Marriage is the Ultimate Team Sport: How to Create a Winning Team

What if the fastest way to a stronger marriage isn’t compromise, but better teamwork? After celebrating a number-one Amazon launch, I took a hard look at what actually helped us get there—clear roles, honest communication, and a shared commitment to play the same game on the same side. The result is a practical, story-rich guide to treating marriage like the ultimate team sport, with four moves you can use tonight.

I start by reframing “opposites” as assets: the planner and the risk-taker, the night owl and the early bird, the introvert and the extrovert. Instead of fighting to be the same, I show how to deploy differences like positions on the field so your team covers more ground with less friction. 

Then I talk about offense and defence, who pushes the ball forward in finances, fun, and intimacy, and who protects the goal with boundaries, savings, and rest, so you can balance initiative with stability without making it personal.

From there, I dig into communication that actually works: daily 20-minute huddles to align priorities, weekly date nights for team bonding, and a yearly strategy getaway to recalibrate goals. I dismantle the mind-reading myth with real scripts for clear asks, and break down why keeping score breeds rivalry while an us-vs-problem mindset restores momentum. You’ll hear candid examples, from celebrating wins to handling those “seams” where balls drop and leave with a simple weekly challenge to spot, name, and thank each other’s strengths.

If you’re ready to stop arguing about who’s right and start winning together, this episode gives you the plays, the language, and the mindset to build a championship marriage. 

Bad Marriage Advice is now an Amazon #1 Best Seller. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, go get your copy here: https://a.co/d/4XaHmA5.
And if you’ve gotten your copy and had a chance to look through it, do me a huge solid and go back to Amazon and leave a review here: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/?&asin=B0FQ46HG3S.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bestseller Win & Gratitude
• 1:43 Marriage Is the Ultimate Team Sport
• 3:14 Differences as Strengths
• 6:28 Offense vs. Defense at Home
• 10:03 Communicate Like Teammates
• 13:16 Daily, Weekly, Yearly Huddles
• 16:15 Stop Keeping Score, Play to Win
• 18:18 Four-Part Recap & Weekly Challenge

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Secrets of Happily Ever After podcast. I'm your host, Monica Tanner, and I'm super excited about our topic today because for the last probably few months, I've been talking about my new book, Bad Marriage Advice: Debugging Myths That Will Make You Miserable and What to Do Instead. And this past week, we officially hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list. So thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supported that, who bought the book, shared about the book, got excited about the launch. But I was thinking about the whole process of launching this book and the events that surrounded it in my family, my kids, sports, and all of the things that were going on. And I felt really, really grateful, not only for all of you, but also for my teammate, my partner, my spouse, and all of his support and love and being able to accomplish so much together. And so I wanted to do an episode about teamwork because if you know anything about me, you know that I am a product of team sports. My husband and I both played soccer in high school. My husband went on to play in college and I loved watching him. And we have four children and they all play team sports. My two oldest played tennis, but they played doubles, so they played as a team. And then I have a volleyball player and a football player right now who are in season. And so my husband and I spend a ton of time watching or coaching. My husband coaches the high school soccer team. And I believe with all of my heart that so much of what I've learned about marriage and relationships and life in general has come from not only my own experience in sports, but I also learned so much from watching my kids and their friends play these team sports. I get to cheer as my kids grow through teamwork discipline grit. And so even though I'm a little bit old to be playing the sports that I love, I learn so much even just by watching from the sidelines. Because here's the thing marriage is the ultimate team sport. But here's where a lot of couples get stuck. They forget that they're on the same team. And so they start treating each other like opponents instead of teammates. And that's where they run into trouble. So today I wanted to do an episode in attempts to point out a few areas in which marriage is a team sport, but couples often get stuck. So today I'm gonna give you four key ways in which marriage is a great team sport and how learning how to play your positions, communicate like pros, and appreciate your differences can completely change the game that you're playing. So if you're ready, I'm ready. This is one of my favorite topics. Here we go. Number one, the first lesson from team sports that applies to marriage is to appreciate your differences as strengths. So you know how every great team has players with totally different strengths. Like there's if you're talking about soccer, you've got a star forward who scores the goals and the defender or the goalie who blocks them. And you also have a coach that sees the whole field. Each of these positions differences are crucial to the game. No one expects all of them to do the same thing. That would be a disaster. But in marriage, we often forget that. We start having thoughts like, why can't they be more like me? Why can't we get on the same page about this? Why can't they just agree with me, right? Why can't they be tighter? Why can't they wake up earlier? Why can't they want to go out more? I've had so many clients talk about how they feel opposite from their partner, like they're incompatible and they're never gonna be able to agree on anything. And here's the thing: it's not necessarily that you married your opposite, although they do talk about how opposites attract. Perhaps you were attracted to something in your partner that you either lack or look up to. And that's why your partner is the perfect teammate for you. So a lot of these differences, like having one partner that's super organized and the other one that's spontaneous, or one that's a night owl and one that's a morning person, or introvert extrovert, these are traits that are not necessarily ever going to be worked out. They're key differences, but for good reason. Your differences aren't the problem because no matter who you marry, even if you married your biological twin, which I'm just saying, same genetics, raised in the same family, they're still going to see the world differently because they've experienced it differently. So there's no chance you're gonna marry someone exactly like you, and for good reason. Those differences are actually a huge strength. And when you start to see it that way, everything changes. So think about your favorite sport. If everyone tried to be the forward, there wouldn't be anyone to defend the goal. But if everyone tried to play defense, then you'd never score. So instead of thinking, why can't my partner be more like me, think more like me, or agree with me more, try thinking, what strength does my partner bring to this team that I'm missing? That's when frustration turns to appreciation. I remember when we were first married. I like to stay up late. I feel like at some point in the nighttime, my brain clicks on and I can get a lot done. My husband, on the other hand, is an early to bed, early to rise. In the beginning, that felt like a huge problem for me because I wanted to be on the same schedule as him. But as we started having kids and as they started growing older, I realized it was such a strength for our team because I could stay up late and help my kids with projects or wait for the teenagers to come home. And my husband could get up early and help them get ready for school. There's tons of examples like this where I could either be frustrated because of our differences or appreciate the strength that these differences bring to our team. So that's number one. Your differences are your strengths. Number two, understand the difference between offense and defense. So taking this idea of different roles a step further in sports, offense is about pushing forward, taking risks, making plays, scoring points. Whereas defense is more about protecting the goal, watching for threats, anticipating, and stabilizing the game. A winning team needs a great offense and a great defense, no matter what sport you're talking about. So maybe one of you is more of the offensive player, and one of you is more of the defensive player. Now, this can change according to what you're talking about. For example, in my marriage, when it comes to finances, I'm definitely offense. I'm the one who wants to buy the thing, go on the trip, have the adventure. My husband, on the other hand, is defense. He thinks about budgeting, retirement, and saving for emergencies. Now I used to take this so personally. I used to get so frustrated because I thought he was trying to snuff all of the fun out of everything. But when I really started to think about it, how grateful I am that it takes both positions, both roles to create the life that we really want. Without the offense, we'd never do anything fun. Without the defense, we wouldn't be able to save for retirement or make our dreams a reality. So both are equally important. There's no right or wrong. It's just learning to balance and negotiate and work together. The same goes for intimacy. Our roles are reversed there. He's more of the offense and I'm a little more on the defense. But again, there's no right or wrong. Both are equally important. The reality is that sexual intimacy is so important. You've got to score goals in order to win. So you want someone who's scoring and someone who's defending. Otherwise, not a lot else would get done. That's one of my husband and I's favorite jokes. We recognize that our different roles complement each other. And so we stop competing against each other and we've started collaborating. Now I talk a lot about collaboration in other episodes, so I'm not gonna go into it in this one, but just know that when the offense and the defense collaborate, you get a really strong winning team. But in order for collaboration to work, you've got to have the third crucial ingredient for a team sport, which is communication. So number three, communicate like teammates. The reality is no team will ever win without really good communication. Now, my two favorite sports right now are football, which my son is playing, and volleyball, which my daughter is playing. Can you imagine if the quarterback didn't call a play? You would have no idea whether he's gonna throw the ball or hand off the ball, whether you're running a passing play or a running play. That would be total chaos. So communicating, calling a play, huddling up becomes really important. The same goes for volleyball. If you've ever watched volleyball, you'll see that they huddle before and after every single point. Why do they do this? It's all about communicating, making adjustments, supporting each other. Every good team communicates and huddles. So in volleyball, my daughter plays libero, which is a complete defensive position. She knows her role, she plays defense. She rarely, if ever, tries to kill it, which is an offensive play. So in her role as defender, her job is to make sure the ball doesn't drop. Now, when she's on the court, there's other defenders. So in between her and the other defenders is what they call a seam. Now, any good opponent knows that the best place to put a ball is in the seam. Why? Because in order to get those balls that are in the seam, the defenders have to communicate with each other. Otherwise, they would crash into each other or the ball would drop. Now, if you watched a lot of volleyball, you know that sometimes the ball does drop into a hole or into the seam. And guess what that team does? They huddle up, they re-evaluate, and they make sure that the next ball doesn't drop. So huddling up in order to communicate is one of the most important things you can do in your marriage. In fact, I talk about daily huddles or daily connections. I recommend that couples huddle up 20 minutes every single day. Here's where you're gonna reconnect, figure out what's working well, what do you need to adjust, and how can you have each other's back? I also recommend you huddle up once a week in the form of a date night. This is team bonding. And then once a year for a week, you're going to huddle up in the form of a romantic getaway. Now, this is not only team bonding, but a strategy session. How are we doing towards our goal? What's working for us and what's not? How do we create more synergy in our team? And how can we communicate with each other better? It's simple but powerful because just like in team sports, communication keeps your team together. A really good example of when teams don't communicate. I wrote a whole chapter in my book about communication breakdown, which is the idea or the myth that if my partner loved me, they would just know. I see this happen far too often in relationships where teammates don't communicate and then they punish each other for not knowing the play. A good example is just this past week when my book hit number one and I was so excited to celebrate. I didn't make my husband guess what I wanted to do to celebrate. I told him exactly what I wanted to do, what restaurant I wanted to eat at, and who I wanted to invite. And because I communicated that so clearly, we were able to enjoy in exactly the way that I envisioned it. So communication is key. And last but not least, number four, play to win together, not against each other. Okay, this is a big one because too many couples, after being together for any period of time, they start playing against each other instead of with each other. They start keeping score and resentment starts to build. It looks a little bit like I did the dishes all week. What did you do? I'm the one who always planned state nights. I put the kids to bed last night. I said story last time. You picked the restaurant last week. There are all kinds of ways to keep score and create resentment. And that is not going to give you the winning playbook. It's not teamwork. That's called rivalry. So in marriage, we have to remember that it's not me versus you. It's not offense against defense. It's literally us versus everything else. So in a good, healthy, thriving, teamwork style marriage, you're on a team and literally everything and everyone else is your opponent. Every decision you have to make, every problem you're trying to solve, and every other person, including your coworkers, your in-laws, and even your children are your opponents. Now, a very popular scenario I see is children are really good at recognizing the seams that I talked about on the volleyball court. They love to put the ball right in the seam. And if you're not communicating well and you're not playing as a team, your kids are gonna score that point every single time. You have to communicate, you have to work as a team, and you have to see everything and everyone else as your opponent. Can you imagine if you were watching a game on TV and all of a sudden the offense turned against the defense and they started fighting about who was right or who was playing better? That team certainly would not win. And I'm sure that happens more often than not. But if you want a winning team, you have to be willing to play together to win. When you stop trying to be right and start trying to be effective as a team, that's when everything changes. Because here's the truth: if one of you wins, you both win. When one of you struggles, you both struggle. So stop keeping score and start cheering for your teammate. That's how you build a championship marriage. So let's recap. Number one, appreciate your differences. They make your marriage stronger. You're not trying to be the same or agree on everything. Use those differences as your greatest strength. Number two, understand your roles. In order to win, you have to have a strong offense and a strong defense. Once you recognize that, you can start to appreciate each other more. Number three, communicate. Without communication, you're not going to get very far. And fourth, play to win together. Remember, you're not opponents, you're teammates. And when you build a strong, thriving, intimate, passionate team, and you recognize that everything and everyone else is your opponent, you start to win together. So this week, I want to challenge you to notice one way your spouse plays the game differently. Appreciate those differences. Appreciate their role. Huddle up often and thank them for how they help your team. Because when you both show up for the same goal, that's when your marriage starts to feel like happily ever after. Not because it's perfect and not because you're not playing difficult opponents, but because you're playing on the same team. Thank you so much for listening today. Thank you so much for all of your support around the launch of bad marriage advice. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, go get your copy. It's the perfect thing to have on hand for newlyweds, anniversaries, or just because for your favorite couple. And if you've gotten your copy and had a chance to look through it, do me a huge solid and go back to Amazon and leave a review. That's how other people are going to find this book. And we're going to create a movement that's gonna snuff out those outdated cliches and give people the real tools they need to succeed at marriage. And make sure you join me same time, same place next week. And until then, happy marriaging.