We Over Me

Have you ever wondered what really makes a marriage work—not just survive, but thrive for decades? In We Over Me, Khadeen and Devale Ellis answer that question through their own deeply personal story, revealing that love isn’t about finding perfection; it’s about committing to service, growth, and self-awareness. They argue that successful relationships are built not from rules or fairy tales, but from an intentional choice to put the “we” above the “me.”

At its heart, this book dismantles the idealized version of marriage promoted in romantic comedies and social media highlight reels. The Ellises contend that true partnership requires labor, humility, and a willingness to love each other through change. As they often remind readers, marriage is a service-based industry: it thrives only when both partners focus not on what they can receive, but on what they can give. Through honest storytelling—from a college love that grew through an abortion, financial crises, parenting struggles, and career shifts—the book highlights how commitment to shared purpose rebuilds connection over and over again.

From 'Me' to 'We'

The authors begin by shattering the illusion that relationships follow universal formulas—the idea that there’s a “right” timeline for love or marriage. Instead, they argue that couples must create their own playbook. For Khadeen and Devale, that meant abandoning the dysfunctional patterns they saw growing up: communication voids, performative affection, and staying together for appearances. They learned to navigate conflict through honest communication and personal healing, realizing that healthy relationships begin with individual growth.

You’re reminded that before you love someone else effectively, you have to do your own internal work. If you bring broken expectations, insecurities, or emotional baggage into a relationship, you’ll only recreate the fractures you grew up watching. The Ellises challenge readers to ask: Am I prepared to serve another person from a place of wholeness?

Service, Not Sacrifice

The distinction between service and sacrifice becomes central to their philosophy. Service, in their view, means mutual effort—a conscious commitment to make your partner’s load lighter while maintaining your own peace. Sacrifice, by contrast, implies losing yourself or enduring constant pain for someone else. The authors openly describe how they learned this difference the hard way: when Devale was cut from the NFL and spiraled into depression, or when Khadeen had to balance motherhood and self-doubt while supporting his dream.

Their journey reframes hardship as teamwork rather than blame. By putting each other first without erasing themselves, they demonstrate that love as service reinforces connection, confidence, and resilience. (This echoes themes found in Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, particularly service as an act of care—but the Ellises take it further by emphasizing reciprocity and emotional maturity.)

Communication and Truth

Another cornerstone of their message is transparency. Devale contrasts their openness with the secrecy and passive-aggressive communication he saw in his parents’ marriage. He realized that pretending things are fine to impress others only corrodes intimacy. For the Ellises, uncomfortable honesty—admitting that they’ve fought, failed, and forgiven across twenty years—became the real foundation of their success. Speaking authentically, even when hurt, allowed them to replace comparison and ego with empathy and clarity.

They remind you that true partnership means saying the hard things kindly, not avoiding them. It’s vulnerability as strength, not weakness. “We Over Me” becomes both mantra and method—when they stop letting individual defensiveness guide their actions and instead remember what serves the “we,” solutions emerge naturally.

Why This Book Matters

Through candid storytelling, the Ellises invite you to rethink what success in love looks like. Their experiences—an unplanned pregnancy that led to painful decisions, an NFL career collapse, postpartum depression, relocation, and navigating social media fame—show that emotions, money, and pride can derail intimacy unless approached with humility and teamwork. Their motto, Choose service over selfishness, points to a larger cultural message: love is not performance, but practice.

By blending humor, realism, and hope, We Over Me becomes part marriage manual, part memoir. It’s a reminder that “happily ever after” isn’t a destination—it’s a daily choice. Every argument offers a chance to reinvest in your love; every challenge deepens your empathy; every act of service builds your shared legacy. As they say, forget the fairy tale—real love begins after the wedding.

Early in their journey, Khadeen and Devale learned that following other people’s relationship blueprints leads to frustration. They reject formulas like “wait ninety days before intimacy” or “let the man lead” because such ideas rarely fit real people. Their story of meeting, dating, and falling in love in college illustrates that when couples build relationships around their own values—not society’s—they create more authentic partnerships.

Breaking Traditions

Khadeen “shot her shot” at Devale in her teens, something her family or culture might have discouraged. Her confidence started their connection. Later, when she became the breadwinner while he pursued acting, they defied traditional gender expectations. Rather than viewing these shifts as failures, they interpreted them as evidence that modern love requires flexibility. “We built our love based on our own rules,” they write, knowing authenticity matters more than appearances.

This lesson resonates in a world still bound by outdated advice. You’re encouraged to stop benchmarking your relationship on Instagram couples or family traditions. Look inward: what kind of balance, intimacy, and communication style truly serves you and your partner?

Authenticity Over Representation

The Ellises challenge readers to show up as their full selves rather than an “idealized representative.” When people enter relationships wearing masks, they set up inevitable disappointment. Being truly seen means risking rejection—but that vulnerability is what yields trust. (This echoes Brené Brown’s research in Daring Greatly on vulnerability as the foundation for authentic connection.)

Their difference in backgrounds—Caribbean and Southern Baptist homes—forced them to redefine communication and emotional expression. They discovered that rules shaped by upbringing don’t necessarily serve adult connections. What works for one family or generation may not work for another. Their marriage required new norms: women initiating, men showing emotion, and both learning grace through transparency.

Communicate Early, Often, Honestly

From their first date, both declared what they wanted: not a traditional boyfriend-girlfriend setup but an open, truthful exploration. This clarity ensured no blurred lines. Devale emphasizes that when you start relationships being clear about your needs, you set a foundation for future honesty. Over time, even disagreements become easier to navigate because boundaries are explicit, not assumed.

“Feeling lost and misunderstood early in a relationship is completely normal. Being deliberate about how you communicate and seeking to understand each other is the only way to find common ground.” — Devale Ellis

Their conclusion: your most fulfilling relationship begins where you stop following others and start following truth. Make your own rules, not walls.

The Ellises’ story of navigating their first pregnancy and abortion reveals how couples grow when love shifts from noun to verb. Love as action means showing compassion through hardship, accountability, and empathy even when pain and guilt cloud logic. This chapter, though emotionally raw, is a lesson in how relationships endure storms when anchored in mutual understanding.

Transforming Crisis into Connection

At nineteen, when Khadeen discovered she was pregnant, their world flipped. Both were maturing emotionally while grappling with family expectations and religious guilt. They chose termination—an immensely difficult decision—but the process tested their communication and maturity. Devale supported her choice quietly, embodying “service” even while grieving. Watching her pain, he realized that partnership sometimes means choosing empathy over opinion.

That moment stripped away illusions about easy love. It taught them that true intimacy forms when vulnerability replaces control. Together, they learned to face societal judgment, family silence, and emotional fallout without abandoning each other.

The Power of Nonjudgmental Support

Throughout this ordeal, they maintained open dialogue—something they hadn’t seen modeled at home. Devale’s upbringing encouraged confrontation; Khadeen’s discouraged expression. Through crisis, they developed a shared language of empathy. They learned that loving someone means respecting their autonomy while still showing solidarity. (A parallel insight appears in Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity, which emphasizes how independence sustains intimacy.)

Their story invites readers to see hardship as a crucible where compassion deepens. When you love someone through trauma, silence and withdrawal give way to clarity and healing. Love becomes less about fixing and more about feeling with.

Choosing Responsibility Over Ego

Rather than blaming each other, they saw the experience as a wake-up call. Devale admits he felt “emptied” when Khadeen ended the pregnancy but realized maturity demands accepting circumstances he cannot control. Khadeen felt torn between shame and relief. Both emerged stronger by focusing on accountability—avoiding future recklessness and building trust from transparency instead of denial.

Their conclusion is universal: real love flourishes not despite pain but through it. You can’t bypass the hard places; you have to walk through them together.

After years of watching their parents hide pain behind polished appearances, the Ellises vowed to do marriage differently. In this section, they redefine partnership as transparency, friendship, and individual freedom—breaking generational cycles of silence. They call this the art of creating a new kind of love story, one driven by purpose, not performance.

Rejecting the Masks

Khadeen’s West Indian upbringing emphasized appearances—“What will people think?”—while Devale’s Baptist family prized repression under civility. Both models left emotional distance. When they began marriage, these inherited behaviors caused tension until they learned to prioritize openness over optics. Sharing disagreements publicly on social media drew criticism, but they persisted, believing honesty helps heal shame.

Real love, they learned, is messy but freeing. Pretending perfection suffocates growth. By publicly unpacking real issues—child-rearing, family boundaries, sex, finances—they inspire others to normalize honest dialogue.

Marriage as a Living System

For Khadeen and Devale, marriage evolves like a living organism. Each partner changes through career transitions, family aging, and societal shifts; instead of resisting change, they revisit agreements often. “Peace starts with absence of comparison,” Devale writes. The couple sees happiness as understanding, not conformity. Comparison—especially via social media—kills joy by turning relationships into competitions.

They contrast their dynamic with others trapped in obligatory marriages, echoing bell hooks’ idea in All About Love that love and honesty liberate both partners. Their model invites authentic evolution instead of static roles.

Redefining Family Roles

In building their family, Khadeen challenged traditional notions about serving the man first. Her act of making Devale’s plate—a culturally charged symbol—became a mutual exchange of care, not subservience. The Ellises extend this lesson to their relationships with parents and in-laws, navigating boundaries that respect elders while maintaining autonomy. Their blended household across generations tested patience, but reaffirmed that harmony grows where communication and respect coexist.

Creating a new kind of marriage, they show, means designing habits and boundaries that reflect who you are, not who you’re told to be. Love becomes collaboration, not imitation.

The Ellises insist that a lasting marriage starts with friendship. Friendship builds mutual respect, forgiveness, and easy joy—traits that outlive passion or physical attraction. In times of chaos, returning to friendship helps couples regulate emotions and conflict more gracefully.

Learning to Communicate as Friends

Both authors reveal that early communication was painful. Khadeen’s family avoided conflict; Devale’s confronted it loudly. Their clashing styles led to years of misunderstanding. Through persistence, they developed methods of listening to understand, not to win. This required dropping ego and prioritizing emotional safety. “Grace and time,” Devale says, “are needed to learn each other’s communication styles.”

They’re candid about seven-hour fights over words like “ho,” illustrating how arguments often stem from tone and ego, not substance. By approaching conflicts like friends instead of rivals, they learned to see disagreements as problem-solving, not personal warfare.

Grace and Growth

Over time, they taught each other emotional vocabulary and patience. Mistakes became opportunities for understanding. Their guiding principle: the friendship outlasts every role—spouse, co-parent, business partner. You choose friendship daily even when love feels heavy. This perspective aligns with John Gottman’s research on marital stability, which emphasizes friendship and deep knowledge as antidotes to resentment.

Returning to Playfulness

Friendship preserves the fun. Whether playing cards in college or joking about “medium-sized dick anger” during arguments, humor restored intimacy. The Ellises often remind themselves, “I miss my friend.” By distinguishing friendship energy from parental or business energy, they keep affection alive despite life’s chores. Friendship, they argue, is the root system that keeps marriage upright—even when storms bend the branches.

Their takeaway: before seeking romance, build camaraderie. If you fight like friends—with respect and laughter—you’ll love like partners for life.

Every chapter of the Ellises’ story reiterates that love requires effort. “Doing the work,” they clarify, means continuous reflection, forgiveness, and growth. Work begins with self-awareness but matures through joint responsibility—especially when facing setbacks such as job loss or depression. The couple’s experience transitioning from the NFL to civilian life serves as a blueprint for partnership during change.

Facing Financial Collapse

When Devale’s NFL career ended and the 2008 recession erased their savings, they faced existential panic. Khadeen stepped up to work at MAC Cosmetics, while Devale battled addiction to painkillers and low self-worth. Both confronted the illusion that traditional gender roles guarantee security. Their revival came when they redefined work as teamwork. Sustained effort wasn’t about saving her career or his pride—it was about saving their union.

They rejected toxic independence and replaced it with interdependence: Khadeen earned while Devale cared for their baby. That humility broke old scripts and reinforced equality as survival.

Monogamy and Commitment

Through this period, they refined their belief that monogamy is “a choice to serve one person daily.” Many people romanticize monogamy as inertia—staying faithful simply by habit. The Ellises reframe it as devotion through intentional action. To love one person forever, you must keep choosing the relationship even when expectations shift. (Psychologist Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving offers a similar view of love as discipline and will.)

Doing the work means confronting ego. When Devale admits he blamed Khadeen for his pain, he models accountability. When Khadeen admits her pride blocked compassion, she models humility. Their unity resurged once they both decided vulnerability wasn’t weakness—it was partnership.

“Good work requires failure. Failing your partner isn’t the end unless you quit. The greatest apology for an epic fail is changed behavior.” — Devale Ellis

Doing the work, they conclude, is never one-and-done. Like fitness, marriage maintenance requires daily reps of honesty, empathy, and effort.

While some couples fear codependency, the Ellises embrace healthy interdependence—loving each other into their dreams. Their relationship thrived because each became the other’s biggest cheerleader. Watching one partner succeed brought joy, not competition. Their codependence, they argue, is not clinging but building: two people leaning together toward shared purpose.

Mutual Ambition

Both were ambitious dreamers—Devale with acting and entrepreneurship, Khadeen with media and makeup artistry. At critical junctures, one’s courage inspired the other. When Devale left football, Khadeen supported him unconditionally; when she pursued broadcasting, he celebrated every audition. They treated each other’s victories as joint ones. “Nothing else is more important to me than building a great life with Kay,” Devale writes.

This kind of mutual affirmation transforms dreams into partnership goals, making success collective instead of individual.

Supporting Without Losing Self

Khadeen cautions against relying on a partner to complete you. Self-worth must be self-made. Yet being with the right person amplifies both identities. She calls their synergy “front-row seats to each other’s growth.” Their dynamic mirrors psychologist Carl Rogers’ concept of unconditional positive regard—seeing your partner’s potential without imposing your own narrative.

Love shouldn’t erase you; it should expand you. When each partner pursues purpose, togetherness amplifies energy rather than divides it.

The Joy of Shared Creation

The Ellises describe their creative work—podcasting, acting, and social media—not as a business but an extension of their love story. Their motto “We Over Me” became a brand because service and ambition overlap when values align. By working side by side, they embody how intimacy and productivity co-exist.

Their message to you: don’t fear healthy dependence. When two fully developed people share faith and goals, collaboration becomes liberation. Loving each other into your dreams means you’re not losing autonomy—you’re multiplying it.

Once parenthood and career pressures entered the mix, the Ellises learned that happiness returns when they shift focus from selfish ambition to service. “Marriage is not about being a boss,” they write—it’s about lifting each other through selfless acts. This pivot reignited their love and stability after years of strain.

Redefining Roles

They first tried fitting into traditional gender norms: husband as provider, wife as homemaker. But both soon realized those labels boxed them in. Instead, they designed roles around strengths, not stereotypes. Devale cooked breakfasts and attended practices; Khadeen built her makeup career and later freelanced. Mutual respect replaced resentment.

Service became reciprocal. He provided emotional stability; she offered encouragement during his creative rebirth. Together, they modeled flexibility in love.

Turning Work Into Purpose

For Devale, being cut from the NFL forced him to rethink manhood. Real maturity meant protecting Khadeen’s peace, not just their finances. He connects this realization to the alpha-male myth—dominance doesn’t define masculinity; integrity and empathy do. Serving her dreams didn’t diminish his strength; it revealed it. (This redefinition parallels modern psychology’s shift toward emotional intelligence in leaders.)

For Khadeen, service meant consciously supporting him without erasing herself. Working at MAC while raising their child became sacrifice turned strategy. Later, when she left retail for entrepreneurship, her leap thrived because he steadied her faith.

The Paradox of Service

Serving your partner paradoxically replenishes both. When each person wakes asking, “How can I make your day lighter?” the relationship strengthens organically. Their “Simpin’ and Submitting” discussion reframes viral misinterpretations—mutual care isn’t weakness. It’s advanced maturity. When partners serve without tallying debts, partnership evolves from transaction to transformation.

Ultimately, choosing service over selfishness means doing love as action. It’s not about losing power; it’s about using power for peace.

After years of parenting and business building, the Ellises faced a familiar marital challenge—keeping intimacy alive. They didn’t tiptoe around it: sex in long-term marriage requires creativity, honesty, and humor. By narrating awkward moments and hormonal changes, they normalize these realities and offer strategies that couples can adopt.

Talking About Sex Without Shame

Devale confesses his ego bruised whenever Khadeen wasn’t interested. He internalized rejection until he learned to talk openly about needs instead of sulking. She, meanwhile, grappled with postpartum depression and body image shifts. Only when they discussed these experiences without judgment did physical reconnection follow. Teaching couples to keep talking even when libido fades resets focus from blame to curiosity.

“When you stop talking about sex,” Devale says, “that’s when it’s over.” That line encapsulates their philosophy that communication, even about discomfort, keeps relationships alive.

Respect The Seasons

They categorize intimacy into stages: energetic college passion, survival-mode parenting, rediscovered adventure. Each requires adaptation. Pregnancy, postpartum, or stress shift desire, but patience and creativity renew it. They learned that play, travel, and curiosity restore connection—like climbing St. Lucia’s mountains or hotel getaways to stimulate novelty.

Renewal requires physical presence and psychological safety. Understanding each other’s triggers and health turns routine sex into evolving connection.

Pleasure as Shared Healing

Khadeen’s humorous anecdotes about aphrodisiacs and “lockjaw therapy” underscore that pleasure isn’t vanity—it’s vitality. Devale’s insight that women’s reproductive changes demand male patience reinforces the theme of empathy. Intimacy recovers only when partners serve each other emotionally, not just physically.

Their candidness transforms sex from taboo to teamwork. For long-term couples, their honesty is comforting proof that passion can evolve without fading—it just needs tending, talking, and sometimes a weekend away.

In their later chapters, the Ellises extend the “We Over Me” philosophy to parenting. They boldly declare: “The kids ain’t first.” Their reasoning isn’t neglect—it’s prioritization. A healthy marriage creates the energy and stability children need to thrive. Parenting becomes legacy-building when it grows from partnership, peace, and transparency.

Partnership First, Parenthood Follows

When Khadeen and Devale initially centered everything around their first son, Jackson, they felt drained and disconnected. Once they realigned marriage as central, family harmony returned. They emphasize that children learn emotional intelligence by witnessing healthy love. “Our kids model our communication,” Khadeen notes; affection and mutual respect become their blueprint.

They also redefine parenting as mentorship, not control. Each child, they discovered, needs unique guidance—and flexibility beats rigidity.

Building Safe Legacies

Having survived a near-death delivery experience, Khadeen stresses maternal advocacy and holistic care. Their decision for home births symbolized reclaiming agency from medical hierarchies. They urge women to demand safety and respect in reproductive experiences. Likewise, as Black parents, they prepare their sons to navigate racial bias—teaching strength without toxicity, toughness with tenderness.

Their collective parenting goal: blend resilience with refuge. Home should be the safest space—emotionally and spiritually—for growth.

Balancing Love, Work, and Self

Amid raising four boys, they learned tagging out—scheduling rest and relying on community—prevents burnout. Both advocate breaking myths about perfect balance; parenting requires grace, not perfection. They conclude with a declaration that legacy isn’t measured in wealth but emotional inheritance. Children will replicate what they see: honesty, forgiveness, and love practiced daily.

By the end, the Ellises remind you that putting “we” above “me” extends to “them.” The love you build today becomes your family’s peace tomorrow.