Two calendars. Four kids. A drop-off line Kyle handles most mornings and a baseball practice schedule that laughs at both of us. Somewhere in the middle of all that logistics, there’s a marriage – and for a long stretch, ours ran on autopilot and Post-it notes.
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of doing strategy for a living and marriage for real: your marriage is a team. And teams don’t drift into winning. They practice, they call plays, and they review the game film. Nobody puts that in the vows, but maybe they should.
Stop keeping score
The fastest way to lose as a team is to play as opponents. Who did more. Who’s more tired. Who remembered the permission slip. Scorekeeping feels fair in the moment and poisons everything slowly.
Nobody wins a fight on the same team. You either both win or you both lose.
The reframe that changed our house: it’s never me versus him. It’s us versus the problem. The problem is the schedule, the budget, the toddler’s third meltdown – never each other. Sounds simple. Takes practice.
The weekly meeting that isn’t romantic but works
Twenty minutes, Sunday night, after the kids are down. We look at the week: who’s where, who’s drowning, what needs money, what needs a decision. Then one question that matters more than all of it: what’s one thing you’re looking forward to?
I run meetings for a living, and I’m telling you the one at my kitchen table is the most important one I have. It doesn’t have to be candlelit. It has to happen.
Call plays, not fouls
Teams don’t stop mid-game to list everything wrong with each other. They call the next play. In marriage that sounds like: “I’m at capacity, can you take bedtime?” instead of “you never help at bedtime.” Say the small thing early, while it’s still small. Resentment is just unspoken logistics with interest.
Assume the best read
When he forgets the thing, I get to choose the story I tell myself. Worst read: he doesn’t care. Best read: he’s carrying a lot and it slipped. Ninety percent of the time the best read is the true one, and even when it’s not, it keeps the conversation on the same side of the table.
And laugh. Deliberately. The season with little kids is loud and sticky and someone is always crying about a cup. If you can’t laugh at the chaos together, the chaos wins.
The team is the point
I wrote about how motherhood is leadership training. Marriage is where you practice it daily – clarity about what matters, communication before it festers, execution on the boring stuff, and grace when the plan falls apart by Tuesday.
The kids will grow up and the house will get quiet. What you’re building right now, in the loud years, is the team that gets to enjoy the quiet.
Same team. Call the next play. That’s the whole playbook.