Goals and success at getting to them are really, the only way to actually gain more control over the world, instead of suffering. This new control is defined simply - by an expansion of the size of your personal boundary, by actually reaching a goal. Now you control the goal. Goals are crucial to intellectual attraction and partnership, and so mastery of them is essential to a long term relationship.
You might have found that with age and experience, you had learned lessons in past attempts and failures at the task, and at the time, you felt overwhelmed, or too focused on just one aspect of it or another, causing it to flounder. Or you chose the wrong people to involve in it or assist you, such as many entrepreneurs find in their early careers.
You also may not have had the discipline or resolve. But years later, you had more of an even-handed and even-minded approach to it, and were a better judge of collaborators, supporters, and partners, then saw your dream start to realize closer than ever before.
You had grown some maturity along the way, whose balance" and discipline, and fairness toward other people really expanded your success.
It is hard to align on goals with a partner who has directly opposed goals to your own. They want to be a city attorney on the eastern seaboard, and you want to be a cowboy or cowgirl living on a western prairie. Your personal life's goals are likely to be in conflict, and there are features of one's "mission" or "purpose" in life that must make use of masculinity, femininity, or passion that form yet another connection between the unconscious, reptilian brain and the higher brain.
One of the greatest tests of whether your larger goals have merit is to check to see if they amplify your masculinity, femininity, or passion, and if they don't, you will find that one or more of the Factors of Mission or Factors of Purpose are violated: whether you are "good" at something, whether you enjoy doing what you are doing, and finally, whether your goal or goals benefits society.
Positive Life's Goals are then one of the 4 Cardinal Traits of Success - Intelligence, Maturity, Beliefs and Goals - that we need to find in a lasting mate and partner.