I pulled in the driveway, parked the car, and shut off the engine. What an incredible night! We had eaten Subway (Teresa’s favorite fast-food) down by the river, then walked under the slowly setting sun until it was too dark to go any further. Since we weren’t finished talking, we decided to take a drive out towards Red Canyon Park. The moon was full and bright and I felt elated!
All I could think about was kissing her. She was so beautiful and I was completely enthralled with her.
At one point, I pulled off the side of the road and asked if I could hold her hand. I immediately retracted my request because I realized how it put her in an awkward place. She should not have to be the one protecting our sexual relationship. We had decided that we wouldn’t hold hands, not like that. It’s just that I felt such incredible desire for her I thought maybe we could do it for a little bit.
I apologized, and we continued talking. We talked about our feelings for each other, trying to guess, I suppose, at whether or not we both wanted marriage.
As we drove back to her house, and sat in silence in the dark of the driveway, I still felt extreme passion for her. I desperately wanted to hold her hand, give her a hug, kiss her on the cheek—anything that said “I loved you” better than words. But I knew that if we got involved physically, my passion for her would only grow. And I was afraid that if we began giving physical affection we’d end up compromising morally.
But something deep inside of me felt that as a Christian couple we should be able to express our affection for each other without stumbling into immorality. It didn’t seem right that I would be so ruled by my passion that I’d compromise sexually with my girlfriend.
Besides, what was I supposed to do with these euphoric feelings I had?
Somewhere, something had to give: either I was going to compromise with my girlfriend or I would compromise in the confines of my own secret pleasure. Weren’t both wrong? Surely there had to be another way.
It seems to me that when it comes to physical affection in courtship, or dating, or whatever you want to call it, we often come up incomplete in our conclusion of how a couple should handle their physical relationship. I don’t think any of us want to commit fornication, but I think all of us understand there’s more to immorality than simply holding hands. Fornication begins somewhere deeper, somewhere that affects how we think, what we want and which choices we make.
What Teresa and I discovered as we continued our relationship was that it is possible to develop a deeply romantic relationship with each other without compromising morally. We learned that it’s possible to express affection without getting derailed by our passions.
In fact, our passions became the catalysts to protecting sexual intimacy and purity for marriage. The desire we felt for each other deepened our resolve to not violate one another. And we learned how to cultivate that kind of desire, to romance passionately, without ending in regrets.
My guess is you, as we did, may struggle to know how to express your affection and deepen your relationship before marriage without ending up in a place you don’t want to be, a place of compromise and regret.
I wrote an eBook about some of the lessons Teresa and I learned through the time that we dated. For lack of a better title, I named it Is Touch in Courtship Wrong? I didn’t write the book to refute people’s beliefs in hands-free dating. I wrote it to nudge us beyond the surface ways we attempt to deal with lust and the behaviors through which it manifests itself in dating, to better understand the role of affection in courtship.
One reader thanked me for the eBook, saying “it helped her and her then boyfriend know the importance of communication in their physical relationship.” Another reader “appreciated how the book brings out a lot of different aspects into the question of what place touch should have in courtship because,” he said, “it’s not a simple and easy question to answer.”
I believe people are wanting more. There’s a lot going missed in our current approach to dating, and one of them is developing a healthy physical relationship.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to download the book, read it, and then talk about it with your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Talk about it with your friends and parents. Dig deeper into what makes us want to compromise morally when it comes to physical touch and I guarantee you will discover a romantic love that is free to stay pure. You will experience internal freedom from lust and peace in your pursuit of a lover. You will be able to live fully alive in your passions without compromising in purity.
Too many relationships struggle with lust even when they’re not touching each other. Too many couples don’t trust their partners because they feel they’re only being pursued for the other person’s pleasure. Don’t be another couple caught in a quiet struggle of sexual compromise.
Download the eBook today and become a person who no longer relates with apprehension, but romances without regrets.
Not ready to buy the book? Check out these other articles on dating, marriage, and sexually healthy relationships:
