@wellthatsunusual
The state of not having had a penis inside your vagina? Or no sexual activity. As most of the Christians I knew when I was young seemed to regard it as the former and got up to all-sorts (way more than I ever did!).
I went to school with quite a lot of Christian girls who were adamant that they wouldn't even kiss until they got married. I often wonder if they stuck to it.
I remember as a teenager being given a book by my church telling us that we shouldn't even be spending time with a member of the opposite sex unless there was a realistic prospect of marriage and that there should be no physical contact using hands or any other body parts (although I think a chaste kiss was fine) and no letting anyone else see your body. They advised not spending time alone and said it was absolutely forbidden to go into a room with a bed in it. I had some messed up feelings around sex.
OP was it important to your husband that you were a virgin and important to you that he was? Or if one of you had 'lapsed' (I use that term because that's how it was classed when I was growing up) could you have forgiven each other for the past and started afresh?
Yes for my DH it was important that we were both virgins. I had a (short) previous relationship with someone who wasn’t religious, he wasn’t a virgin. I loved him and thought I would marry him. It didn’t work out thankfully as, looking back, we were not at all well suited. I was very young.
Yes I think I could have forgiven, although such a hard question to answer 12 years down the line, we got together when I was 23. I couldn’t imagine him not in my life.