Join hundreds of other business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals, solopreneurs, and purpose-driven high achievers—people with big callings and even bigger calendars—who are ready to start living and leading from a place of internal rest rather than busyness, burnout, and overwhelm.
We skipped our marriage review for 10 years. Here's what it cost us.
Published 14 days ago • 2 min read
Summer Series | A Rhythm Worth Returning ToThis one kept showing up in replies. Here it is again.
Hey there Reader,
Earlier this year I shared a number most leaders never say out loud. My wife and I rated our 25-year marriage a 6. Most of us would never accept that score in the business we lead. I'm bringing this one back for anyone running a great quarter and a not-so-great marriage at the same time.
At our twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, a friend asked us to share some marriage wisdom with the room. I said what we'd learned was simple. He replied: "Simple but not easy." That was the easy part of this piece to write.
26th Anniversary to Berlin, MD
The harder part was admitting what we found when we finally ran our annual marriage review after skipping it for ten years, the same kind of review I'd never skip at work. My wife rated our marriage a 6. I gave it 6.5. My company has never scored that low, and I'd never let it run that long without a review either.
This issue covers the three practices that kept us together through two decades of hard seasons, the discipline we let lapse, and the specific target we've set to move from a 6 to an 8 by June 30th. If you run a tight operation and a looser marriage, this one is for you.
We recently went away for our 26th anniversary and did a 6-month marriage check-in. The result: we both gave our marriage a firm 7. That’s progress! What have we been doing? 3 simple things:
Weekly coffee dates have created greater intimacy and connection
Started marriage counseling
More focused and clear communication on parenting issues (one of our pain points)
Began reading The Seven Principles That Make Marriage Work by John Gottman
You already run a quarterly review on your P&L. You probably have a standing weekly with your leadership team. You'd never let a board agenda go ten years without revisiting it. The marriage check-in is the one review most leaders quietly skip, year after year, while applying rigor everywhere else. Your relational rhythm isn't separate from your leadership capacity. It's the chamber that keeps the rest of the heart working. A marriage running at a 6 shows up later that same week, in a short answer to your VP, a missed cue at the dinner table, a decision made tired instead of clear. This isn't a soft skill. It's an operating discipline you've applied everywhere except the one place it matters most.
Where would you rate your marriage right now on a 1 to 10 scale, and what's one practice from this issue you could put on the calendar this week?
Join hundreds of other business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs, ambitious professionals, solopreneurs, and purpose-driven high achievers—people with big callings and even bigger calendars—who are ready to start living and leading from a place of internal rest rather than busyness, burnout, and overwhelm.