Like Hot Leather Pants

I should be jaded. I should have thrown dating out with the trash. I should forget about finding romantic love. But, the ‘hope’ in hopeless romantic clings to me like hot leather pants (cue Friends scene). With each dating and relationship adventure, I grieve and wake up the next morning ready to be open to another connection. I can’t help my love for humanity! It’s deep within my soul. 

When I was talking to my book-loving and avid reader of a friend about what my first blog should be, she said, “Talk about your first dates, like from high school.” I laughed because I didn’t date, and the closest thing to dating was being in a relationship with a guy I was going to marry… at 19 years old!

“I didn’t date in high school because I grew up in the I Kissed Dating Goodbye and purity culture era. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a time when the Christian church prioritised courting (where the person is your end goal—think Romeo and Juliet) and sexual purity was of the utmost importance!”

I remember the year I met the guy I first dated. We were both at Bible College and the professors had called an emergency meeting. In one room, all the male students and male professors gathered, and in another room, all the female students and the one female professor gathered. I’m not sure what the guys were told, but we were told about the importance of keeping pure and not tempting the boys. One particular item that was discussed was for us not to sit on the laps of boys, because it was too tempting for them. I distinctly remember sitting on the right side of the room where the blinds had been pulled down on the windows facing the hallway. There was a small slit that I could see through and I watched as the boys left their room while we remained being told all the ways we needed to dress and act to avoid tempting the boys “with our womanly wiles.” They didn’t say that last part, but I think it’s fitting.

Maybe that explains why I had avoided dating. I grew up with that kind of atmosphere. Even in my non-Christian high school, girls weren’t allowed to wear spaghetti straps because it showed our bra straps. We had to stay covered!

“Everything I was taught growing up was to protect myself from boys who couldn’t control themselves. In order to date, I had to trust the guy would have control, but everyone was telling me that wasn’t the case, so I didn’t.

That was until I moved to Europe.”

I started over. People didn’t know me as the “goodie-goodie” or so-and-so’s sister. I was just me. And that’s when life started to change! There were a lot of firsts for me at that time.

First time moving overseas and not knowing anyone.

First time fundraising my salary—and where I learnt a lot of my marketing expertise.

First time drinking socially.

First time clubbing and loving it.

First meet cute on an airplane.

First time dating… and then online dating (that’s a doozy).

First time going to speed dating events (more stories on that).

First time experiencing sneak attack dating.

First time being ghosted.

First time… well you get the picture. All of these and so much more are ready to come out of the vault. They’ve been logged away only entertaining me and a select group of people for the past several years.

I started sharing these stories with my flatmates in London when the pandemic first hit. During lockdown, we started cooking and eating dinners together, then entertained ourselves playing games like Dutch Blitz. During this time, I would share random stories from my life. After the weeks turned into months of being locked in our homes, My flatmates expressed that if I didn’t write about these “unreal” and “you can’t make this stuff up” experiences, then they would write a book and share it with the world under the pseudonym, Kylie Jackson, a farm girl from New Zealand. To which I would just roll my eyes.

It took a couple of years (four to be exact), but Kylie Jackson… I mean Kaila Johnson, is finally sharing her stories.

“So, meet CUTE, a blog full of curiosity and empathy, embodying how an underestimated small-town, farm girl became so tough! This isn’t just about dating (though I have many stories to keep you entertained), it’s also about some of the greatest heartbreaks that are rarely spoken about—friendship. 

Buckle up! It’s gonna be a roller coaster.”