desireemay

Joe then chimed in, “I thought about how I’d feel if Mary had dated someone else before she’d met me. Or what if she’d been engaged before she met me? Would I have felt robbed of something special if she’d had sex with her previous fiance? Absolutely. Would I have felt robbed if she’d kissed her previous fiance? No; I would have considered that to be a perfectly appropriate level of intimacy for that relationship.”

After thinking it over, I tend to agree with them. A kiss expresses a good deal of commitment — but getting engaged actually expresses quite a bit more than that same level of commitment. So not kissing your fiancee, I think, would actually be denying her something you should be giving her: one particular expression of your commitment.

Now, having said that — kissing is a mighty powerful thing. In a very real way, it’s preparation for sex, and it does a great job of creating desire. So you should be aware of its power and treat it with respect: don’t get into long necking sessions, for example. Bad idea. Find a different line, but do draw the line, and get friends to check up on you.

The physical-intimacy line I’ve decided to draw for dating is a pretty simple rule-of-thumb: nothing I wouldn’t do with my sister. That means no kissing, for example. Maybe one exception to the rule: holding hands. I wouldn’t do the fingers-entwined kind of hand-holding with my sister, but I wouldn’t consider that inappropriate for a dating relationship.

For engagement, another fairly simple rule of thumb: nothing we’d be embarrassed doing in public. Kissing yes, but long, drawn-out kissing that turns into a necking section, no. And so on. Plus another rule, to make sure that temptation doesn’t run away with us. Touching each other may only be done in public. When we’re alone together, NO touching. And get friends to check up on us and ask us, regularly, if we’ve broken any of those rules.

Now, that’s my line. Where you draw the line is between you and God. And, if you’re currently dating or engaged (I’m neither), your girlfriend or fiancee, of course. But I’d advise you to consider just how much of a distance there is between “no kissing” and “everything, including sex, is perfectly O.K.”, and just how fast you’d be bridging that gap if you wait until the wedding day for the first kiss. It seems to me that engagement, rather than the wedding day, is the right time to start allowing physical intimacy to move forward. Keep in mind that not all engagements are successful, and don’t defraud each other of anything that really should be saved for the wedding night. But withholding all physical intimacy during the engagement is, I think, going too far.