The Weekly Meeting You Run for Your Team but Never for Your Marriage

Many leaders could recite their Tuesday one-on-ones from memory — who’s on the calendar, what carried over from last week, which follow-up you still owe someone. Ask the same leader when they last had a real, structured conversation with their spouse about how the week actually went, and the answer gets vague fast. Not because the marriage doesn’t matter, but because it never had intentional time set aside for it.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: The Meeting That Never Made the Calendar

Work relationships get structure: recurring one-on-ones, quarterly reviews, a standing time that doesn’t depend on whether the week was calm. Marriage, for most leaders, runs on whatever’s left — a hallway update, a tired debrief, “we’re fine” said quickly on the way to bed.

H – Hear: Live With Your Wives in an Understanding Way

“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Peter is writing to believers under real external pressure, and he chooses this moment — of all moments — to address how husbands pay attention at home. The Greek behind “live with” is synoikountes, which carries the sense of ongoing, attentive cohabitation, not just sharing an address. And “understanding” translates gnosis — the same word used elsewhere for deep, deliberate knowledge, not surface-level facts you’d pick up in passing.

Peter isn’t describing a feeling. He’s describing a practice: paying attention closely enough, consistently enough, to actually know what’s true about the person you live with — not what you assume is true because nothing’s blown up recently.

Amos asks a question that fits here almost too well: “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” (Amos 3:3). Walking together — real, sustained closeness — has always required agreement, intention, a plan to actually be in the same place at the same time with attention available. Peter’s “understanding way” and Amos’s “agreed to meet” are describing the same discipline from two different angles: closeness that survives a demanding season doesn’t happen by proximity alone. It happens by agreement, kept.

E – Exchange: What You’d Never Let a Client Relationship Do

Most leaders run a better meeting with their team than they’ve ever run with their spouse. You wouldn’t let three months pass without a real check-in with a key client or direct report, because that would put that relationship at risk. Marriage gets the exception most leaders would never grant at work, not because it matters less, but because no one was intentionally carving out time for one of the most important relationships in life.

Because God’s love is attentive enough to notice what you need even before you ask, how does that change how you engage you spouse this week?

W – Walk: Put It on the Calendar This Week

Block 15 minutes this week, same time, titled simply “Us.” No agenda needed beyond the three questions in today’s tool below.

Practical Tool – the 15-Minute Marriage Huddle

1. What was the best part of your week so far — and did I actually get to hear about it?
2. Is there anything sitting on you right now that you haven’t said out loud yet?
3. What’s one thing I can take off your plate this week? 

One rule: during question 2, the listening spouse doesn’t fix, solve, or explain — just receives. Fixing, if wanted, gets its own separate conversation.

Closing question: If someone audited your calendar, how would your attention to client’s engagements compare to your attention to your spouse?