Hi Christiangirl,
I was going to respond to your other thread until I saw that it was almost 4 months old, lol. If you want my thoughts after seeing what I write here, just let me know (post there and/or PM me).
... My air conditioning broke the other night and it was 92 degrees in my home. It was too hot for me to sleep there so I crashed on his couch downstairs. ... I just didn't want to stay in my home when it was so hot. However, my mother says that's wrong. I think that's just one opinion but she says its wrong no matter the circumstance. Can anyone else shed some light on this? Thank you!
Please recognize that for the rest of their lives, what your parents think and feel about you is going to impact you in a nontrivial way. Its significance is such that it is the sort of thing that can contribute to a happy life or contribute to an unhappy life. In all the Bible, God never talked about ceasing to be accountable to one's parents. From God's point of view, you will be best off in the long run by doing what they insist for you (even when they may be wrong about something). It is God who will reward you for obedience to your parents. God granted them some of
his authority over you so that they could love and protect you. If you don't do what they tell you, you are rejecting that loving protection, which ultimately God is overseeing.
Obey your parents, then ask God to make it easier or to help you. No matter what happens between parents and children, one should continue to honor their father and mother (if only in their hearts when face-to-face ceases to be an option). God's command to do so even comes with a promise of long life to those that do so—which various things can interfere with, but it does reveal God's attitude about it.
It seems that you want to prove trustworthy to your parents. The way you do that is by doing what they say without argument. You can discuss it, but should be quick to accept their considered final decision. If doing what they want is a problem, ask God to change it and/or help you with it. In many situations he is rather likely to answer your prayer if you have it in your heart to obey your parents. This actually should be the pattern of behavior for all children toward their parents, however it is not really how most of us are programmed, and that can make it nearly impossible for us, along with the fact that parents are sometimes ignorant of what is best, selfish, or just unwise.
Having said all that, another important consideration is what your relationship with them is like. Your relationship with them may basically give you permission to resist what they would like for you (but not what they insist on).
Literally speaking, there are situations where it is not wrong for you to say overnight at his house, such as if you passed out from the heat, couldn't afford an ambulance ride, and fell asleep right there and didn't wake up til the next morning. It is a contrived scenario, but I'm just saying "never say never."
However that is beside the point. If you didn't really know how strong your mom's feelings were about saying over night, then whether you sinned or not is what your heart tells you. If you thought God considered it wrong and did it anyway, you sinned, otherwise you probably did not (such as if you weren't sure).
Now that it is something in the past, what should your future behavior be? What I said above applies, but even if your mom didn't care, there are reasons not to participate in risky (or risque) behavior before being married. God wants us to behave wisely, because even when sinning is not directly involved, being unwise will take us in the direction of sinning becoming easier. As with all relationships where two people are attracted to each other, care must be taken that certain facets of the relationship do not deepen or mature more quickly than others. The obvious example is things that involve sexiness that will make it harder to resist premarital sex. It either of you already find it hard to resist, then you have been handling some things in a less than an ideal way. It could even be things as indirect (and somewhat unavoidable) as watching certain TV shows or seeing certain PG-13 movies.
Another example is that sometimes it is a bad idea to have a habit of praying for each other out loud to God—when it comes to praying intimate or loving things. It can create deeper intimacy before one or both of you are ready for that in a more holistic way. (It is something good to do every day with one's
spouse.)
Behaving with Godly wisdom now will turn out to be valuable in other, non-obvious ways as well. In what ways do you trust your boyfriend? If he is trying to keep from making his boss angry so he gets a promotion rather than being fired, what is he going to do when the boss asks him out to lunch, and then when arriving, discovers it is lunch at a strip joint? Odds are you wouldn't find out the answer to that unless it happens (or he plans in advance what he would do, even though it would cost him his job), but giving your relationship the time your parents think it needs gives you more time and opportunity to know him better.
Once you marry you will be stuck with him for the next 50 years and both of you are going to change in many ways over time. Romantically speaking, you may know him well enough already, but in a marriage, the pressures of life will start to affect your relationship. Consider some conflict that has been easy to manage now. How would you handle the same conflict after life had been become more and more difficult and painful due to various bad life events and has drained you of your strength to fight? What will he be like when you are ill and in pain so that it causes pain in him? Will he focus on his job more and you less to avoid the pain that is keeping him from doing his work the way he wants? This is exactly the sort of thing your parents can help you understand if they know him well enough. (They know you well enough.)
I have rambled on longer than I would prefer. I definitely better stop now, ahem.