June 17, 2008

To kiss or not to kiss?

First Kiss

I was responding to an e-mail I received a few weeks ago and share the story of David’s and my decision not to kiss until our wedding day. I thought you might like to read it too:

David and I talked a quite a bit about the kissing thing. When I met him, “I kissed Dating Good-bye” was a popular book. I had just broken off a relationship that had been too physical, and I thought that if I didn’t kiss a guy, then we would be less likely to get into any other physical trouble too. So, I made a promise to God that my next kiss would be on my wedding day.

That was good for David. He wasn’t sure how to act in a dating relationship. He wanted to remain pure and keep the relationship pure. Waiting until marriage to kiss seemed like a good guide line to follow.

The reason I think it worked for us is not because we didn’t kiss, but also because we went slow in anything physical. Unfortunately, a person can have a goal to not kiss, and still get into a lot of trouble physically. We took things slow all the way around. It was months before we held hands, or hugged. I think that made the bigger difference for me. It forced me do what I didn’t do in previous relationships. We worked on communication. We talked a lot. Because of that, and because we desired to put God before everything else, we have a strong foundation in our relationship.

A lot of people didn’t understand our decisions, or even agree with it. That was ok. I know I needed it at the time.

That being said, I do feel I missed something in not kissing before being married. I thoroughly enjoy the ooey-gooey feelings. I missed not having that with kissing, since the first kiss was in public, and then we had our wedding night.

What I do wish we could have changed, if we changed anything, is that I would have liked to have our first kiss be a small peck type kiss by ourselves before the wedding, and leave it at that. But more important to us than the kiss was the promise we made to God, and that is why we didn’t.

Since writing this e-mail, I have had a lot of thoughts about how would we raise our kids where it comes to dating. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about setting guidelines, where should boundaries be, etc. In the end, all I could really rely on was that God is in control. I know David and I will desire to teach purity and good character to our kids, and maybe in that we will also give a few guidelines to help them out.

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