By Shelly Williams/editor-in-chief
From saying “I love you” too quickly, to having a child, to moving in together, NE student Luke Landreville and Marika Boudreaux, his girlfriend of almost three years, often laugh about how they’ve done everything backward — until he proposed in class.
She said yes, and now Landreville said their relationship has come full circle. Landreville popped the question after presenting a how-to speech for his Fundamentals of Speech class Nov. 18, giving the top three ways of “How to Ruin a Relationship.”
His girlfriend sat in the crowd as a guest speaker for his presentation. She and Landreville’s classmates had no idea what to expect. His speech instructor Deanna Roskop kept the proposal a surprise until the very end but lured Boudreaux into the classroom by sending Landreville home with a paper stating he could get extra credit if he brought in a guest.
Landreville said he chose his topic because his now-fiancée used to tell him he didn’t know how to have a healthy relationship. So he decided to poke fun at himself based on the relationship he and his girlfriend share.
“There’s communication failure, trying to change the other person and also moving too quickly,” he said during his speech.
Lack of communication is one of the deadliest forms of relationship trouble, often making the couple strangers to each other, he said. But when done well, communication can bring a couple closer together.
“To ensure communication breakdown, stop listening completely,” he said. “Second, you want to ignore your partner, and if need be, you want to blame and criticize them for everything they do.”
Landreville said his specialty is completely shutting down, joking that it affects everyone around him as he showed photos of himself sleeping with his 14-month-old son in his arms.
Another way to ruin a relationship would be to try changing the ways of a partner, he said.
“While others do change, it is almost never when your partners demand or dictate it,” he said, quoting an expert on relationships. “To avoid this, ladies, you should keep ‘training’ your man as if they were a dog. And men, you want to pick out a flaw that your woman has and then keep pointing and pointing and pointing it out.”
Landreville said his “dog training” never worked for him. While single, he loved to hunt and fish and golf with his buddies. He still goes hunting, fishing and golfing, but his buddies have changed from friends to family.
The last way involves talking about love and marriage on a first or second date, like he did, he said.
“The first time that you feel like saying ‘I love you,’ wait 10 seconds and go home and tell your cat,” he said, quoting another relationship expert. “I think you should say it right away, even if you don’t mean it. This helps seal the deal when trying to ruin a relationship.”
He then asked Boudreaux to join him in front of the class to help him conclude his presentation. He then asked her several yes-or-no questions about their relationship.
“Our relationship is a good example of how to ruin a relationship?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Our communication is usually on the extremes of yelling and the silent treatment?”
“Yes,” she chuckled.
“Neither one of us wants to change anything about ourselves, but if given the opportunity, we would change a lot of other things about each other?”
She nodded.
“And from the beginning, we’ve moved too quickly and have joked about how our relationship is actually backward?”
She laughed, motioning for their son to quit playing behind Roskop’s desk.
“Having said that, I love our relationship,” Landreville said to her, while holding her hand.
“I know you don’t think I know anything about having a healthy relationship, but I’d be honored if you would give me the opportunity to prove it to you for the rest of our lives.”
Then he dropped to one knee and gave her a ring.
The couple does not yet have a date set for their nuptials. His mother will be married this summer, so Landreville said their wedding would probably be afterward.
“The way he tied it in [to his speech], you didn’t expect it at all,” fellow classmate Judy Gray said. “You could tell he was a little nervous because it was unlike him. The only reason I knew that was because his notes were shaking in his hands. The irony he used had us laughing, and then this, and so all of your emotions were just all brought to the top. It was great.”
