Dear Tiggy,
I’m 15 and have known since I was 12 that I’m attracted to guys and girls. Only two people know this about me and both are bi: one is my best friend in the world and the other is a girl in my Girl Scouts troop.
I had my first kiss with the friend in Girl Scouts. I felt horrible, like I wanted to throw up afterwards. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t really know her at the time, because it happened in a freakin’ church at a slumber party, or because I’m not meant to be bisexual.
I do like girls but I don’t really like the whole kissing thing. It makes me freak out, and I haven’t kissed a boy so I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a nervous wreck or not. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Emily
It’s because you were nervous. I have a whole boatload of stories from friends who were about your age when they had their first kiss and were completely grossed out. A lot of them leaped to the possibility that the whole gender was a wash, but virtually all of them were off-base.
There’s just so much on your emotional plate at 15, with new dating experiences and societal pressure and hormones and I don’t know what all. Sometimes it’s like every first step sets off a landmine of feelings you can’t possibly untangle.
Try to get in the mindset of framing your lovelife as a fact-finding mission –- that is, a mission to find facts about yourself. But stay in fact-finding mode; no need to shift to analysis just yet. I completely understand the drive to draw conclusions but you’re a bit too quick to extrapolate the data. Just observe for now.
You will need to collect more data to identify trends but be sure to pace yourself. If it was nervousness that made you feel blech about that one kiss, you don’t want to plow ahead and have a bunch more jittery, yuckers, tongue-dominant events, that’s for sure.
Here’s another tip: resist the urge to rank your experiences. Maybe you’re ready for hand-holding or slow dancing. With the right person, those things are no less intimate than full-on hook-up, honestly.
I’m glad you have a bi best friend to talk this out with. Run this by her and I bet you’ll start to feel better about the whole thing.</span
© 2012 Tiggy Upland. Tiggy Upland reserves the right to use all submitted queries anonymously, in any medium.