Is it wrong that my boyfriend and I satisfy each other through touching?
Question:
Help, please. I am an adult female in her early thirty's. I am also a virgin by choice. I am in a committed relationship with my boyfriend and I love him. He is a good, honorable man who is not a virgin and has changed his way of life and tries to live right. We have chosen to not have sex until we marry.
My question is we kiss and touch each other in passion and completely satisfy each other. We have enough will power to only go this far and no farther. I feel there should be no guilt because in my heart he is my husband just not by law. But is what we do wrong?
My boyfriend says sometimes he feels a little guilty and wants nothing bad to enter into our relationship. He was married for 13 years and the marriage was bad. I do not want to live my life without his touch. I have been controlled by my father my whole life and would like time to breathe before I marry him. I will marry him, just not today. Are we sinning and what should I do? I am very confused because I feel different than him, but agree that I want nothing bad between us. We are both good seeds. I have no soul ties, but he has and has asked for a cut of those ties.
Answer:
"Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband" (I Corinthians 7:1-2).
"Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife; Whoever touches her shall not be innocent" (Proverbs 6:26-29).
I must assume that by "completely satisfy each other" that you are hinting that you mutually masturbate each other to orgasm. As Solomon pointed out, it is foolish to think that you can go partway and not be touched by sin. Can you claim that your thoughts are innocent? Can you claim that his thoughts are righteous when these things are going on? "But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). When it does happen, because odds are that eventually, you'll give in to passion, you can't claim that you didn't mean for it to happen. It would be no different than the boy who kept playing by the edge of the cliff saying, "But I didn't mean to fall off!"
That you plan to marry doesn't excuse your sin. Instead, you are acknowledging the truth -- you aren't married. Feelings don't make a marriage. "Yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant" (Malachi 2:14). Until you properly enter into a covenant with him that binds the two of you to each other for the rest of your lives, you are not married.
And your past doesn't excuse current sinful behavior. You choose to delay marriage, that is your right. But your choice doesn't permit you to behave improperly.
So what do you do? Stop sexually arousing each other until you actually do get married. If you can't live without his touch, then do as Paul stated, "but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion" (I Corinthians 7:9). Those are the only options available to you.
You didn't state why this man left his former wife, but keep in mind that unless he left her because she was committing sexual sins, he has no right to another marriage. "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery" (Matthew 19:9).
