Eugenia, twenty-three years old, is a pretty and confident lady from a secure and well-off family. Her family adored her since she was an only child and she grew up with the idea that the world was her oyster. Then he met Laud, 26, a recent graduate in Business Administration, on a beach in Accra, Ghana. Eugenia had just graduated from university and her parents gave her the trip as a graduation gift; Laud had just passed his exams and used a portion of his savings to give a gift of “congratulations”. With one look, Eugenia and Laud fell in love. The chemistry was tremendous. They both felt on top of the world now that they had finished school, and the pleasant night breezes didn’t hurt either. Only a few days after their romance, Eugenia decided that Laud was the one. He was handsome, hardworking, and had all the right credentials. He was out of her girlish image of the perfect match. Obviously, Laud liked Eugenia too, when they found out that they both had plans to move to Miami and the idea hit them both simultaneously: they were so in love, why not live together?
That is exactly what they did. Only Eugenia had a not-so-hidden agenda. From the first week of living together, she began to exert pressure, her parents were not happy that she was living with a man and they harassed her into getting married. Laud was starting to start a small business and it would not help his career to have a wife. What Eugenia managed to do was maneuver Laud into getting married, not that he hadn’t come to love him on his own, but Eugenia, Laud later realized, was pushing. Laud, who visited the consultant, began to realize what was happening, now he can see Eugenia’s motivations more clearly: “Once we got married,” he said, “Eugenia started the same pressure techniques about moving from Miami … I tried to explain to her that I was still not making enough money to buy a house, that I had just started my small business. But it was as if she did not listen to me and listened to me about anything. All of that was at ease because she was complying his own agendas and fantasies about what he wanted out of marriage. He had married the marriage, he had not married me. “
Eugenia was trying to force Laud into his own dream without consulting him. Eugenia and Laud face some difficult days ahead: she has to realize that marriage means a commitment to a real person, not an idea, and he has to face the possibility that once she finally sees him, they both can. have a second thoughts about your relationship. There is also no guarantee that Eugenia will wake up to the reality of Laud; if he doesn’t, Laud will have to decide whether he wants to continue in the marriage.
The problem that Laud and Eugenia illustrate is a very common one. A very common and painful trap that many men and women fall into when they marry is that they marry with the idea of marriage; they don’t actually marry a human being. Or they can marry the lifestyle that certain marriages make possible, with no real thought for the person who brings them together. Some couples are really attracted to lifestyles, not other people. Wealth, prestige, connections, someone’s family – there are a number of lures we can fall in love with in addition to the real man or woman. People married to this type of fantasy are not really married at all; They have simply bought into the idea of marriage without feeling that there is a fallible human being attached. Waking up and realizing that you are in a myth, not a marriage, can be painful – it means giving up some simplistic ideas about what you thought marriage meant, and it can mean having to meet the man you’ve married and vice versa. the first time, maybe years after you said “yes, I do.”
The value of looking at love in marriage has nothing to do with material possession; it’s about sharing good and bad moments. Proverbs 31:10 says, “A wife of noble character I can find? Worth more than rubies.” Both spouses in a serious relationship (marriage) seek to marry human beings and not ideas in marriage. Not only can you get happiness from ideas in marriage, but happiness comes from marrying the human being. Many people complain of not finding happiness in their relationship. Have you ever wondered what the root of all this moaning is? It may be that you demand too much of your partner or you do not support them spiritually, physically, morally and affectionately.
The marriage was a sure success so the couples would know they had had enough to eat, shelter over their heads, and financial support to raise their children. But deeper than that, marriage played a significant psychological role for couples – it defined couples’ sense of self in a way that others might. This is because marriage meant a “complete” life; just being married provided a genuinely satisfying, validating, and psychologically rewarding experience for most couples.
The value of seeing Eugenia’s situation is not judging her inability to see and accept her husband and his life for who they really are. It is by allowing her story to push us to recognize ways we can be similarly trapped in fake marriages. You can’t get out of a trap until you see how it works. That’s the point, so choose a good partner who marries a human being and not the idea of getting married.