Episode 28: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know

What if the most powerful investment you could make in your business has nothing to do with strategy, scaling, or systems?

What if the foundation of your success is not found in your calendar, your offers, or your revenue goals, but in the quality of the relationship you come home to every day?

For women who own businesses, lead teams, and carry a lot of responsibility, marriage often becomes the place where energy runs out instead of being restored. It gets what is left over after everyone and everything else has taken priority.

And yet, research shows the opposite approach creates the greatest return.

Preserving your marriage may be the most important business decision you ever make.

The Science Behind Strong Relationships and Success

This idea is not fluffy. It is backed by one of the most well known and respected research projects in history.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 and followed hundreds of participants and their descendants for more than eighty years. The goal was simple. To understand what actually creates a long, healthy, happy life.

The conclusion was clear.

The quality of our relationships is the single most important predictor of long term happiness, physical health, mental health, and overall wellbeing.

Not money.
Not status.
Not achievement.

Strong, supportive relationships act as a buffer against stress, protect the nervous system, and help the body return to balance after challenging events.

When relationships are healthy, people show lower rates of chronic illness, slower cognitive decline, and greater emotional resilience.

In other words, your marriage directly impacts your capacity to lead, create, and build.

The U Shaped Curve of Marriage

One of the most fascinating findings from the study is that marital satisfaction tends to follow a U shaped curve over time.

Happiness is often highest early in the relationship, declines during the years of raising children, and rises again later in life.

Many women business owners are right in the dip of that curve.

Young kids.
Growing businesses.
Mental load.
Household responsibility.

In this phase, it is common to feel disconnected, unsupported, resentful, and alone. Many women quietly wonder if something is wrong with their marriage or with them.

But the dip does not mean the relationship is broken.

It means the relationship needs care.

When Your Nervous System Is Running the Marriage

When life is full and demands are high, many women live in a chronically dysregulated nervous system.

That shows up as constant alertness, irritability, exhaustion, and the feeling of never being fully present anywhere.

When the nervous system is dysregulated, the brain scans for threat. It looks for what is going wrong. And in that state, your husband often becomes the problem.

Not because he actually is the problem, but because your body is trying to protect you.

From this place, decisions about marriage are made from fear, scarcity, and survival. Not from clarity or love.

That is why the first step is not fixing the marriage.

The first step is regulating your nervous system.

Why You Cannot Fix a Marriage From Exhaustion

If you feel unsupported, resentful, emotionally depleted, or chronically overwhelmed, you cannot create connection from that place.

You cannot communicate well.
You cannot problem solve clearly.
You cannot access compassion or desire.

This is not a personal failure. It is biology.

Before asking whether you want to stay married or how to make it better, you have to create safety in your body.

Only then can you hear your intuition and make decisions that actually align with who you want to be.

Preserving the Relationship Starts With You

Many women wait for their husband to validate them before they feel better.

To see them.
To acknowledge their effort.
To finally say the right thing.

But waiting for that keeps you powerless.

Preserving your marriage starts with learning how to validate yourself, regulate your emotions, and feel safe in your body first.

When you can sit with your own feelings instead of pushing them away or projecting them outward, something shifts.

You move from reactivity to grounded presence.

And from that place, everything changes.

What Preservation Really Means

Preserving a relationship does not mean tolerating what feels wrong or unsafe.

It means being intentional about what you put into the relationship over time.

Just like preserving food, what goes into the jar matters.

Clean conversations.
Honest emotions.
Boundaries.
Repair.
Vulnerability.

When these things are practiced consistently, the relationship becomes a source of nourishment instead of depletion.

It becomes something you can lean on during hard seasons rather than another place you have to hold together.

Why Marriage Creates Freedom in Business

When your marriage feels secure, supportive, and emotionally safe, it creates a stable foundation for everything else.

You take bigger risks.
You think more creatively.
You lead more confidently.
You recover faster from setbacks.

Not because life is easier, but because you are not doing it alone.

A preserved relationship gives you roots and wings at the same time.

Choosing With Intention

There may be moments where you honestly question whether you want to stay married.

That question deserves respect, not judgment.

But it must be answered from a regulated, grounded place.

When you feel safe in your body, you can trust your answer. Whatever it is.

From that place, you know what the next step is. A conversation. Support. Boundaries. Repair. Or something else entirely.

Your intuition is already speaking.

Your Marriage Is Not Competing With Your Business

It is supporting it.

Your marriage is not the thing holding you back from success. When tended to with intention, it becomes the structure that holds everything else.

Preserving your relationship is not a distraction from your work in the world.

For many women, it is the work.

And when you invest there first, the return touches every part of your life.