Modupe Ehirim, the founder and lead counsellor at The Right Fit Marriage Academy, tells TOFARATI IGE about her passion for strengthening marriages

What does the TRFA do?

It is a community of people who believe that marriage can be beautiful. These people are open to learning and ready to change. We believe that marriage education is a life-long matter and one can never know enough about marriage.

The ‘community’ basically provides an enabling environment. In our online community on Facebook, we hold monthly events where we invite speakers to discuss topical marriage issues.

Marriage is a private decision between a man and woman but it has a lot of implications for people who are not a party to that decision. The ideal way for one to be prepared for marriage is to grow up in a home where one’s parents had a healthy relationship. That would shape the child to be a better person in society. We expose our members to this reality and it broadens their awareness about marriage and its implication on others.

What inspired you to set up the academy?

I have always been excited about marriage, primarily because I want my marriage to be good. But over time, in my conversation with people, I realised that not everybody understood marriage the way I understood it. I had the opportunity to be part of the pre-marital counselling programme of a church. In the course of that, I discovered that there were many things people did not know about marriage. So, in 2016, I decided to start using social media to reach people because I already saw people using it but I was not happy with how they were using it. When people go to social media with their marriage-related questions, some answers are likely to create more troubles. That was when I decided to use it differently. I started by letting people know that there are good and bad marriages. One just has to look out for the good ones.

Did your passion for strengthening marriages come from personal experiences?