The Kissing Convention

For me, texting is a part of my daily life. I'm not the kind of person so attached to their phone they freak out if it's not in their pocket, but my mobile is an important resource in my life: if anything in my usual daily schedule falls out of place, like my train is late, or I'm feeling sick and need to leave school early, if my friends aren't in our usual spot in the cafe, I can text my mum/dad/brother/friend accordingly and let them know what's happening.

Equally, I value my phone as a device to spread a little sunshine: I appreciate how much a sweet text can change my mood, so sending something nice to someone from time to time is something I try to make a habit of.

I send between two and twenty texts most days. Despite the fact I don't think I could ever use up my monthly text limit (5000 texts!), I still reckon that's quite a few.

Yet everytime I'm about to send a text - no matter who I'm sending it to - I hesitate, because I just can't get my head around the kissing convention.

How many "xs" should I put? What will they think if I put an "x"? Are three "xs" too many?

Sometimes I forget about the kissing thing altogether and then worry - will they be offended I didn't put an "x"?

My problem I'm blogging about today is not the idea of putting kisses at the end of texts, emails, letters etc. I'll leave that for another time. I have a problem with putting 18 kisses for every IM message you send, but otherwise, textual kisses are a sweet sign off to a text to someone you love: friends, love interest, family, whoever.

Anyway, no, I'm blogging about the ambiguity over what kisses MEAN. There is so much speculation by teenage girls as to whether that kiss means he wants to go out with her or whether he does that to everyone and it means nothing. And if your boyfriend doesn't put a kiss in that message, does that mean he's gone off you?

I hate the idea of people looking at texts from me and thinking that I'm "into them" or have "gone off them" because of whether I happened to tap an arguably meaningless letter of the alphabet into the end of my message.

Because I don't think a huge amount about the kisses I do or do not give. Usually, I'll mirror what you're doing. I'm not trying to hint that I like you, I'm not trying to "play it cool" by not sending you kisses, and I'm not annoyed by you if I don't.

Sure, there are correlations. If I don't like you, I'm not going to give you 3 kisses. But if I don't put any, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It's probably more likely to mean I feel easy texting you and I just want to talk.

Also, kisses from me aren't anything romantic. I put kisses on most of my friends text, but if I'm romantically involved with you, chances are I won't very often because we text a lot and it seems a waste of time. And if I am into you, you're not going to figure it out by the number of kisses. I'm not that readable, or robotic. There's no Lizzie formula. Que sera sera and all that.

Really, the kissing thing is a very teenage girl thing. I'm not saying others don't do it - they do - but those dedicated to the kissing convention are predominantly my species: the adolescent female.

To conclude: the kissing convention RULES.

1) Don't follow any rules.

2) Your texts, your life.

3) Don't get offended or upset or worried when people don't put the number of kisses you expected. Life's too short and chances are they forgot,

4) Realise that other people's rules aren't the same as yours.

5) Don't read into the number of kisses. Ever.

Love to all!

Lizzie xxx

(don't read into it. I know you're thinking about it)