Family Values

Marriage Vows (II): Convergence

Dale Skeen lovingly surveys the backyard of his home in Atherton, California. The place is drop-dead stunning -- a perfectly proportioned Tuscan villa plopped into the heart of Silicon Valley, complete with a swimming pool, Romanesque statues, flowering trees, and a manicured lawn. The summer evening is soft. "In a place like this," Skeen muses, "you can almost forget that there are millions of people outside of the gate."

JoMei Chang joins Skeen on the terrace, interrupting his reverie. Where Skeen projects a sense of calm, his wife is intense and outgoing. Of the two, Chang is far more likely to dominate a conversation or to fill a room. "She's a very competitive young woman," says Bob Halperin, 72, an advisor at Greylock Management who has worked closely with the couple.

Chang, 48, and Skeen, 46, met at a technical conference 18 years ago. He was a professor at Cornell, she was a researcher at Bell Labs. Both had PhDs in database systems. They dated for three years, seeing each other mostly on weekends, then agreed to move to California together. They married there on Jan. 1, 1986 -- a day Chang's Taiwanese mother, consulting the Chinese calendar, predicted to be the most fortuitous.

In 1985, they helped launch Teknekron Software Systems, cashing out when Teknekron was acquired by Reuters in 1994. "We learned that when you make your first $10 million and you don't have to work for a living anymore, you have to face the truth about yourself. What do you want to do with the rest of your life?" What they wanted was to start another company. Together. Without taking a single day off, they cofounded Vitria Technology Inc. Chang became chief executive officer. Skeen was chief technology officer.

Six years later, Vitria, which makes infrastructure software for e-businesses, boasts 800 employees and an annual revenue growth of 400%. And Chang and Skeen pursue a life where their three shared passions -- their company, beautiful design, and each other -- blur relentlessly into one another. For them, work and life are indistinguishable, a single, merged sphere.

It isn't that they think of nothing but Vitria. Although they don't have children and don't discuss the prospect of having them, both are consumed with redesigning their weekend house in Pebble Beach. They love to garden. They read. But all roads, it seems, lead back to their company.

Office blurs into home and home into office. Chang and Skeen regularly host staff meetings at their house at nights and on weekends, and they plan to convert a carriage house into a formal conference room. And they make no apologies for their lifestyle. "Work and home are intertwined," Chang argues. "We recognize it's inevitable, so we don't even try to stop it." More than that, "When you build a startup, the whole thing is about passion. What's better than to share your deepest passion with your spouse? We're business partners, and we're also married to each other. I feel fortunate for that."

Indeed, they revel in rare intimacies. "When you work so closely together, you get the chance to see sides of each other that you wouldn't see otherwise." Skeen says. "You see how your partner excels. If you have a traditional relationship, your spouse could be a hero at the office, but you would never know that."

This is a couple that is more emotionally and intellectually aligned than most. They don't compete. Their egos aren't on the line. They can imagine nothing, they say, but working together for the rest of their lives.

Do Try This at Home

Consider your life. What is most important to you? What are your dreams? How do you want to spend your time? How much achievement, wealth, and material stuff is enough? When you look back on your life at the end, what will make you feel that you've been successful?

This is the challenge that DeGroot presents to couples before each ThirdPath workshop. Sound marriages start with coherent individual priorities: Husband and wife must define for themselves what it is they want from work, parenting, and each other.

Then they must forge a shared vision. They must come to terms, DeGroot says, with differences in their individual definitions of parenting roles. What makes someone a good mother or a good father? What about a good worker? Couples have to rationalize their competing individual priorities. They need to agree on how they will allocate their time.

Folks, don't try this at home. Well, okay, do try -- but know that it's treacherous marital terrain. Most couples aren't accustomed to raising these types of questions, so mutual discomfort arises when the subjects come up. Roadblocks emerge early on in ThirdPath sessions. Some women stumble over their notion of motherhood, which they equate with the job of primary caregiver. They are afraid of surrendering preeminence in the home and control over parenting decisions. And, truth be told, they don't really trust their husbands to do the job right. Men are stuck in their own rut: While most welcome the chance to claim bigger roles in the home and to build strong relationships with their children, they fear that they'll be less valued by society if they don't put their careers first.