What does it take to become the GOAT? For the Patriots legend Tom Brady, the answer was: everything. Endless hours of practice, unwavering focus, and a single-minded pursuit of gridiron glory. But as the confetti settled after his record-breaking Super Bowl wins, there was something else caught in the crossfire. A relationship years in the making that cracked away at the edges and finally drifted apart. For Gisele Bündchen, Brady’s football glory wasn’t everything. Especially as it overshadowed their life. And years after the fact, Brady admits to the signs that were there all along.

Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen were balancing high-profile careers while raising their children. But as Brady’s career stretched well beyond the typical NFL retirement age, cracks began to show. Gisele, once the world’s highest-paid supermodel, stepped back from her own career to focus on family, hoping Brady would eventually do the same. But his decision to un-retire for the Buccaneers in 2020 fueled speculation that football would always come first for him. As Brady had notably said in an interview some years ago, “She didn’t feel I was doing my part for the family… She felt like I would play football all season, and she would take care of the house and all the sudden when the season would end, I would be like, ‘great, let me get into all my other business activities. Let me get into my football training.’” And that might have been just the case.

Now, travelling through Japan with his children for the summer, Tom Brady found the meaning for ‘Ikigai’, the reason for one’s existence in this world. And for Brady, that has always been football.

As Brady wrote in the June 16th edition of 199, “For most of my life, football was my ikigai. I loved football. I was good at it. I got paid for it. And I sincerely believe that the world benefited from it. – I always felt that way as I took the field. So many people were committing their time and energy to me and our team, I never wanted to let them down.” For Brady, the football journey didn’t just end with him hanging up his cleats one day. It is a journey he has now taken from holding the football to holding a mic. But his lifelong devotion to football came at the cost of family.

This isn’t news to Gisele, who has spoken candidly about the growing imbalance in their marriage. Years before their divorce was finalized in 2022, Bündchen had stepped back from her own career to focus on raising their children, all while hoping Brady would eventually do the same. But each year, the unspoken question returned: when would enough be enough? That hope fractured in 2022, when Brady retired from the NFL, only to reverse course 40 days later and return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for one more season. It was a decision that, by many accounts, widened the already-growing rift in their marriage.

In a revealing Vanity Fair profile published in 2023, Bündchen pushed back on the narrative that she had ever issued Brady an ultimatum. “That takes years to happen,” she said of their split. “This is not something that happened overnight.” But she made clear that the football-first dynamic had been weighing on her for a long time. “When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say, ‘You have to live this life,’” Bündchen told VF. “You set them free to be who they are.”

And now, reading between the lines of his 199 entry, it’s clear Brady sees it too, even if he never quite names it. “My purpose has also evolved,” he writes. “Football and entertaining people is still at the heart of things for me now… But I feel my purpose has also evolved.”

Tom Brady still lives and breathes football, just with the eye of an analyst now. But as fame and the spotlight continues to follow Brady, his family still continues to get in the way. Most recently, that spotlight hit a negative note during Netflix’s The Roast of Tom Brady. For Brady, it was another thing gone wrong that he had to apologize for.

Tom Brady’s apology after Netflix’s roast

After the ramifications of the roast hit hard, Tom Brady has called it a “f—– up” event. Something that had affected his children deeply. In the roast from last year, Nikki Glaser had taken a shot at Brady’s breakup with Gisele Bündchen. As Glaser had said, “You have seven rings… well, eight now that Gisele gave hers back.” While Brady had laughed it off at that time, his children didn’t see it the same way. Back in May, Brady had appeared on the Impaulsive podcast, and confessed how that roast made things worse for the family. As Brady put it, “It was tough on my kids for sure… You don’t know what to expect, and I love laughing at myself… but for my kids, that was really hard.”

For Tom Brady, that roast and his children’s reaction to it were a harsh realization. As he looked back on it, he’d said, “There are some things as a parent you f— up and you don’t realize until after. We’re not perfect parents. There’s no perfect manual for it.” At the time, they only felt like harmless jokes. But back at home, face to face with his kids, Brady realized the consequences a little too late. As he further continued, “I felt like a stake through the heart when I talked to my kids the next day. They’re protective of their mom, of their dad, of everybody. ‘What was the point of that? Why did you do that?’ You live and you learn.” But Brady learnt from that incident, and decided to become a “better parent” going forward.

Now, Tom Brady navigates his passion for football in a different way. He makes more time for his children and co-parents them together with Gisele. The Japan trip is just the latest in a long line of time spent bonding with the kids. Brady is also balancing a growing romance through it all. And Brady has put it best, “There is something both freeing and energizing about knowing that ikigai isn’t a one-shot deal. It is a living and evolving and growing thing… as long as you are also living and evolving and growing as a person.”