Too Much Kissing

I know it’s the culture, and when in France, do as the French, but I just can’t take much more of this!

Traveling and working abroad for the last few years I’ve noticed that general personal bubble spaces are bigger or smaller depending on the culture you’re in. Most Americans I know have a pretty big bubble space, which is probably related to the fact that we just have more space in general.

I grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, where we had many more trees than people. Now, here I am in Paris, where strangers touch me more often than my husband and he is often encouraging me to kiss them repeatedly.

When we go to a party or a family function, it’s the custom in France to greet and kiss every person. That means, if you are the first one at the party, and thirty people come, you gradually kiss each of them as they enter, even if you’ve never seen them in your life. If you are the last person at the party, everyone stands up when you enter, hovers around you, and you methodically go through each of them and greet them with kisses.

Not a kiss, kisses. The number of kisses can vary, and this can be tricky and possibly dangerous if you’re a novice. This can depend on age and attitude, but in general most Parisians give two kisses, one on each side of the cheek. In the suburbs and beyond it’s usually around four, one side, then the other, then back to the original side, and then the other again. I’ve heard that it can be up to six or eight in some regions of France!

This means that if I am at a party at my father in law’s house in the suburbs and there are 25 guests other than me and my husband, I kiss each of them four times when saying hello and four times when saying goodbye. That’s 200 kisses!

It may seem comical, and most French people think it’s interesting and a bit amusing that I don’t feel comfortable kissing my husband’s parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, friends, co-workers, and any of their friends or family members or co-workers that they bring along with them.

However, when I haven’t jumped up to kiss in the past, either out of annoyance or just because I was lost in my thoughts, people have said some rude things to me, acting as though I was being rude. One woman said, “No kisses? Are you sick?