As I engage in all kinds of Christian dating activities should I save being intimate with someone for marriage?

The issue of saving intimacy for marriage is a hot potato in Christian circles and we would not want to go into great depths here but there seem to be two schools of thought. One seems to be that all forms of intimacy must be kept for marriage including hand-holding, cuddling and words of affection. This is taught so that when one eventually does get married you would know that the other person is doing those things with you for the first time and it is more special. In our opinion that is a nice idea and in an ideal world this would be fantastic.

Intimacy and the real world

This teaching does assume a number of things such as for this to work each person would need to have had this attitude from very young and to have kept to it perfectly until the day of their wedding. In this world though the likelihood of that being true is very low. People become Christians late in life, or after previous relationships as non-Christians. Those in the Church that have not had any relationships for long periods of time for reasons of wanting to keep themselves for the right person may find that they do not know how to express themselves when the right person does come along.

Keeping it all in or sharing your love modestly?

The principal of keeping oneself for ones partner is a right one because the opposite attitude of giving it all away to anyone you meet is clearly wrong. But how can we have healthy dating relationships that develop our emotional and physical expressions without going over the line and being completely intimate in ways only set aside for marriage? We would say that it is sensible to spend lots of time with other people as well as being alone. Think about each act of affection that you allow yourselves to express and whether it means that it is harder to end the relationship if you don’t want to marry the person. Last, and by no means least, keep God involved in all your actions and thoughts.

Related external articles - Links are not the responsibility of ChristiansUK.com and open in new windows.

Article on Christian marriage and dating.
Article on maintaining balance and morality in Christian dating relationships