I saved my first kiss for my wedding day.
Updated: Feb 2
“What?” said my high school friend at the freshman cafeteria table. “You mean you’re just saving sex until you’re married right?”
“No—I mean I’m not even going to kiss until I’m married.”
She laughed. “No, you’re not. That’s not gonna happen.”
"Yes, it is," I smirked and peeked at the tiny rhinestones in the heart-shaped ring on my left hand that my dad gave me the year before.
I wasn’t exactly the type of teenager to seek out “trouble” or test many boundaries. Her scoff at my lofty aspiration wasn't because I had a promiscuous reputation. If anything, I may have been her most sheltered friend. But from her point of view, maturing under the example of family, friends, and culture that welcomed sexual experimentation, she couldn’t believe that someone might refrain from innocently locking lips until you’d made the highest level of relational commitment under the law.
Meanwhile, this church kid eagerly nestled in front of the TV every week to watch a certain family with 19 kids airing their day-to-day on cable. I was 14 when the first daughter got married. Every season following displayed the next of the 19 getting a special someone and courting along towards union in the eyes of the Lord and the State of Arkansas. With each one, I grew to admire their broadcasted value of physical boundaries in relationships, particularly the decision to save kissing for the wedding day. No one told me to do the same, but excitement stirred within me to accomplish it. So I wore my radical statement proudly. For a girl who wasn’t rebellious, having this counter-cultural decision tucked inside felt like wielding a secret weapon against secular conventions.
Fast-forward a little while. Enter teenage hormones, a bit of hopeless romantic, a bit of FOMO, and the social-media-distant observation of Christian influencer relationships where kissing was involved and purity was still honored (we hope). I decided it wouldn't hurt to kiss someone—and it would be nice. It would be romantic. It would be a mark of growing up. Physical boundaries could still exist even if I decided to kiss my special someone before my wedding day. The no-kiss rule faded into the list of seemingly legalistic tendencies to avoid.
And then I met my husband.
As a pair who began dating while living on opposite sides of the country, we finally had our first chance to meet up after a few months since we made it official—my best friend’s wedding in Virginia. While it wasn't our first time interacting in person, it was the first time since our friendship graduated to "going steady", and my first time in an official dating relationship.
"I get to see you soon," he said on my phone screen with a blissful look in his eye, just before saying goodnight. Only a couple of weeks stood between us and five-ish days of breathing the same air on the same coast. "We should probably talk about our physical boundaries before then," he added. "Not right now—but before the trip." My stomach fluttered.
"Yeah, I'd like that." The uncertainty of that conversation felt nerve-wracking—being vulnerable and putting words to different kinds of physical affection, deciding between the wise and not-so-wise. But I knew the clarity was important. I wanted it.
Nights drifted by and I dreamed (quite literally) that he might kiss me at the wedding. I imagined a tearful, but sweet, kiss goodbye as we parted ways at the airport after it was over. And then I pictured New Year's Eve, just a couple of months ahead when he'd be home for the holidays, having my first midnight peck, maybe under some leftover Christmas mistletoe. Does his family even hang mistletoe? I wondered.
Finally, we sat down in front of our respective FaceTime windows to talk it over. 1 week. He wanted me to go first—what kinds of physical affection I’d be comfortable and uncomfortable with. Where do I start? I froze. We didn't want the three-letter "s" word (that was understood), but I suddenly felt awkward articulating the other things I felt ok with—the romantic gestures I fawned over since high school. I played with phrases in my head about holding hands, kinds of hugs, and the infamous kiss. I couldn't get anything to sound right. Noticing my increasingly apparent bashfulness, he helped me slow down and untangle the knot of my wound-up thoughts. And then it was his turn.
He gently revealed the boundaries he had set for himself: he would treat anyone he dated as if they might end up being someone else's wife—he wouldn't kiss someone he wasn’t married to.
I won’t lie and say I wasn’t a little disappointed. My mind eraser dusted away the image from my dream. No kiss for now. But his reasons, borne of a godly personal conviction and informed by some life experience, tugged on that once-upon-a-time goal of mine, pulling it closer again.
After we got engaged and it was certain I would, in fact, be his wife, I realized I wouldn’t just be refraining from kissing my “current boyfriend”. I would be saving my first kiss for my husband. Funny how the Lord led me back to appreciating and honoring a past conviction. I dug it out of the legalism box I stuffed it into years before and placed it as a centerpiece in my heart. Did I want to kiss him? Sure. But, more than that, I wanted to honor this commitment to self-control. Was that always easy? No. But it was a gift that it would only be for a season.
As you may have guessed, I’m no longer a stranger to a kiss. We made it to the wedding day. As someone who, before the boundary conversation wanted to experience that without being married, would I go back if I could and change anything? No.
I think people can have God-honoring relationships in which kissing is involved before their wedding day, and I don't think less of them. They know their hearts and hopefully are receptive to the Lord's leading on what is beneficial for them in that context. With my proclivity toward the hopeless romantic state of mind at that time, there’s a good chance the act of a kiss would have fueled thoughts causing me to cross healthy boundaries physically, mentally, emotionally, or all of the above. It would have made this Duggar-watching church kid grow drunk on attention and affection, awakening love before she reached the milestones necessary to nurture it. And it probably would have caused the same for my husband.
This is certainly not the case for everyone, but, for us, it would have added an extra challenge to keeping love, in body and mind, "asleep" before the time was right. Holding off from a kiss (no matter how seemingly short or innocent) was only going to help us achieve our goal; it wouldn't hurt us to take the extra step of discretion. It's important to note that this was a decision we made for ourselves. Just like when I was younger, no one told us to do this. The journey of deferring this gesture wasn't shrouded in shame or obligation. We desired it; we treasured it.
In an episode of her podcast WHOA That’s Good, Sadie Robertson-Huff and her husband Christian answered a question about the boundaries they set in their relationship before they were married, saying, “Physically speaking, we didn't say ‘We're not gonna do this, this, and this, and we are gonna do this, this, and this—here's the boundary.’ When you have a boundary, you typically go to the boundary line…and then you cross it and feel bad.” They strove to remove emphasis from the boundary “line” and instead framed it around the ultimate goal: "We're pursuing God and [His] plan for our life and our relationship…together we made a decision…to do that, and that looks like purity. That was that boundary in a sense…before I pursue you I'm going to pursue God and then out of that relationship that's gonna cause me to love you the best that I can.” (1) While you could argue we did literally decide what we would/would not do, our motivation was not just to refrain from a thing, but to pursue God and each other in a way that would lead us to discern and love well in that season.
If your experience with relationship boundaries looks different than mine, that's ok. How we chose to walk in our relationship prior to marriage is not for everyone. You know your heart. If you're a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to be receptive to the Lord and alert to what causes you to be in a position to stumble, whether in relationships or just life in general. What causes you to stumble may not be the same as someone else--even your significant other—and it's valuable to know. By the grace of God, my husband and I were able to stick to our objectives, but if you've made choices you regret, that's ok, too. The same Grace that allowed us to remain faithful to our objectives and redeems our everyday missteps, covers your regrets, too, and makes a way for you to walk free of them.
On the cusp of leaning away from the no-kiss goal, 15-year-old me wrote in her journal, "I want to even maybe save my first kiss for my wedding day, but I don't know if I can hold out 'til then..."
Spoiler alert—you can. You did.
Photo Credits:
Post Preview Photo - Lindiebeth Photo https://www.lindiebethphoto.com
Post Page Photo - Samantha Robillard Photography https://www.facebook.com/SamanthaRobillardPhotography
For reference:
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Disclaimer:
There are certain things about the Duggar family during their time on TV that are best not repeated. I have grown to parse out the things that were good about watching them and things to leave behind, and it seems that they have grown as well. It's beautiful to see how so many of them have progressed in their walk with Christ, using things they went through to glorify the Lord and make different choices in their lives for their own families. I've referenced it in at least one other post, but I recommend Jinger (Duggar) Vuolo's book "Becoming Free Indeed", an insightful look into her journey of separating some harmful teachings under which she was raised from what it truly means to live as a believer.
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