We Started a Business After Moving to Portugal. Our Marriage Survived.

The second fix was harder. We divided responsibilities by skill, not by who was louder. I took client strategy and new business. Cody took operations and delivery. When a client issue came up, the person whose lane it was made the call. The other person stayed out.

The third fix was a rule: no work talk after 7 p.m. The first few weeks were brutal. I wanted to debrief every call. Cody wanted to vent about a tricky deliverable. We sat in silence, not knowing what to say to each other without the business as a buffer.

Slowly, we found other things to talk about. The neighbor's cat. The fado show we kept meaning to book. Whether the pastel de nata at the corner shop was better than the one across town.

The business grew. We hired two contractors. Revenue hit six figures. We stopped checking the bank account every morning.

Last month, a client asked if we were ever going to kill each other. Cody laughed. I said, "We already tried. It didn't take."

The truth is, working together forced us to communicate better than we ever had. We learned to say "I need space" instead of slamming a door. We learned to trust each other's judgment without hovering.

A work divorce would have been easier. We would have missed what came after the hard part.