I was raised (in Seventh-Day Adventism) that you should not mess around before marriage. You should not even kiss too intensely.
On his second hour of his radio show Friday, Dennis Prager got a call from a evangelical Christian man who said he was bothered by lust. Dennis asked him if he had a good sex life with his wife. The man said no, it had never been good. They’d been married 11 years. They had not messed around prior to marriage.
Dennis: "People need to confront reality… I do believe that overwhelmingly people should postpone intercourse for marriage. I also believe that doing nothing before marriage is a bad idea because you need to know if you have chemistry in that arena. It is better for everybody and for all religious values if you know that. This notion that if people share their love of God and in this case love of Christ will overcome all other issues is a fairy tale. Happiness and fairy tales do not mix."
I found the following advice from Prager very helpful in deciding what exactly I should do before marriage and what exactly I should leave for my marriage night. "There are ways of knowing do you share chemistry without intercourse. That is so elementary my dear Watson that I don’t know what to say. You don’t even need to do everything else, there is just enough to know if this can be an area of passion and joy. It might not be to one partner. You need to know that. Before I ever married, a psychiatrist told me that sex is 2% of marriage but it can ruin the other 98%."
