Your marriage needs a mission

Across twenty years of marriage, Brittany and I have been through a lot including raising four kids, shifting careers and dealing with sickness and tragedy. We’ve survived certain seasons, each of us doing our part to get through one week at a time.

That's not a bad marriage, but I've had a nagging feeling that it's less than what it could be. The question I keep coming back to: what are we actually building together?

About a week ago an interview was posted that gave me some additional perspective. Adam Lane Smith, a Catholic attachment therapist with four kids, sat down with Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, a childless, non-religious couple who built Quest Nutrition into a billion-dollar company. On paper, these people shouldn't have much in common. They have different worldviews, different life structures and different foundations entirely. But they landed on some shared ideas that I’ve been thinking more about.

Tom described their marriage using a CEO and COO framework. He leads strategy and direction. Lisa runs operations and brings valuable perspective that he can't always see. They go deeper into how they navigated the stress and chaos of building a company together while keeping masculine and feminine polarity in their relationship.

Talking about marriage as a leadership team can sound transactional. What about love? What about romance?

Feelings matter. But feelings come and go. Here's a better question than how you feel on any given day: what are you building together? What is the shared mission that your marriage exists to accomplish? Most couples have no clear answer to that question.

Think about the reasons most couples get married or the reasons they stay married.

Love and romance. The feelings were real and the commitment followed. But feelings shift. A marriage built on feelings is always one bad season away from questioning whether it's worth it.

Partnership and companionship. Having a best friend, building a life together, having fun. These are good things. But what happens when your interests drift apart or when life gets genuinely hard and the fun disappears?

Raising kids. This one is closer to the truth. I believe deeply that children have a right to both their mother and father, and that marriage is the proven structure for raising kids into healthy adults. But what holds a marriage together when it’s childless or after the last one leaves home?

From my Christian foundation, I'd add a fourth that’s more important than the others: marriage as a picture of Christ and the church. The man loves his wife as Christ loved the church, which means sacrificially, initiating, and literally dying for her. Enormous weight is put on the man as leader. The wife trusts and follows a man who has proven himself worthy of that trust.

None of these foundations are wrong. But I’ll add another idea that draws a marriage even closer.

During the interview, Lisa said something that stuck with me. She talked about how she didn't just commit to Tom. She committed to the vision Tom presented, and then devoted herself to him as the man who was going to make it happen.

Leaders know where they're going. They have a clear sense of what they're building and why, and they create something worth joining. Others don't follow blindly. They buy into a shared direction and trust the leader to build toward it.

The marriages that drift, the ones that slowly die from boredom and resentment and parallel lives, they don't always fall apart in a dramatic moment. The core problem is simpler and quieter: they lack a shared mission.

Borrowing from the business world, great organizations can answer a few core questions clearly.

Why do we exist? That's mission. Your shared purpose and calling, the thing that gets you both out of bed beyond just keeping the household running.

Where are we going? That's vision. A picture of the future you're building toward together as a family.

How do we operate? That's values and culture. The words that describe your family at its best, what you want to be true about how you treat each other and engage the world.

Most marriages and families never take the time to reach this level of clarity.

In our twenties, Brittany and I had a version of this, even if we didn't call it that. The vision was simple: give her the flexibility to be home with the kids. Build enough financial stability to make that possible. We were moving toward something.

In our thirties, that shifted. The kids needed more of our presence than our planning. We loosened up, enjoyed life a little more, hustled a little less. That was right for that season.

Now, entering our forties, I've had to admit we have some work to do. So far, our shared purpose has been largely tied to the kids' season of life. Our kids are getting older. They'll need us far less in the coming years. Brittany and I are looking at decades ahead. What are we building in that chapter?

Family is incredibly important to us. And I want to do all we can to bless other marriages and families. I don't have a clean answer yet. But I've learned that asking the question is the beginning of leading well.

This part is on you, just like it's on me. You don't wait for your wife to initiate this conversation. You don't wait until the right season or until the marriage is in good enough shape. You go first by setting aside some quiet time and organizing your thoughts. Then, you bring something to the table. Even a rough, honest, imperfect version of where you think you're headed is better than nothing.

Your wife doesn't need you to have all the answers. She needs to see that you're thinking about them and then starting the conversation.

Your marriage isn't just a relationship to maintain. It's a project you're building together. And the man who leads it gets to decide whether it drifts or moves somewhere worth going.

-Andrew

P.S. Turning your marriage into an aligned leadership team is step 4 of Family Leadership Blueprint. Check it out for free here.