Eugenia, twenty-three years old, is a pretty and self-confident lady from a wealthy and secure family. Her family had adored her since she was an only child, and she grew up with the idea that the world was her oyster. She then met Laud, a twenty-six-year-old recent business administration graduate, on a beach in Accra, Ghana. Eugenia had just graduated from university and her parents gave her the trip as a graduation present; Laud had just passed her exams and used a portion of her savings to treat himself to a “congratulations” gift. With one look, Eugenia and Laud fell in love. The chemistry was great. They both felt on top of the world now that they were out of school, and the nice afternoon breeze didn’t hurt either. Only a few days after their romance, Eugenia decided that Laud was the one. He was handsome, hard-working, and had all the necessary credentials. He was taken out of his girl image of the perfect couple. Laud was obviously in love with 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 pressure her, her parents did not like that she lived with a man and they harassed her to get married. Laud was starting a small business and it wouldn’t help her career to have a wife. What Eugenia managed to do was maneuver Laud into getting married, not that he didn’t come to love him on her account, but Eugenia, Laud later realized, was pushing. Laud, who has 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 to move out of Miami … I tried to explain to her that I still didn’t make enough money to buy a house, that I had just started my small business, but it was like she didn’t listen to me and listen to me about anything, that was all a pleasure because she was fulfilling her own agendas and fantasies about what she wanted out of marriage. She had married the marriage, she had not married me.”

Eugenia was trying to force Laud to enter his own dream without consulting him. Eugenia and Laud face difficult days: 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 he finally sees him, they can each have second thoughts about your relationship. There is also no guarantee that Eugenia will wake up to Laud’s reality; if she doesn’t, Laud will have to decide if he wants to continue in the marriage.

The problem that Laud and Eugenia illustrate is very common. A very common and painful trap that many men and women fall into when they get married is that they marry with the idea of ​​marriage; they don’t actually marry a human being. Or they may marry the lifestyle that certain marriages make possible, without really thinking about the person attached to it. Some couples are really attracted to lifestyles, not other people. Someone’s wealth, prestige, connections, family: there are a number of lures we can fall for besides the real man or woman. Married people with this type of fantasy are not really married at all; they have simply bought into a marriage idea without any sense that there is a fallible human being attached to it. Waking up to realize 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 married and vice versa. the first time, maybe years after you said “I do.”

The value of seeing love in marriage is not about material possession; it’s about sharing good and bad moments. Proverbs 31:10 says, “Who will find a wife of noble character? She is worth more than precious stones.” 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 about not finding happiness in their relationship. Have you ever wondered the root of all this white? It may be that you demand too much of your partner or do not support them spiritually, physically, morally and emotionally.

The marriage was a surefire success so the partners knew they had had enough to eat, a roof over their heads, and financial support to raise the children. But beyond that, marriage played a significant psychological role for couples: it defined the couples’ sense of self in a way that might make them notice something else. This is because marriage meant a “full” life; the very fact of being married provided a genuinely satisfying, validating, and psychologically rewarding experience for most couples.

The value of looking at Eugenia’s situation is not in judging her inability to see and accept her husband and his life for what they really are. It’s in allowing her story to prompt us to recognize ways in which we may be similarly trapping ourselves 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 will marry a human being and not the idea of ​​marriage.