What does “no sex before marriage” mean to you?
Eh, I think “starting as we mean to go on” is as near to the mark as any. 
I would have said “no petting below the waist”…
then Opportunity Knocked and I knocked back.
Now, “No Oral, Anal, Vaginal or Manual-to-Orgasm…”
Nitpick: All the sex you can get. This may not be the same as how much you want.
To me, “no sex before marriage” means you still have respect for marriage in a world that tries to tell us marriage is meaningless. (Hey, you started it).
To actually answer the OP, though, I would say oral sex and actual sex would qualify. There are some gray areas there, though, such as hand jobs, but I think that’s not quite sex.
To me “no sex before marriage” means “DANGER WILL ROBINSON”. At a very early age, my mother advised me to never marry a man that I had not had sex with. She was speaking from experience, having “saved herself” for her first husband. Let’s just say they were not sexually compatible and leave it at that.
I would never marry a man without sleeping with him first.
You’re kidding, right? First you wag some high-falutin “respect for marriage” implication at us, then turn around and tap dance around the definition of sex to exclude hand jobs?
The “world” that’s telling you marriage is meaningless sounds like it’s you, Charger.
No matter how much you love someone, you may not be sexually compatable. Now if you wait till after the marriage serimony to find that out what do you do if you and your partner aren’t compatable?
Do you get divorced = dissrespect the sanctity of marriage.
Do you remain in a sexless marriage = PROBLEMS!!! probably loss of love and some amount of cheating.
Anyone who respects marriage in the old fashioned way, will only have sex with someone whom they have every intention of marrying. But to go into marriage a virgin or without having had sex with your fiance is the height of naevity.
The reason I would not stay with someone who didn’t want sex until after marriage is not the lack of sex, but that that person was proving themselves unrealistically naeve, and because I would not want to enter any marriage that had a significant chance of ending in divorce.
I think the “no sex before marriage” rule is foolish - why be stuck with someone for a long time (if not the rest of your life) with whom you’re sexually incompatible? Neither my future wife nor I followed that rule.
That said, if I were to have adhered to such a rule, I think “whatever brings your partner to orgasm, or has the potential to” is as useful a definition of “sex” as any. French kissing and heavy petting isn’t “sex,” IMHO.
… but just the same, it’s not something you’d want your wife knowing you did with your mistress. 
For those saying only vaginal intercourse is sex, are all strictly-gay men virgins?
I would have a problem with a lady having the attitude of “sure, I pulled a train at the frat house every Saturday night when I was in college, but it was all oral and anal, so I’m still a virgin.”
And, technically, oral sex is sodomy.
Speaking from my personal experience, “What does “no sex before marriage” mean to you?” meant a very short relationship, which didn’t result in marriage. So, it worked, sorta.
There’s no potential for orgasm from kissing or heavy petting? Have you considered that you might be doing it wrong?
Hmmmm. Now you’ve got me thinking. Kissing? No. Heavy petting? Well… if heavy petting results in orgasm, I think that crosses a line (perhaps only in my own mind) into being a handjob. And that’s “sex.” YMMV (and probably will)!
I once gave my girlfriend- now my wife- an orgasm by doing nothing more than kissing her breast. So I know for a fact that the kissing orgasm exists.
My brother and his wife did the same as the couple you mention, actually I’m not sure that they even held hands before their wedding.
I think it all depends on why you’re not having sex before marriage. If it’s because you truly are trying to save yourself for your spouse and feel that is the right thing to do, then nothing sexual would be permitted.
When you start saying, 'handjobs, BJs, (insert thing) are ok", then you’re just trying to justify something that probably isn’t your own conviction.
Personally, I say do whatever you want with the person you’re with, if your belief says no sex without marriage, don’t. If your belief says, screw whoever you like, go for it.
I hope that’s not the only reason she married you. Granted, that’s a pretty good trick, but still…
the ads for the previous page were all about Hair Loss. :dubious:
Treating the category of activities that can create another human life separately from other activities makes perfect sense to me. It is probably an even more important distinction to people strongly opposed to abortion. Also, it should be an important distinction to those strongly opposed to paying child support. Creating a new human life together is likely to create a powerful, near-permanent bond between two people. I can understand someone wanting to put a “fence” around the potential for creating that type of bond outside of marriage. I don’t think this is just “fetishizing” something from before the days of birth control. Birth control is not infallible.
IN a forum I used to visit one woman claimed her lover had trained her orgasm on command. Feel free to take this with several grains of salt … I know I did.
If it was about procreation, it’d be a procreative act.
If not, then like a few others, I’d define it as nothing sexual (beyond kissing) if I were really considering it, figuring if I was looking for loopholes around the declaration, I probably shouldn’t be making it in the first place.
Total agreement here!
In my adventures as a single woman I dated a few men that were major disappointments sexually. While there are many important components to marriage other than sex, it’s still a major factor in what I want in a long term/lifetime relationship. Some of the guys who were lacking in that area (for me) were sweet people with alot going for them, but I am happy I didn’t commit myself to a lifetime of unfulfilling sex with them. I’m sure there are women out there that these individuals would be completely compatible with, because ‘good sex’ is relative to the parties involved.
That being said, I obviously don’t adhere to the no sex before marriage stance. If I did, I guess my definition would be anything involving penetration.