Today we’d like to introduce you to Tiffany Saunders.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Married On Purpose Collective really grew from my belief that healthy, lasting marriages require intentionality. Marriage can be beautiful, but life happens. As a mental health professional with my own practice (LiveOnPurposeTherapy.com), I have spent years helping individuals and couples navigate relationships, communication, emotional wellness, and some of the challenges that can keep us from being fully connected to the people we love. But this vision is also personal for myself and my husband, Stephen. After being married for 24 years, our past experiences have shown us that even good marriages need nurturing, laughter, friendship, and opportunities to reconnect with God at the center.
I began thinking about what it would look like to create something for couples that didn’t feel overly clinical or like another traditional marriage conference. I wanted couples to have an experience—something that allowed them to step away from everyday life, have meaningful conversations, laugh together, try new things, create memories, and simply enjoy being husband and wife again.
After embracing the vision, together we began building what would eventually become Married On Purpose Collective.
Our inaugural couples retreat was the first major step in bringing that vision to life. We were intentional about creating a weekend that balanced meaningful relationship-building with fun. We wanted couples to talk and reflect, but we also wanted them to laugh, play, relax, and reconnect. I never wanted strengthening your marriage to feel like work the entire weekend.
One of the most rewarding moments for me actually came after the retreat. Couples started asking, “What are we doing next?” They were talking about future retreats, trips, cruises, and opportunities to get together again. That meant so much to Stephen and me because it showed us that something bigger than a weekend had begun to form. Community was developing.
That experience helped me realize that Married On Purpose Collective could become more than an annual retreat. My vision now is to continue creating experiences and building a community where couples can be intentional about their marriages throughout the year. We are exploring future retreats, gatherings, travel experiences, and other creative opportunities for couples to stay connected, while also building a team of people who share our heart for strengthening marriages.
At the heart of everything Stephen and I are building is one simple message: you don’t have to wait until your marriage is in trouble to invest in it. You can laugh together, grow together, make memories together, and continue choosing one another—on purpose.
And that is the heart and story behind Married On Purpose Collective.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, it has definitely not been a smooth road. In fact, I believe many of the experiences Stephen and I had before we ever met each other have shaped our marriage and ultimately helped give birth to Married On Purpose Collective.
Stephen grew up with stable examples of relationships around him, but his first marriage ended in divorce. Looking back, he recognizes that maturity and having a deeper understanding of the commitment and purpose of marriage could have made a difference. That experience caused him to become much more intentional about understanding what he wanted and needed before entering another marriage.
My story was very different. I did not grow up with positive models of marriage. My father struggled with alcohol and crack cocaine addiction, and our home was affected by verbal and physical abuse. His addiction eventually contributed to his death following an overdose and stroke. Those experiences left wounds that followed me well beyond childhood.
For years, I carried trauma, rejection, difficulty trusting, anxiety and depression. Like many people who grow up without experiencing healthy love and security at home, there were times when I looked for that love and acceptance through relationships. I didn’t fully understand then how much the hurt and rejection I experienced in my relationship with my father would influence the way I experienced other relationships.
Then I met Stephen.
Marriage didn’t suddenly erase everything either of us had experienced before we found one another. We brought our histories with us. For me, that meant having to recognize and work through issues of trust, hurt, rejection, and some of the protective walls I had learned to build very early in life. For Stephen, there were lessons from his previous marriage and his own areas of growth. And together, we had to learn how to build our marriage rather than allow our past experiences to define it.
After 24 years of marriage, we can look back and see just how much growing we have done—individually and together. We’ve learned that loving someone isn’t always enough by itself. Marriage requires self-awareness, communication, forgiveness, grace, friendship, healing, and a willingness to continue learning your spouse as both of you change throughout life. For us, it has also meant continually learning what it looks like to keep God at the center.
Those lessons are woven into Married On Purpose Collective.
We aren’t approaching couples from a place of having a perfect story or a perfect marriage. We approach them as two people who came into marriage with very different histories, had our own growing and healing to do, and made a decision to continue growing together.
Our experiences have also made us passionate about something we emphasize through Married On Purpose: you don’t have to wait until your marriage is falling apart to invest in it. Sometimes strengthening your marriage means addressing what is happening between you and your spouse, but sometimes it also means having the courage to address what happened long before your spouse ever entered the picture.
Some of our greatest lessons have come from the difficult parts of our stories. Today, instead of allowing those experiences to simply represent what we went through, we are choosing to use what we’ve learned to help other couples become more intentional about how they love, heal, communicate, connect, and grow together.
That is a large part of why Married On Purpose Collective exists.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Married On Purpose Collective is a faith-centered marriage enrichment community that my husband, Stephen, and I created to help couples become more intentional about nurturing their marriages, strengthening their connection, and simply enjoying life together.
One of the things I want people to understand about Married On Purpose is that you don’t have to have a marriage in crisis to invest in your relationship. We believe healthy marriages deserve attention too. Sometimes couples need tools for communication or opportunities for deeper conversations, but sometimes they simply need permission to step away from the responsibilities of everyday life, laugh together, experience something new, and remember why they enjoy being together.
That philosophy shapes everything we create.
Our inaugural Married On Purpose Couples Retreat was designed to feel like an experience rather than a traditional marriage conference. We incorporated meaningful conversations and relationship-building activities alongside games, laughter, couple time, shared experiences, and opportunities to create new memories. We wanted couples to learn without feeling like they were sitting in a therapy session all weekend.
Marriage coaching is another important part of the vision for Married On Purpose Collective. We offer coaching (in person and online) for couples who want to become more intentional about their relationship, whether they are working through a particular challenge or simply want to strengthen an already healthy marriage. Our coaching focuses on helping couples improve communication, deepen emotional connection, better understand one another, identify shared values and goals, and develop practical ways to continue growing together.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
What matters most to me is my faith and my family, in that order. My relationship with God is the foundation of who I am, how I try to live, how I love, and how I serve others. My faith has carried me through some of the most difficult seasons of my life, and it continues to shape the way I view marriage, family, purpose, and community.
Next to my faith is my family. I believe the family is one of the most important building blocks of a healthy society. When families are strengthened, the impact reaches far beyond the walls of the home. Healthy families help raise children who feel loved, secure, and supported. Those children grow up and become our neighbors, teachers, business owners, leaders, and community members. Strong families contribute to strong communities, strong communities help create thriving cities, and thriving cities ultimately contribute to a stronger society.
That belief is also at the heart of why strengthening marriages is so important to Stephen and me. When we invest in marriages, we aren’t only investing in two people. We are potentially impacting children, future generations, extended families, churches, neighborhoods, and communities.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://coaching.marriedonpurpose.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marriedonpurposecollective/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marriedonpurpose
