# What does "no sex before marriage" mean to you? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 9, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740 "2006-03-09T20:46:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Belrix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed655f/32.png) [@Belrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Belrix)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/21 "2006-03-09T23:50:12Z")
My favorite definition of sex: If you can have an orgasm doing it, it’s sex. (I guess the unadded caveat is that more than one person is involved). I’ve heard the “everything but vaginal” argument but I think it’s splitting hairs. I know a married christian couple that did nothing more than hold hands pre-marriage. To resist temptation, their decision was that all that physical stuff, yes, including kissing, was out until after marriage. If I were to re-virginize & re-enter the dating market, I think I’d try to save sex for after marriage. A personal choice that I didn’t excersize the first time around. For me, I think I’d define that as “keeping it above the waist”. YMMV, objects in mirror are closer than they appear, etc, etc, etc. ---
**Author:** ![phungi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phungi/32/395_2.png) [@phungi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phungi)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/22 "2006-03-10T00:16:14Z")
To me, “No sex before marriage” means no penetration (vaginal or anal). However, the “lessening of each others’ burden” is not sex, it is natural healthy exploration. Then again, I guess it depends on the motivation, beliefs, and expectations of the one asking the question… ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/23 "2006-03-10T00:21:02Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > All right, I’ll answer properly. Mainly because of the mutual masturbation comment which I highly disagree with. It’s just skin contact. That’s not that far off from saying any touching below the neck becomes sex. > > “No sex before marriage” means no vaginal intercourse. And that I’m looking for a new boyfriend. You bring your partner to orgasm, and that’s not sex? **Mika,** you’ve got my head spinning. “I didn’t cheat on you, honey, we just made each other come.” I don’t think I want a front row seat for the rest of that conversation. :eek: I think I made it clear that IMO, the whole concept of no sex before marriage is nonsense. The folks who believe in it, though, have to be realistic. Oral, anal, manual, axillary, intermammary, or whatever, if one or both of you comes, you had sex. When lingam and yoni get really happy, it doesn’t matter whether a hymen was broken or not. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/24 "2006-03-10T00:29:16Z")
Well, I suppose someone saying ‘no sex before marriage’ might be meaning ‘no risk of pregnancy before marriage’ and so only dissallow vaginal penitrating sex. ---
**Author:** ![BabaBooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dfb087/32.png) [@BabaBooey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BabaBooey)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/25 "2006-03-10T00:49:27Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > “I didn’t cheat on you, honey, we just made each other come.” I don’t think I want a front row seat for the rest of that conversation. :eek: I don’t think you can equate what consitutes sex to what constitutes cheating. If my hypothetical wife were to kiss another man, I would consider that cheating, but if she were the have blown another man before marrying her, I would still consider her a virgin (although whom she blew and there relationship at the time would be considered in how, um, prudish I considered her). ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/26 "2006-03-10T00:52:29Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > You bring your partner to orgasm, and that’s not sex? **Mika,** you’ve got my head spinning. > > “I didn’t cheat on you, honey, we just made each other come.” I don’t think I want a front row seat for the rest of that conversation. :eek: Bringing your partner to orgasm is definitely _sexual_, but it doesn’t automatically equate to having sex (as the phrase is commonly used) or losing one’s virginity. Virginity is rarely if ever defined as never having had any sexual experience whatsoever with another person. Me, I’d say that no sex before marriage means no vaginal or anal intercourse, but since I also think waiting until marriage is a terrible idea I can’t imagine my opinion is very relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/27 "2006-03-10T01:03:28Z")
> [@BabaBooey](#): > > I don’t think you can equate what consitutes sex to what constitutes cheating. If my hypothetical wife were to kiss another man, I would consider that cheating, but if she were the have blown another man before marrying her, I would still consider her a virgin (although whom she blew and there relationship at the time would be considered in how, um, prudish I considered her). Thank you. **AskNott** , I wasn’t aware we were talking about cheating on the confines of a relationship. I assumed the OP meant in the course of legitimate dating. How did they become the same? Anyway. Honestly, no, I don’t think bringing your partner to orgasm is sex. Not as how I define it. So…you define it that way? Not cheating? Say you wanted no sex before marriage…so this would count? You wouldn’t marry so-and-so because they brought someone off once? ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/28 "2006-03-10T02:01:06Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > By the way, if you have absolutely no intention of getting married, there’s no marriage to have sex before. You can have all the sex you want! I like the way you think! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/29 "2006-03-10T02:57:28Z")
Of course, and IANAC, but I’m fairly sure that in Mark, just having lustful thoughts is as bad as “leavening the dough.” Therefore, “no sex before marriage”, to be perfectly strict, is to also not have lustful thoughts before marriage. Ergo, I think it’s a damn stupid, counter-to-everything-ever position to take. And in my experience, just about any Christian teenage friends I know definitely say vaginal is not virginal, but not before. I do, myself. While you have sex, technically, by going down on Chachi, you do not “have sex.” The generally accepted distinction, for the kids I know, is that you don’t say “we did it in his mom’s subcompact” if all you did was rub nipples in the back of a bowling alley. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/30 "2006-03-10T03:12:14Z")
I think it depends on what your \*reasons \* for “no sex before marriage” are. If you’re “saving yourself”, then I guess it’s up to you to decide what’s worth saving. If you simply don’t want to get pregnant outside of marriage, well… there’s only one way to get pregnant. Anything else is fair game. ---
**Author:** ![BoringDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ad7895/32.png) [@BoringDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoringDad)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/31 "2006-03-10T03:39:30Z")
> [@Evilcaptor](#): > > To me, “gay sex” is a quaint custom followed by certain primitive American subcultures. You don’t get to have sex until the witch doctor says “booga! booga!”. Most amusing. > [@BabaBooey](#): > > If someone had said the same but replaced “no sex before marriage” with “gay sex”, you’d probably being going apeshit. I made the suggested substitution, and it just leaves me confused. There is some religious ceremony you must perform before having gay sex? I was unaware of such a thing. As to OP, **DianaG** seems spot on. It’s an individual decision (that society was required to fetishize in the days before birth control), so only individuals can decide what it means to them. ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/32 "2006-03-10T04:17:02Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > You kids sure have a narrow definition of sex. Only three types? Don’t you consider your entire body (and mind) sexual? > > “No sex before marriage” is a pretty transparent cop-out. If the OP needs some sort of Doper community buy-in on the definition then I can’t imagine the satisfaction of adhering to that definition is going to be very deep. > > What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to protect the feelings of some future spouse so they won’t have to deal with the thought of you exploring your sexuality without them? Or is that a projection of the kind of protection you want from them? > > Do differentiate between “no sex before marriage” and “no sex outside of marriage”? If you imagine yourself widowed, in your 40s say, is sex a no-no until you remarry? > > Is touching genitals so foul that doing so destroys your pristine condition? Thank you so much for misreading my OP. This forum is IMHO, and it’s for polls. This is a poll. I was curious about whether other people agreed with my definition. Anyone who gets their advice about such things from message boards is misguided at best. It’s something you should decide for yourself. For your information, I do not adhere to a “no sex before marriage” policy myself–note the “if” in the third sentence of my second paragraph. I’m not sanguine about marriage and likely won’t ever be married myself. I do find an “everything but” policy a bit weird, but that means weird to me. I would not want to deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/33 "2006-03-10T05:07:39Z")
Personally, I would think “sex” would include anything likely to lead to orgasm. But the one time I found myself in bed with a girl who claimed she was saving herself for marriage, she used the “anything but” definition. I didn’t argue. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/34 "2006-03-10T05:39:27Z")
When I was a horny teenager in the late 1960’s, my steady girlfriend and I had penis-in-vagina sex once or twice a week. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of oral sex, but once or twice, when I hadn’t bought a condom, I talked her into anal sex. She liked it. I confess, I even went along with her mistaken belief that a woman who doesn’t have an orgasm won’t get pregnant, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Now, if she had believed in today’s faith-based ideas that only vaginal sex is sex, we would have done only oral and anal sex. That would have been all right with me, for a (hetero) teenage boy’s thinking will follow any path that leads to coming inside a girl. Maybe it isn’t fashionable in 2006, but in 1966, if a boy found out his girlfriend gave another guy a blowjob, she wasn’t his steady girlfriend anymore. For the rare couples who were saving their virginity for marriage, it was the same. Oral sex was sex. A handjob was sex. There’s nothing left to save, after that. Even in 1966, most of us knew that saving virginity was obsolete, but at least we were realistic about it. We knew better than this silly fence around “a penis in a vagina.” ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/35 "2006-03-10T06:17:38Z")
Vaginal and anal. Mutual masturbation is, well, masturbation, and I’ve never made up my mind about where oral falls (except that it’s cheating if you’re involved and do it with someone else, but then, so is kissing.) ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/36 "2006-03-10T13:28:29Z")
> [@BabaBooey](#): > > If someone had said the same but replaced “no sex before marriage” with “gay sex”, you’d probably being going apeshit. Outside of minors, you’ve got no place judging someone based on sexual preferences. I think you probably agree with the homosexuality aspect, but when you read “no sex before marriage” I suspect you immediately think “Christian.” Why would I be going apeshit. Suppose some gays believed they had to have their relationship OK’d by their personal variation on witch doctore before they consummated it? So long as it’s their personal belief, it’s just their personal silliness. It only becomes a problem when people try to enforce the rule on other, unwilling people. Which I don’t believe the Christians have any power to do any more. Or anyone, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/37 "2006-03-10T13:48:01Z")
If you can do it with your pants on and zipped up, then it isn’t sex. Therefore, I discount the orgasm definition, since it’s definitely possible to have one with your pants on, if you’re horny enough. I never quite understood the concept of saving the vagina when every other orifice of the body has been used sexually. I find it odd that a person involved in a weekly oral/anal/bukkake gangbang can still call themselves a “virgin”. At that point, the word virgin seems to lose a bit of meaning, ya know? Mutual masturbation is a grey area, I’d probably put that in the “no sex” category, since I don’t consider it sex when I do it to myself, why should it be sex if someone else is there? ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/38 "2006-03-10T13:51:28Z")
Once I became a Christian, I chose to follow the no-sex-before-marriage rule. There was hand holding and one or two kisses but I found that waiting for the wedding night made the descision worth it. I highly reccomend it. Oh, and **Evil Captor** , _that’s_ discipline! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/39 "2006-03-10T14:12:04Z")
So if a chick has done anal but never vaginal; is she still a virgin? ---
**Author:** ![FordPrefect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@FordPrefect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordPrefect)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740/40 "2006-03-10T14:30:37Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > By the way, oral sex is sex. Notice the “sex” part in “oral sex”? Why do you think they call it oral sex if it isn’t sex? I disagree. Oral sex is a gateway sex, but what about “cyber-sex” which is nothing more than talking dirty. Does that mean talking dirty with your girlfriend is sex? Or is it only sex if you email your dirty thoughts to her? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-no-sex-before-marriage-mean-to-you/347740.md?page=3)