Married since 2013. Still choosing each other.
Married since 2013.
Still choosing each other.
Everything we teach, we lived first.
This is how it happened and why we built Covenant & Vows™
Everything we teach,
we lived first.
This is how it happened and
why we built Covenant & Vows™
OUR BEGINNING
I proposed after two days.
My grandmother’s 八十大寿. She was the eldest in her generation. That meant the whole family came. Granduncles, grandaunties, uncles, aunties, cousins, a hundred and twenty people in that room.
That morning I had asked Charlene to be my girl. She said yes.
So that evening I walked her in and introduced her to everyone. My girlfriend. And from that day on, everyone knew who she was to me.
The next morning, Sunday, we went to look at wedding rings at Ion Orchard. Neither of us could fully explain why. It just felt like the right thing to do.
Then Monday came. We were both in the middle of a leadership program, the kind that holds you to a standard most people never encounter. My coach pulled me aside. ‘You two are finally together. Yesterday you were looking at rings. Today is Monday and you haven’t said anything?’
That question got into my head and wouldn’t leave.
That evening on the bus ride home I went completely silent. The longest I had ever gone without talking to her. A million questions running. One question cut through all of it.
Do I want to spend the rest of my life with her?
Do I want to spend the rest of my life with her?
The answer was immediate. Yes.
We got off the bus. We were walking. After a distance I stopped and asked her to marry me. She said yes. We were both crying. I hadn’t even knelt down. Didn’t matter.
Girlfriend on Saturday. Fiancée on Monday.
We got married in 2013. We haven’t stopped choosing each other since.
Not happily ever after.
Something more real.
A love that appreciates.
But that kind of marriage doesn’t just happen. It gets built. And sometimes it gets tested in ways you never saw coming.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
You're not the only one.
We know this marriage.
Two capable people. Who found each other against all odds.
Who said yes, to the relationship, to the wedding, to the life they were building together. Who were genuinely excited about what was ahead.
Fast forward.
Same two people. Still capable. Still building a good life.
But somewhere along the way, they stopped being excited about each other.
One of you is carrying something that hasn’t been said out loud yet. You’re showing up. Delivering at work, at home, for the children, for everyone who needs you. From the outside, nothing is wrong.
But you're functioning.
You no longer recognise yourself.
And underneath the functioning, there is a fear neither of you has fully named. That you might become what you swore you’d never be.
Resentful. Quietly resigned.
Two people going through the motions in the same house. You watched that marriage growing up. You made a quiet promise to yourself that yours would be different.
That's the Roommate Season™.
And it came for our marriage too.
Keep reading. This part matters.
WHAT IT COST US
We went through it. All of it.
We were married in January. Six hundred guests. A celebration that filled the room completely.
Three weeks later, Chinese New Year arrived. And the word divorce had already come up.
My father has eight siblings. My mother has six. CNY meant full days, both sides, every year, for twenty-eight years. Charlene’s family moved at a different pace entirely. Add parents with expectations on both sides, relatives with opinions on both sides and underneath all of it, one question neither of us could answer yet.
How do we choose each other without betraying the families that raised us?
We fought over it. We cried over it. We fought the same Chinese New Year fight for five years.
But we didn’t walk away. We stayed in the room and worked through it, slowly, one thing at a time. The hard calls about which houses we would and wouldn’t visit anymore. What it meant for us to be our own family first.
Year five, it was over.
We don’t cry at CNY anymore.
We thought the hardest part of our marriage was behind us.
Then came the one we never saw coming.
We waited ten years for Judah.
Not because we didn’t want children. We wanted them desperately. But the door stayed closed. Month after month, year after year. Through all of it, the hoping, the not knowing, the quiet grief, people who saw us never saw a couple in pain.
Everywhere we travelled, people assumed we were on honeymoon. Hotels gave us upgrades. Restaurants gave us free desserts.
The moment that stayed with us was at Disneyland in Anaheim. Our 10th anniversary. When we met Mickey, he spotted the anniversary badge on Charlene’s jacket. He couldn’t speak. Mickey never breaks character. So he pointed. Married? We nodded. Ten years.
Mickey stopped. He opened both hands wide, four fingers each, then closed them and opened two more. 8 + 2 = 10. Exactly right. He was shocked. We were laughing. The whole moment was wordless and entirely real.
Then the door finally opened. And Judah came.
After ten years of waiting, our miracle child.
You would think that arriving at the best season of your life would protect you from what came next. It didn’t.
The first year with Judah was survival. No sleep, no margin, just logistics. When the fog lifted I looked up and realised something had shifted between us. For the first time in thirteen years we were doing things separately. Running in parallel. Efficient. Functional. Present but
not really there for each other.
"I literally felt like I lost my right hand."
Charlene was carrying her own version of the same grief. There was a season where she had quietly decided she would just carry everything herself. She brought her high-performance mode from work straight into motherhood and ran on it until she was bursting at the seams.
Friends would check in now and then. “How’s my favourite couple doing?” “You’re still my OG couple goals.” Different people. Different words. But always the same thread running underneath them.
From the outside, we looked okay. Inside the marriage, we knew there was still work to do. That gap was what she couldn’t unsee. She knew what Judah needed most wasn’t a mother who could carry everything. He needed to watch his parents choose each other.
The Roommate Season™
doesn't wait for a broken marriage.
It came for ours too.
The Roommate Season™ doesn't wait for a broken marriage. It came for ours too.
Most couples go through the same season we did, alone, without a name for it, without a map, without anyone who has lived it showing them the way back.
That’s the only reason we built Covenant & Vows™. Not because we studied this. Because we lived it and we found our way back. That’s exactly what we want to give you.
WHY THIS EXISTS
People found us before we were ready.
Long before Covenant & Vows™ existed, people kept finding their way to us. After events. In conversations that were never supposed to go that deep.
The question was always the same. ‘I can’t imagine working with my spouse. How do you guys do it?’
It always started there.
Cordial. Curious. Safe.
It never ended there.
People watched us work side by side all day, meetings, trainings, events, client-facing. And somewhere in that watching, something opened up. By the end of the conversation it had gone to
places nobody planned. An affair. A financial collapse. Finding out their spouse was watching porn, and feeling deeply betrayed by it. A marriage running on empty for years. Tears nobody saw coming, including them.
We weren’t positioned for any of it. No program. No website. And honestly, we didn’t even want it.
I remember sitting in a meeting room after everyone else had left, and one person stayed back. Same opening, same cordial question and ended with tears.
I remember thinking, why does this keep finding us? It’s late. We’re tired. We didn’t ask for any of this.
But we couldn’t turn them away. And they kept coming.
We started counting at some point, just to know. By the time the number passed a hundred, we stopped keeping track. They came anyway. Because sitting with Charlene and me made it safe to finally tell the truth.
And somewhere along the way, people outside our world started noticing too.
When Focus on the Family Singapore reached out and asked us to be interviewed, Judah was five months old. We said yes. It was the first time neither of us was with him at the same time. Our miracle child, the one we waited ten years for.
And we both walked into that room together, because the work had already found us long before we had a name for it.
We kept meeting the same marriage. Different couples, different names, different backstories. But the same quiet distance. The same exhausted
high-achiever carrying more than their spouse could see. The same Roommate Season™ showing up again and again in different living rooms across Singapore.
For years we gave it away. Good conversations. Real insight. The kind that made people feel completely seen, for about an hour. And then we
watched it make no difference to the things that actually mattered.
A good conversation doesn't change a marriage.
It can name the problem. It cannot move it. So we stopped. And we built something that actually shifts the dynamic, not in the conversation but in the thirty days after it.
That's Covenant & Vows™.
Not something we studied. Something we lived through and built because nothing else existed.
And it was built for this marriage.
The one you’re in right now.
her
She is not in the background of this work.
If you’re reading this as a wife, this section is for you.
Charlene has been the other half of every breakthrough we’ve witnessed. Not because she plays a supporting role but because she sees things I don’t. She reads the room differently. She catches what’s underneath what people are saying. She is the reason people feel safe enough to tell the truth.
In a world that rewarded her for being capable, at work, in the family, in the arts, she is the living proof that strength and softness are not opposites. She is nobody’s pushover. And yet with me, she still gets to be fully chosen, soft, held.
She knows what it cost to stay strong for so long. She knows what it feels like to wonder if softness is even safe anymore. For the wife who has been living that, Charlene is not a theory. She is a living example. Right there in the room with you.
She told me about a moment that stopped me when she described it. We were in a heated fight. Both of us fully in it. Neither giving in.
"At some point I turned away. I hardened my heart. I was done. Everything in me wanted to escalate more, protect myself. Then something shifted. I had this thought out of nowhere.
Wow. I GET to fight with this guy. Not some random guy, not someone temporary. Him. And I actually started smiling. Right there in the middle of the fight.
The armour just dropped. I softened without trying to. The old me would have gone harder, sharper, made sure I won at all cost. But to stay soft in that moment, I had to let go of the need to win, the need to punish, the need to be right. And what it gave me was unity. Not forced, not faked."
She wasn’t describing a perfect marriage. She was describing what happens when the permanence of us becomes more real than the need to win. That shift is available to every marriage. Including yours.
Judah was twelve months old when I kept suggesting I take him out on Monday mornings so she could have time off. She kept brushing it off. Then one ordinary Monday, she said yes.
"After Judah was born, I don't think I really gave myself space to rest. I basically brought my high-performance mode from work into motherhood. Before that shift, I was honestly just very tired, bursting at the seams. Not just emotional. But deep, physical, constant tiredness.
Then there was this simple, ordinary moment. I just decided to say yes to Verrill's offer. I stayed home. I rested. I watched shows. I just allowed myself to not be 'on'. It sounds small. For me it was major. I stopped performing strength for a moment, and actually let myself need him."
She didn’t plan a dramatic handover. She said yes to one ordinary offering. Everything started shifting from there.
I asked her once what she would have missed if she’d married a man who simply agreed with everything she wanted.
"If I married a man who just agreed with me, I actually probably wouldn't respect him very much. And when I don't respect a man… the marriage becomes very one-sided. It would just revolve around me, what I want, what I think, what I feel. Over time, that kind of dynamic actually becomes quite empty.
What Verrill does for me is very different. He keeps me in check. He brings perspectives that I genuinely cannot see. And I used to fight that a lot, because I thought I was right most of the time. But as I've grown, I've realised it's not even about who's right or wrong anymore.
It's that both perspectives can be right… and his helps me see a bigger picture I wouldn't have seen on my own. When he stands his ground, honestly, it's 'Hoh man ah'. He doesn't do it in a rude or overpowering way. He does it in a way that still respects me, doesn't put me down, but is firm. And somehow… he does it in a way where I still feel like his queen he consults and his princess he cuddles."
She is a strong woman. She is nobody’s pushover. And she is telling you that being led well by the right man, in the right way is not weakness. It’s the thing she wouldn’t trade for anything.
There was a season, early with Judah, where Charlene decided she would carry everything herself. This is what broke that open.
"There was definitely a season where I thought, even if Verrill is not supportive, never mind, I'll just carry everything. I was functioning, but I wasn't myself. What broke it for me was this realisation: I actually don't want this life. Before Judah, we had over ten years of building a marriage rooted in love and unity. And I suddenly saw that what I was doing was completely different. It wasn't unity anymore.
I don't want Judah growing up watching two separate individuals instead of a united marriage. That would be one of the worst inheritances we could give him. I don't want to be the capable mother who does everything alone. I want to be the woman who has it all without anything breaking. That's what I'm fighting for. Not my husband. Lols."
She wasn’t talking about a broken home. She was talking about two good people, living parallel lives under the same roof, functional and present, but not really there for each other. And she decided that was not the inheritance she was willing to give her son.
That vision is why we built this. And it starts with one spouse deciding to go first.
One voice. Two people.
One marriage coaching yours.
You've read this far.
You didn't read this far by accident.
The Roommate Season™ doesn’t fix itself. Left alone it moves in one direction, further away. The gap gets wider, the distance hardens, and quietly, without anyone deciding it, they become what so many of their own parents were. Married on paper, living two separate lives under the same roof.
And one day, one of them says the words neither of them ever thought they would say.
We don’t love each other anymore.
Your children are already feeling it. They can't name it but they're absorbing it. Every single day.
The thing you are most afraid of isn’t that they will be hurt by it. It is that they will grow up and do exactly what you did. Marry someone, drift quietly, not know why. Because this was the marriage template they were given.
You are not at the end of the road. You are here, now, today, with options still in front of you. The only question left is what you, not your spouse, but you, are going to do about your marriage.
The marriage you chose is still possible. But it needs you to decide.
Applying takes a couple of minutes. No commitment, no investment, nothing to prepare. Just tell us the truth about where your marriage is right now.
Applications reviewed personally by Verrill.
Entry is curated. Not every application is accepted.