Single, Dating, Engaged, Married: Learning to Love the Season We're In

In Episode 2 of Three Cords, David and Korina dive into Single, Dating, Engaged, Married by Ben Stuart, a framework for thinking intentionally about relationships through every stage of the journey.

Relationships can make us obsessed with what comes next.

When we are single, we wonder when we will meet someone.

When we are dating, we wonder whether this person could be the one.

When we are engaged, we start counting the days until the wedding.

When we are married, we begin thinking about the next house, the next career move, children, family, and everything else life might bring.

It can become surprisingly easy to spend one season preparing for the next without ever asking what the present season is actually for.

That is one of the ideas that stayed with us as we studied Ben Stuart’s Single, Dating, Engaged, Married: Navigating Life and Love in the Modern Age for our second episode of Three Cords. Stuart organizes relational life around four distinct seasons and gives each one a different purpose: singleness as devotion, dating as evaluation, engagement as union, and marriage as mission.

That framework gave us a simple but challenging question:

What if every relationship season has something to teach us that we cannot fully learn by rushing into the next one?

Singleness Is More Than Waiting

We think singleness is often treated like a waiting room.

You are there until your real life starts.

You work on yourself.

You meet people.

You pray.

You date.

Hopefully, eventually, someone walks into the room and changes your relationship status.

Ben Stuart challenges that assumption.

In his framework, the purpose of singleness is devotion.

That immediately changes the conversation.

Singleness is not simply the absence of a relationship. It can be a season in which a person has a particular freedom to develop their relationship with God, discover who they are, build community, pursue meaningful work, serve other people, and create a life that has purpose before another person ever enters it. Stuart points specifically to the biblical idea that singleness can allow for a kind of focused devotion that marriage naturally changes because marriage introduces responsibilities to another person.

We think that distinction matters.

Marriage should add another person to a life that already has meaning.

It should not become the source of all meaning.

A spouse cannot realistically carry the responsibility of giving another person identity, purpose, community, emotional stability, spiritual direction, and fulfillment.

That is too much weight to place on another human being.

One of the healthiest things we can bring into a relationship is a life that already has roots.

Dating Is About Evaluation, Not Imagination

Dating can be exciting because it contains possibility.

You meet someone.

You discover what you have in common.

You start imagining what life together could look like.

And sometimes imagination moves faster than information.

That is why Stuart’s word for dating stood out to us:

Evaluation.

Dating is not marriage.

It is not engagement.

It is the season where two people are learning enough about each other to determine whether moving toward marriage makes sense.

That requires both openness and clarity.

According to Stuart’s framework, dating should involve wisely evaluating whether someone is a potential spouse rather than drifting into a relationship without understanding where it is going.

That sounds simple.

In practice, it can be difficult.

Feelings are involved.

Attraction is involved.

Hope is involved.

And once we really like somebody, it becomes easy to evaluate the relationship we want instead of the relationship we actually have.

We think healthy dating requires the courage to stay curious.

Who is this person when they are disappointed?

How do they handle conflict?

How do they treat people who cannot do anything for them?

What role does faith actually play in their life?

How do they think about money?

Family?

Commitment?

Work?

Friendship?

Sacrifice?

Are we becoming more honest as the relationship develops, or simply more attached?

Those questions are not designed to turn dating into a job interview.

They help us remember what dating is for.

You are not trying to find a flawless human being.

You are trying to understand the actual human being in front of you.

Chemistry Matters, but Character Has to Carry More Weight

Attraction has a place in relationships.

We certainly are not arguing that chemistry should disappear from the conversation.

But chemistry can introduce us to someone without telling us whether we can build a life with them.

That takes time.

We think one of the traps of modern dating is confusing intensity with compatibility.

A relationship can feel incredibly exciting while still lacking the ingredients needed for long term partnership.

That is why evaluation cannot stop at, “Do I enjoy being around this person?”

A better question eventually becomes:

Who are we becoming when we are together?

Does the relationship produce honesty or insecurity?

Peace or constant uncertainty?

Growth or stagnation?

Can we disagree without trying to destroy each other?

Can we tell each other the truth?

Can we apologize?

Can we listen?

Do our convictions and our lives point in compatible directions?

Attraction may start the conversation.

Character determines whether there is enough substance to keep having it.

Engagement Is Preparation for Marriage, Not Just Preparation for a Wedding

Engagement is probably one of the easiest relationship seasons to misunderstand because weddings demand so much attention.

There are venues.

Guest lists.

Budgets.

Clothes.

Food.

Photography.

Travel.

Family expectations.

A thousand decisions can consume the months leading up to the ceremony.

Meanwhile, the biggest thing being built during engagement is not the wedding.

It is the marriage.

Stuart presents engagement as a season of intentional preparation and movement toward becoming one.

We think that is an important distinction.

A beautiful wedding can be planned in months.

A healthy marriage has to be built for years.

Engagement gives a couple an unusual window to start having the conversations that married life will eventually force them to have anyway.

How will we manage money?

What expectations do we have about work?

What role will faith play in our household?

How do we think about children?

What boundaries will we create with our families?

How do we repair conflict?

How will responsibilities be divided?

What do we expect from each other emotionally?

What does commitment mean when marriage stops feeling new?

Those conversations are not nearly as exciting as choosing flowers.

They are far more important.

We think engagement should give couples permission to become increasingly honest.

Not less romantic.

More real.

Because saying yes to marriage means saying yes to the actual person, not the edited version we created while dating.

Marriage Is Not the Finish Line

Then comes the stage that relationship culture often treats as the destination.

Marriage.

The search is over.

The decision has been made.

The wedding happened.

Now what?

Stuart gives marriage the word mission.

His framework argues that marriage is not merely about enjoying one another. A married couple can begin thinking about what they are capable of building, giving, serving, and pursuing together.

We love that idea because marriage can easily become inward looking.

Bills.

Schedules.

Work.

Meals.

Chores.

Appointments.

Family obligations.

Eventually, two people can become extremely efficient at running a household while forgetting that they once dreamed about building a life.

Mission asks us to look outward again.

What are we building together?

Who are we serving?

How are we helping each other become the people God is calling us to become?

What can we accomplish together that would have been harder to accomplish separately?

What values will define our household?

What do we want our marriage to give to the people around us?

Those questions make marriage bigger than companionship without making companionship less important.

We still want friendship.

Romance.

Laughter.

Intimacy.

Rest.

Fun.

But partnership becomes deeper when two people share more than a home.

They share direction.

Every Season Requires a Different Kind of Wisdom

The biggest lesson we took from Single, Dating, Engaged, Married is not that there is one perfect path everyone must follow.

It is that we should understand the season we are actually in.

A single person does not need to live like they are already married.

A dating couple does not need to pretend they have made a covenant they have not made.

An engaged couple should not spend so much energy planning one day that they ignore the life beginning afterward.

And married couples should not assume the work is complete because the vows have already been exchanged.

Each season asks something different from us.

Singleness asks us to build.

Dating asks us to discern.

Engagement asks us to prepare.

Marriage asks us to unite our lives around something meaningful.

The mistake is believing the next stage will automatically give the current one purpose.

We Do Not Want to Rush Past the Lesson

Looking at relationships through these four stages reminded us of something we want Three Cords to keep returning to.

Intentional love requires us to pay attention.

Not only to the person we love.

To the season we are in.

There will always be something next.

Another milestone.

Another decision.

Another challenge.

Another version of ourselves we have not met yet.

If we spend our lives waiting for the next stage to make us whole, we may arrive there without learning what the previous stage was trying to teach us.

We want something different.

We want to be students of every season.

To learn what singleness can teach about identity and devotion.

What dating can teach about discernment and honesty.

What engagement can teach about preparation and unity.

What marriage can teach about commitment, partnership, and shared purpose.

That is what we found so useful about Ben Stuart’s framework.

It does not simply ask, What is your relationship status?

It asks a much better question:

What is this season for?

And wherever we find ourselves, that feels like a question worth answering.

This is Three Cords. We study the books, the experts, and the research on love, then bring what we learn into conversation with our faith and our marriage.