
Ask HN: Choice of (romantic) partner - big impact? - throwme
Hi all,
since my question and content is a wee bit personal I've decided to post using a temp.<p>I am a 28 years old male and, as many here, both interested in and involved with tech and startups.
I am currently working daytime as a coder, and spend rest of the time coding/cofounding.<p>I have for a while now dated a girl, stunningly beautiful and eternally caring. Very much a dream come true for a mother in law... Except for one thing. One tiny yet life altering thing.
She is uneducated. Very much so.
She never finished elementary school (she's 21).
Now don't take this the wrong way. Most of my friends don't have a higher education - that's not really of importance. I find the character beneath far more important than a piece of document.
In this case though, with the girl - it makes it very difficult to communicate and share ideas.
Basic math, observations about languages, cultures, history and so on - there's nothing there. What breakes my heart and has kept me from loosing interest in her is that she is very interested in learing.
(Reason for her not finishing elementary is not because she couldn't handle it or dropped out. There were other issues. Family issues)<p>Sure we have fun and all but sometimes I feel the need to be understood. My cofounder does, perhaps that's enough?<p>My qustion isn't - what do you think I should do. That one I can handle myself. 
Rather - maybe you guys could share some thoughts and stories about the relationship between your partner and your startup.<p>How big of an impact have they had and in what way?
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Mz
You might try looking at the stories behind Walmart and Habitat for Humanity.
My understanding:

Sam Walton wanted big time success. His wife wanted to raise her kids in a
small town. He felt he needed to go to the big city to get big success but he
loved his wife. So he founded Walmart which was aimed at serving small towns.

Millard Fuller was a millionaire by age 30. At some point after that, his wife
told him she wasn't happy with their lives and wanted a divorce. They had
originally both been Christian and lived simpler lives and were happy at first
and then it all became about the toys money could buy and she hated it. He
gave away all of his wealth to keep the woman he loved and then founded
Habitat for Humanity so they could live out their Christian values.

I'm sure there are other true life stories out there that would be relevant.
Those are just two that come to mind off the top of my head.

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DeusExMachina
I think that what a partner should give you is moral support, not technical
one. Why are you in this relationship? Because you love her or because you
want someone to support in your startup? You already said that your cofounder
understands the tech part. Why should your girlfriend? She is there to
(hopefully) fill other parts of your life that are not work related.

I had a girlfriend last here. She was 10 years younger than me and was
studying music, so she did not understand anything about math, or programming,
or markets, or startups. And she needed not to. I was happy with her, she gave
me the support I needed in doing my work even we did not speak about anything
technical.

If I was feeling bad about something in my work, I spoke with her about what
worried me and my feelings, not the technical problems I had. Girls, and
especially your girlfriend, are not interested in how things work, but in how
you feel. They are not interested in solving problems, but in supporting you.

Leave to your girlfriend what they are their "duties", give her the place she
deserves in your life and not in your job. For tech understanding you have
your cofounder, friends, fellow entrepreneurs and HN.

~~~
pmjoyce
Seriously? This is 2010 and you still think like this? Seems almost Victorian
in attitude.

 _Girls, and especially your girlfriend, are not interested in how things
work, but in how you feel. They are not interested in solving problems, but in
supporting you._

I find it hard to see how this isn't a huge and offensive generalisation. My
wife, for example, is substantially more mathematically able than I am (she's
an actuary), what do you think her reaction to your comments would be?

 _Leave to your girlfriend what they are their "duties"_

What does this even mean? What are his girlfriend's duties as you see them?

~~~
rickmode
I take the comment "don't expect your partner to be an expert in your career;
rather, expect support".

The comment's wording sounds a bit like "put women in their place", but I
suspect that isn't the intent.

~~~
DeusExMachina
I wasn't the intent at all. That's just my experience with a lot of women.

Surely there are a lot of women that are mathematically and technically
capable, but how many there are? Very few. Yes, I too had a girlfriend with a
PhD in biology, so she was more than capable. But how many women in general
are like that? My direct observation is not that many. I'm not saying that
women are less capable than men, only that usually they are different and
don't care. Personal experience. I just lived in two european countries and
this is what I still see. Maybe in the US it's different.

What I was saying is that usually women are more emotional than logical. Do
you have a girlfriend who is technically capable too? Wonderful! But do not
expect them all to be like that.

EDIT: I'm sorry if I sounded sexist, because I really am not. I really love
women and I thing they deserve a bigger place in society, sometimes bigger
than men. But let's be realistic, we all know that there are very few women in
our field and if we meet girls outside of our environment we drastically lower
the chance of meeting a technically capable one.

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alexkiwi
The impact is more of what you make it. My girlfriend is not technical at all
and can barely use facebook. She has become my "usability expert", it's an
awesome way of keeping her involved and she catches a good amount of my
nonsense.

I definitely get your need to be understood, but leave the business side to
your co-founder. My reference experience is that if somebody doesn't ask about
your startup, they don't need to know.

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AmberShah
Forget about it. You aren't looking for a business partner or advisor, you're
looking for a spouse with whom you will have children and a life forever.

I am married to a programmer (and am one myself) so you might think that we
are always talking about it, but we have different focuses and sometimes feel
like we are speaking different languages.

When we do talk about work, it is usually just in what happened and how we
dealt with our co-workers, not specifics of how we technically implemented
something. It's rare that we'll ask each other for technical advice or have a
deeply technical discussion, although it does happen.

And now that we have a child, 90% of our conversations are about him, or our
parents, or our friends (usually with kids too) or our house. Trust me: the
tech startup scene might seem like your whole world right now, but that shifts
completely once you have kids.

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SHOwnsYou
If you're having problems communicating (or being understood) now, that is a
big indicator of what the future may hold.

You're only 28. The most important discussion you might be having is whether
or not to have to children. Wait until more serious questions about how you
two want your life to unfold, or (the even more difficult) estate planning to
happen. Or the painful discussions dealing with aging parents, death of
family/friends, and all the other things that people rarely need to have
concrete discussions on in their 20s and 30s.

If you're having problems communicating about your passion, just wait until
serious topics have to be thought about.

~~~
philwelch
In my experience this isn't a problem. By and large, I don't communicate with
my girlfriend about intellectual shit. However, we try very hard to
communicate with each other about serious life issues, including the death of
my mother, her medical problems, whether we want to have kids and if so how
many, how to match our career and life goals so we can spend our lives
together, and so forth. Communicating about that stuff and sharing
intellectual observations are two entirely different ballgames.

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temphn
> Sure we have fun and all but sometimes I feel the need to be understood. My
> cofounder does, perhaps that's enough?

Yes. Life becomes a whole lot easier once you realize that girlfriends, by and
large, are not into math, computer science, politics, or abstraction.

They're into concrete things like making sure you're well fed and clothed and
that you've gotten enough sleep. That's really important, and your cofounder
sure isn't going to do that for you. :)

~~~
corin_
Wow. Really?

~~~
corin_
Downvoted for not being sexist, fantastic!

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PeterWhittaker
I've been married for 20 years and have been through big companies, startups,
and consulting.

IM(NS)HO, the most important thing between spouses is the ability to
communicate. She may be supportive, loving, caring, and willing to learn, but
the gap between your relative cultural awarenesses is substantial. Too
substantial? I do not know, only you do.

You know how it is with your closest friends, the ones you've known forever:
You say one or two words of movie dialog with just the right intonation and
they smile or LOL or frown or cry with you, because they know exactly what you
mean. ("Temba, at rest.")

Take that and multiply it by a Really Big Number (RBN): That is the lack of
commonality in your communications. Your references to biblical exegesis,
music theory, FPS or MMO, economic policy, etc., etc., etc., are all lost. You
do not have that shorthand communication.

You'll make a comment, say, a literary metaphor, and she will be lost.

Multiply her loss by RBN when the two of you are out with your friends.

If, IF, the two of talk about this, and decide together that the two of you
will support each other through thick and thin and work together to overcome
this isolation, without ever, ever, EVER, being patronizing or condenscending,
if, if, IF, then the two of you can make it work.

But it starts with that conversation. If she is sufficiently self-aware, she
is aware of this gap. If she is a self-motivated learner, she will overcome
it.

But the day you mess up and lord your superior cultural knowledge over her is
the day you lose her. I don't think that one will be apologizable.

But then maybe none of this matters to her. Perhaps her interests lie
elsewhere and she is so happy being with you while developing her own
interests that this present gap will in time be fill in, covered over, by the
new history the two of you share.

(As an aside, if she is a self-motivated learner, the two of you might talk
very seriously about discreetly acquiring a lot of picture-book or graphic-
novel versions of the Bible and classics of Western literature and science.
Just a thought. But discreetly, so that others don't belittle her for learning
from comic books.)

All of this assumes, of course, that she is interested in developing her own
interests. If you are motivated, intellectual self-starter you will never be
happy with a codependent breeder love-pet. You will want an independently
minded motivated self-starter with her own interests. She doesn't have to
start a startup, but she does have to start herself. And the two of you have
to kickstart your kids done the right path too. That requires at least some
shared culture, lest one of you lord over the other.)

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wendysiu
What country is she from?

