Joe shares advice from a couple he met at a bar in his twenties that stuck with him for life: “The most important thing in a marriage is to take care of yourself, then take care of the marriage, then take care of the kids.” You can’t be in a good marriage if you haven’t taken care of yourself, and you can’t be a good parent if you haven’t taken care of the marriage.
This counterintuitive ordering — the inversion of what most people say — mirrors the Southwest Airlines principle of employees first, customers second, shareholders third. Each layer depends on the one beneath it being healthy.
Joe validates how hard this is to execute, especially in the first years. He and Tara went five years without a weekend alone, questioning their marriage during sleep deprivation. When they finally took a weekend away, “all of our problems were gone — we slept 18 hours, connected, and it was just that practical.” He recommends getting help (20 hours/week if possible), taking turns on days off, and recognizing that exhaustion creates the illusion of irreconcilable problems.
Related Concepts
- Parent self-relationship shapes child relationship
- Self-love is the capacity limit for loving others
- Marriage as dojo for self-development