it? Did she want to do more of it? Or did she feel “It’s just the same as kissing a boy?” Or maybe even “It was nothing, I didn’t feel anything at all?”
The fact is, Outcast, we live in a very particular time. Because humans are getting more accepting of different sorts of sexualities that have been shunned for centuries, that also means people – especially young people – are trying more things out. “Am I bisexual?” “Am I actually a different gender, or gender-fluid?” And these questions aren’t a bad thing at all. Especially if they help people get happier, and help people accept others more than they have before.
Don’t get me wrong – if one’s religion or moral beliefs dictate that they shouldn’t even try such things, I’m not going to say they’re wrong. But just as I don’t want to see one person hate another because that person eats foods they don’t believe are morally or religiously right, I also don’t want to see hatred of another for who they’re attracted to, or who they innately feel they are.
So what all this leads to is… talk with her. Find out how she feels, and what she wants. And then have an even bigger talk with yourself. And see what you really, deep down, feel about what she says.
But I can say that I’m a lot more likely to judge someone for kicking a dog than for kissing anyone.
All my very best,
Shirelle