Proposal Season and the Rush to “I Do”
Here in South Florida, from Fort Lauderdale beaches to Las Olas rooftop dinners, couples are getting engaged at a record pace — often after whirlwind dating app courtships that moved from a swipe to a proposal in a matter of months.
But beneath the celebration, a quieter statistic tells a different story: research consistently shows that a significant percentage of engaged couples never sit down with anyone — clergy, counselor, or mentor — before walking down the aisle. They plan the venue, the flowers, and the guest list with meticulous care, but they never plan the marriage itself.
At Impact Family Christian Counseling, we see the fallout of this pattern often — couples who arrive for Dating & Marriage counseling years into a marriage, wrestling with conflicts that were visible on day one of the engagement, but were never named, prayed over, or brought before the Lord together.
Pre-engagement counseling isn’t about slowing down love. It’s about building a marriage on rock instead of sand.
The Secular vs. Biblical Pivot
Walk into most secular pre-marital “compatibility assessments” and you’ll find a familiar formula: personality inventories, communication style quizzes, and financial compatibility scores. These tools aren’t without value — understanding how you and your future spouse handle conflict or budget money matters. But the secular model tends to stop at the level of behavior and personality. It asks, “Are you compatible?” It rarely asks, “Are you both being transformed by the Gospel?”
Secular models of relationship preparation often rest on a foundation that says lasting love is primarily a matter of matching temperaments, negotiating needs, and managing expectations — a transactional view of marriage where the goal is mutual satisfaction. When that satisfaction fades, as it inevitably does in every marriage at some point, the relationship has no deeper anchor to hold it together.
Scripture offers something entirely different. Marriage was not humanity’s invention — it was God’s idea from the very beginning of Creation. “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him'” (Genesis 2:18). Marriage is a covenant, not a contract; a picture of Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:31-32), not merely a legal or emotional partnership. Pre-engagement counseling rooted in Biblical Counseling asks a deeper question than compatibility: Are you both walking with the Lord, and are you ready to die to yourselves for the sake of a covenant?
Biblical Depth and Heart Change: Building on the Right Foundation
Proverbs 15:22 tells us, “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” This is not a suggestion — it’s wisdom literature, God’s own counsel on how His people ought to approach major life decisions. And what decision is bigger than choosing a lifelong covenant partner?
Ecclesiastes 4:12 gives us the picture that should define every Christian engagement: “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” A marriage built on two people alone, however deeply in love, is inherently more fragile than a marriage where Christ is the third strand — woven through the relationship from before the wedding day, not added on afterward as an afterthought.
Pre-engagement counseling, from a biblical worldview, is not about checking compatibility boxes. It is about examining the heart. Jesus taught that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45) — meaning the way a couple argues, forgives, handles money, treats each other’s families, and pursues purity before marriage is not primarily a communication-skills issue. It is a heart issue. And heart issues are not solved by better negotiation tactics; they are transformed by the ongoing, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
This is why our approach at Impact Family rejects the notion — common in much secular relationship coaching — that lasting love is simply a matter of self-discovery, self-actualization, or finding your “compatible match.” True readiness for marriage is discovered not by looking inward, but by looking upward, examining whether both individuals are being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and whether they can, in humility, “count others more significant than themselves” (Philippians 2:3) — the daily posture every marriage requires.
Pre-engagement counseling gives couples space to wrestle honestly with hard questions before the wedding invitations go out:
- Are we both truly walking with the Lord, or is one of us “unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14) in faith and practice?
- Have we dealt honestly with wounds from our family of origin, past relationships, or unresolved sin patterns?
- Do we understand biblical roles, submission, and headship (Ephesians 5:22-33) not as cultural relics, but as a beautiful, sacrificial picture of Christ’s love for the Church?
- Are we prepared to forgive as we have been forgiven (Colossians 3:13), even before we know what we’ll need to forgive?
- Have we surrendered our expectations of marriage to God’s purposes rather than our own comfort?
These conversations, held in a spirit of grace and biblical wisdom rather than clinical checklists, are what separate couples who merely survive their first years of marriage from those who thrive because Christ was invited in from the very beginning.
Practical, Spirit-Led Application
If you or someone you love is engaged — or heading toward it — here are Spirit-led steps to take before the wedding day:
- Seek wise counsel early, not as a last resort. Don’t wait until conflict escalates. Proverbs 15:22 calls believers to seek counsel before plans are finalized, not after they’ve failed.
- Examine your spiritual foundation together. Are you both truly rooted in Christ, reading Scripture, praying, and pursuing a local church community? A wedding date does not create spiritual unity — years of shared discipleship do.
- Bring your full story into the light. Past relationships, family wounds, financial history, and patterns of sin should be confessed and processed together, not hidden until after the vows are exchanged (James 5:16).
- Read together with intentionality. Paul David Tripp’s What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage is a widely respected resource among evangelical couples for confronting unrealistic expectations with gospel hope. Reading it together, alongside Scripture, can surface conversations that dating alone never will.
- Commit to ongoing counsel, not a one-time session. Pre-engagement counseling is most fruitful as a process — several sessions over weeks or months — allowing the Holy Spirit time to do deep, unhurried work in both hearts.
- Invite your church community in. Marriage was never meant to be prepared for in isolation. Pastors, mentor couples, and a Christian counselor can offer a “cord of three strands” perspective no engaged couple can fully see for themselves.
A Note on Wise Counsel
None of this is meant to replace the wisdom of your pastor, elders, or local church leadership — Scripture is clear that the church family plays a vital role in preparing couples for covenant marriage. Pre-engagement counseling through Impact Family is designed to work alongside that spiritual covering, not apart from it, offering focused, biblically-grounded sessions rooted in the truth that Jesus Christ Himself is the ultimate “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6) — the final authority for true heart transformation, not a license or a secular technique.
Your Next Step
If you’re engaged, considering engagement, or already walking through the early, tender season of a relationship headed toward marriage, we would be honored to walk alongside you. Impact Family Christian Counseling offers Dating & Marriage counseling designed to help couples build their relationship on the unshakable foundation of God’s Word, from before the ring is ever exchanged.
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Marriage is too sacred a covenant to build on guesswork. Let’s build it on the Rock together.