Cheek kissing as a greeting in the US

Post date: 2019-10-29 05:50:47

I'm in the US, and I've recently had the great luck to meet a new group of friends who are wonderful. This is an a large urban area on the East Coast. Among this group, cheek kissing is a common greeting. It's not common for me, and I feel anxious about it, so I'm bean-plating it. Help this introvert kiss cheeks the right way -- details after the cut.

The way this usually happens is I'll walk into a gathering (party, restaurant, etc.) and be warmly greeted. These are all platonic friends (of mine at least). They are outgoing, artistic, and fashionable. While greeting me, one or more people will turn their head to the side and tap their cheek, indicating I am to kiss said cheek. My problem is, I'm not sure what kind of a kiss I'm being asked for. I assume it's either an air kiss or a dry smack -- but which, and how? An air kiss I can figure out, but if it's a dry smack, I'm unsure whether I should make full contact, or light contact, or whether it should be straight on or at an angle.

I am confident that the kisses I've given so far are fine and that I'm massively overthinking this. But it would help me to feel more comfortable to know that I'm doing this in the "right" way. I'm excited about these new friends and am at a new place in life -- I really want to be more like them. Honestly, I wish we could all just hug instead, but the cheek-kissers tend to be very insistent.

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