Lydia Plath is reflecting on how it felt to wait to have her first kiss with husband Zac Wyse at their wedding.
Nearly six months after tying the knot, the couple shared the impact that saving physical intimacy for marriage has had on their relationship. Plath revealed that Wyse introduced the idea the same night he asked her to be his girlfriend, and she was quick to say "yes" to both.
"Zac was just like, 'This is really random and this is not something I've ever thought about, but I just keep [feeling] this unction from the Holy Spirit to just ask you what you'd think about saving our first kiss for our wedding day. Like, if that comes, not kissing until our wedding day,'" she recalled on The Jinger and Jeremy Podcast. "I was just shocked in my seat because it's something that I had wanted, but I didn't want it to be a legalistic thing. I didn't want it to be a rule we had to follow because of X, Y and Z."
"I wanted him to initiate it," she added of why she didn't bring it up first. "I wanted the guy to initiate it because it was in his heart -- because if he was going to be the one leading, he would have to have that desire. So when he said that, I was just like, 'Funny you ask.'"
Rather, he said it was a sign of him "wanting to honor" her and "be intentional" as they got to know each other.
"I want it to mean something, I want it to have purpose," he remembered thinking.
Despite being on the same page, the pair said they "took a few days" to be sure that they were "ready to make this commitment" and had the discipline to do so.
"On top of that, to clarify, we both had our first kiss in previous relationships," Wyse noted. "And so for this to come up was truly because it was lingering on my heart for so long. I was just like: 'This is different. There's a purity about her. There's an honoring I want to have towards her that leads me to keep thinking about this, and so I'm going to bring it up to her to see if this is something that I can truly honor her in.'"
"There's such a beauty about it in respecting the other, and it truly is a great physical boundary," Wyse explained. "Because then there were so many other ways that we were able to build trust for one another and just enjoy different moments because we're not kissing and because we're not falling into different physical things. It's like: no; we get to dance or have more enjoyable moments like running around or frolicking or doing whatever because we’re not kissing."
"And not to say that kissing is bad," he continued. "But it was interesting to find the alternatives in it."
Plath agreed, saying she cherishes all the memories they made while dating when most couples would have been "making out."
"I can't tell you how many times we experienced so much joy that we were just like, 'This is even better than kissing right now,'" she said. "'Like, I don't know where this joy is coming from, but I feel so close to you right now because of the conversations we've had, because of how intentional we've been.'"