The short answer: You don’t wait until you’re ready. You start somewhere, shaking, and you say yes anyway.

Recently, I met with a psychic medium who, partway through the reading, looked at me with a smile and said, quite matter-of-factly, that I’d have a committed relationship soon.

Fear rushed over me. Not the flutter of anticipation – actual dread.

Dread because of the awful relationships I have been in, but also because I have no idea how to kiss anymore. The terror doesn’t arrive at the relationship; it arrives at the first kiss.

If you’ve been on your own long enough that the thought of someone’s mouth on yours makes you want to bolt, this one is for you. Twelve years since I last kissed anyone, and my first thought wasn’t who he might be. It was how, in God’s name, I’d navigate a first kiss, let alone what comes after.

Help.

So, while I can’t actually tell you how to do this right now, what I can offer you is a small writing practice to take the terror somewhere useful.

However, for a bit of fun watch this – Not A First Kiss Parody.

Why is a kiss so terrifying when everyone else seems to love it?

Most people love kissing, don’t they? A kiss – what’s not to love? Eyes closed so you can savour the sensual touch of lips; slipping your tongue into someone else’s mouth to explore and get a taste of who they are.

That is, until he smothers his slobbery goo all over you and sucks your face off.

I can’t honestly tell you how many men I’ve kissed, but it’s not a lot. Two long relationships and one short, crap marriage do not make me an expert. But I know what I like. Or at least, I think I do.

During the five years I spent with the ex-husband, we rarely kissed. Partly because he claimed he was impotent, said kissing and foreplay were irrelevant, and was off getting his knob sucked (and other things) by other women. Mostly because he was a dreadful kisser.

Yes, I know. I should have known something was amiss. I should have listened to my intuition. Yeah, yeah. There were extenuating circumstances – I was sucked in and mesmerised by this weird bloke. Me. The one the Moonies couldn’t brainwash.

Shame aside: dreadful kisser.

What happens when fantasy meets a real mouth?

All that time on my own gave me plenty of time to dream. In my mind’s eye, I’d meet this man; our eyes would lock, I’d lose myself in his soul, lifetimes would pass, we’d draw magnetically together, eyes closing, lips meeting. Rock on, delicious.

The problem with mind’s eyes and reality is that they rarely meet.

So what do you do when someone actually asks?

This question takes me back to a time when I’d been chatting with a male friend about ‘stuff’ – each of us sharing the vagaries of past relationships. Then, quietly, he asked:

‘Would you like a kiss?’

Imagine fear gripping you as if someone had just asked, ‘Would you like me to stab you in the heart?’ A murderer might not be quite so polite.

The terror was electrifying. From a kiss, for God’s sake. Something I hadn’t enjoyed in longer than I cared to count. Good question.

Standing transfixed, weighing the question and the terror that came with it, I confessed: ‘I can’t. I’m too scared.’ I smiled at the irony – realising in the same breath that this man was eminently kissable, and that abject fear had my heart in its fist.

Then I looked at his face and thought: I’d have to start somewhere, right? And he was offering, right?

It was yummy. Thanks.

What that kiss taught me

If you’re standing here wondering what sage advice I have to offer, this is what I’d hand you:

• The fear doesn’t leave first. You don’t get brave and then begin. You begin, and the bravery turns up somewhere in the middle.
• The fantasy is not the point. The mind’s-eye version – soul-locking, lifetimes passing – is lovely, and it will not survive contact. Real is better, and messier.
• You only have to start somewhere. One kiss. One yes. One line on a page. The rest can wait.

A small ‘Write From The Wild’ practice

Before you meet your own version of that question, meet the fear on paper first.

1. Set a timer for ten minutes.
2. Write to the thing you’re scared to begin – the kiss, the date, the conversation, the whole terrifying what-comes-after – as if it were sitting across the table from you.
3. Ask it: What are you protecting me from?

Then scribble. Make sure you don’t tidy it up or add a sprinkling of wisdom. Let the fear say its piece, and notice what sits underneath. It’s rarely the kiss. It’s usually everything the kiss might lead to. Yikes…

It’s not about getting rid of the fear – though that would help. It’s more about writing it out, exploring your feelings, and then considering how you can say yes to the thing that is freaking you out.

Come and write it with me

If you want to write your way through your own version of that fear, come and do it with me in the Soul Writers Lounge. Bring the terror, and we’ll unfurl it in our journals.

Go well, friends. Much love.

Dx.