Hey guys.

So this is a bit weird, perhaps, but I feel very confused. I’ve been dating my SO for about 7 months now and we’re internationally long distance. The problem revolves around our ideas of Christian purity and sexual boundaries.

For some background: when we first met and started dating, it was a given that we were waiting until marriage. Both of us wanted that. However, fairly quickly, we realized that this meant different things to both of us. I had never done anything more than kiss while he has had sex once (and decided that he wanted to wait after). For him, purity meant everything but sex while that was certainly not true for me. We began to study Biblical interpretation in an attempt to figure out what we believed, and it’s been difficult for both of us (him with coming to terms with much more stringent boundaries and me for realizing that I don’t believe everything I thought when was young).

The reason today came up is because my mom has now become involved. She is very close with both me and my boyfriend, and we often ask her advice since she is a counselor. Today, after finding out that he thought it was fine for me to send nudes (I won’t, but that’s not the issue here), my mom realized that we’ve been naked around each other. She doesn’t think this is ok morally, but I feel pretty comfortable with that after thinking/reading/praying/talking to people. It’s just uncomfortable and I was wondering anyone’s thoughts on nonsexual sexual boundaries and how to navigate that space.