

Ask HN: Has your startup affects your relationship with your wife or girlfriend? - Concours

I'm bootrapping on a long project and this has heavilly affects my relationship, thanks God my partner understand what it's about. But she stills complain sometimes about me, spending too much time behind a computer, never going out and almost alway cancelling or forgetting a lot of things! Have you experienced this? how do you deal with it?
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tptacek
When you spend all 12 years of your relationship doing startup-y stuff, the
whole "she understands what it's all about" idea gets pretty much shot to
hell. You put up with her going to med school for a few years, she puts up
with your startup for 2 years, but then things level out, right?

So, here's how I handled it: we hired Erin. Worked beautifully. She's a strong
pentester and, as it turns out, a strong dev.

I've mentioned this in a post before, but another one of my favorite jobs ---
running the network for EnterAct, a major Chicago ISP in the '90s ---
addressed this problem by building a family-friendly culture. Regular dinners
with spouses, events, offsites, that kind of thing. Not hard to do. Fun. Makes
a _huge difference_. But it has to be led from the top, and taken seriously.
Asking S.O.'s to come to the office once or twice a year isn't a culture. It's
an annoyance.

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lleger
I'm lucky in many ways to have the girlfriend I have. She's a very patient,
logical and intelligent human being. She understands my conviction for
building a business and penchant for spending ungodly hours on the computer.
She's also an invaluable resource: anytime I have a problem, I talk to her.
Almost every time I come out of that conversation with a better, more elegant
solution than I could have ever dreamed. Her ability to reason in both a
right- and left-brained fashion and communicate to me in my extreme left-
brainedness is incredible. It doesn't even matter that she doesn't program:
her ability to step back and think in a different, elevated fashion is just so
helpful.

And that's the thing: I talk with her about everything. She's not a part of
the company, but she's incredibly integrated into our workflow. Because she's
there with us in everything we do, I think our relationship has actually
strengthened — and quite a bit at that. Being able to share this experience
with her has been wonderful. She cares deeply about what I do and wants to be
a part of it. And I think that's key. Even despite the distance (we spend 9
months out of the year over 3,000 miles apart), we're extremely close and I'm
hopeful for our future, notwithstanding the insane hours I put into building
the company.

And, above everything else, I think that's important. Don't overlook her;
instead, integrate her. There are a lot of great tips in this thread, but I'd
say if you take anything away, it's this: allow her to fall in love with
entrepreneurship as much as you have. If she truly loves you — and I very much
believe this to be true — she'll love what you do as well. That's especially
true with us: we're entrepreneurs to our core and with everything we have.

My girlfriend truly believes in what I am doing and my vision for the future.
She supports me in everything I do and without her, I'd probably have given up
long ago. Her steadfast support keeps me going. The adage "behind every great
man is an even greater woman" is so very, very true.

~~~
seunosewa
It's probably not as effortless on her part as you might think, though.

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yankeeracer73
We like to spend a fair amount of time at cafes together. I work with the free
wifi and she reads a book. Every 30 minutes or so I stop and take a little
break and we talk a little. Sure it's not as good as doing something directly
together but at least we're out of the house and not just sitting in separate
rooms.

Also it's really important to try and go to bed at the same time each night -
staying up until 2am while she goes to bed at 11pm definitely has a negative
effect on some obvious and not so obvious aspects of your relationship.

~~~
petervandijck
What are the not so obvious ones?

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yankeeracer73
She starts to wonder what I'm doing on the computer so late every night - am I
working or am I chatting with someone else, or less paranoid - do I really
need to be up so late and is the computer or whatever work I'm doing more
important than her? Am I working as productively during the day as I can so I
don't need to always stay up so late at night?

Also some of the best conversations happen late at night laying in bed. If you
go to bed at different times, these never really have a chance to happen. And
of course one of you is getting a decent night's sleep and the other isn't, so
one of you is consistently more grumpy than the other. :)

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byoung2
No matter how hard you work at your business, you should always be able to
take a little time off to spend time with her. Let her know that the late
nights at the computer now will mean more trips to the Caribbean an a few
years.

I was in your situation as recently as 2007...I quit my job to start my
business. For all of 2007, I was at my laptop sometimes 20+ hours a day, but
by 2008 my business was profitable. I'm not looking for an exit, and I don't
have any investors to pay back, but I have a comfortable income now, and I
don't need to work full time.

My girlfriend (now fiancee) stuck by me then, and now I'm keeping my promise -
in the last year we've been to Puerto Rico 3 times, been on 3 7-day Caribbean
cruises, been to Cancun, and we just spent 3 weeks in the Philippines. Just
let your girlfriend know that there will be a payoff eventually (hopfully
soon!).

~~~
retube
sounds great. what kind of business is it (if that's not too cheeky...)

~~~
byoung2
It is a transparent outsourcing company. Think Mechanical Turk for web design
and development. I developed a project management interface for web designers,
but when they create projects and tasks, they can assign them to workers in
the Philippines they've never met. I charge one rate per hour/task/project and
pay another.

When I started, I envisioned thousands of workers and thousands of employers.
Or even millions! Within a few months I had a dozen workers and a dozen
employers. That was enough for a solid "lifestyle business", but I've found it
tough to scale and maintain the quality of the work.

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malbs
This is actually the exact issue that I struggle with to really be able to
invest the time into the product I'm working on. The spare time I have
available to me, is actually better spent with my children.

I know some people may view that as a cop-out, that I am not really committing
to my project, but I grew up with an absent father, and it's actually really
important to me that while my kids are young, and looking to me and my wife
for really key influence, I want to be there.

I figure that once they're young adults and want to go out drinking/partying,
I'll have plenty of spare time, and I'll have wisely invested important time
with my kids during that first ~15 years or so.

So right now, my project plods along - maybe 2 hours per week. I'd love to
sink 20 hours a week into them. I tried working late nights, but you end up
writing code that needs to be re-written, or coming up with marketing
strategies/research that seems like you were smoking illicit substances at the
time.

So in answer to the original question - a startup most definitely affects your
relationship with your wife/girlfriend/family. Some of the structures other
HN'ers have put in place sound like a good start.

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jaxn
I am divorced. The marriage didn't work. We it because of the extra time
working on startups? Or was the extra time working on startups more a function
of wanting to be away from the house. Or maybe working on startups kept me so
preoccupied that I stayed in a bad marriage for way too long.

Either way it was 8 long years. I got the business and she got the house.

~~~
Concours
I love her, and she loves me too, so I really hope it'll niot end like that.
Nice to read your experience here, kind of scaring.

~~~
jaxn
You are off to a better start than we were. I don't think we should have been
married in the first place.

However, I am not the only entrepreneur I know who is divorced with long-hours
at least being partially to blame.

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Rust
I experience exactly this, but without the support.

As far as the forgetting goes, I've been using my iPod alarms to act as
reminders for things like laundry, the lawn, the vacuuming, the dishes,
bathroom cleaning, taking out the garbage, and occasionally recording Oprah
and Dr. Oz (since working from home is "not a real job", I get to do all the
housework).

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logic
Sorry, this is long, but hopefully it'll be useful.

My first startup was a "ramen profitable" ISP in central Canada during the
mid-90's. I was very young and foolish, IMHO; I had just entered a
relationship with a woman I'd met at University, I was coming up on the end of
a semester that was going to result in my being politely asked to take a year
off to get my priorities straight, and I was making furious plans with the
folks who became my co-founders to regain the Internet service I was about to
lose due to said scholastic problems. We turned this desire for Internet
service into one of the first commercial ISPs in Manitoba, in a completely
unplanned burst of entrepreneurialism. During initial bootstrapping of the
company, I got married. The next four years were probably the worst of her
life; I prioritized the business above myself and her, without question. I was
too busy to see what were obvious signs of our relationship becoming
poisonous; signs my friends and co-founders were very aware of, but didn't
mention in order to keep peace. Tempers flared constantly.

We exited, selling the company to a local competitor, and I took a position
with a mid-sized ISP in Chicago (it warmed my heart to see a mention of
Enteract in tptacek's post; not many independent ISPs left in Chicago
anymore). My wife and I moved, we suddenly didn't have any of the stresses of
business operation hanging over us, and I think we assumed our relationship
would improve. It didn't; after four years of fighting, we just didn't know
how to deal with each other any more, and didn't have any interest in figuring
out how. Within a year, she moved back to Canada, and I filed the divorce
paperwork that we drew up together, resulting in an amicable and fair
attorney-free divorce.

I've since remarried, and my wife and I have a very different relationship to
that of my first wife and I; when one person is being unreasonable, the other
calls them on it, and we work out problems in good faith. And we assume good
faith; we trust that the other person has our mutual best interests at heart,
and that's a place that took us a while to get to.

I'm not sure if this story helps at all, but just be mindful of the fact that
you need to make yourself spend time on your relationship. If that means
scheduling time for each other where the cell phone and computer will be off,
you do it. It is very easy to take the other person in your life for granted,
and assume they know how important they are to you.

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jrussbowman
With relationships, it's always hard to give advice. Really, you need to talk
to your partner, and basically make sure she is willing to tell you when she
is complaining, and when she is putting her foot down.

My wife is due at the end of June, as a result I've spent maybe 10 hours in
the past 2 months on my project because she's wanted me to spend more time
with her and our other child. It is what it is.

Prioritize is all I can suggest. Which is more important to you, the project
you are bootstrapping or your relationship. In my case, the day our first
child was born I realized that everything I did from that point was to make my
family happy, so that's helped put priority into perspective. Wealth will make
them happy sure, but they also need a husband and father to fulfill those
roles as well.

One idea I can offer is, get her involved in the project in some way, if you
can. My wife has little to no interest in anything technical, she's an event
planner and right now just bartending so she can spend more time with the
kid(s). I tried, wasn't really an option in my case. If you have better luck,
then those long hours you put into your project could be something you're
doing together.

~~~
Concours
Thanks for the advice, I'll try it, maybe getting more feedback from her, but
she hates computers and smartphones, I guess, I'm spending too much time with
both.

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edw519
We found a nerdy, but perfectly acceptable way to handle this: schedule time
with each other. It works out very well; we both look forward to our time
together and we both schedule around it. We rarely deviate. We also understand
and respect each other's time needed alone.

    
    
      - dinner every night at 6:30
      - Jeopardy every night
      - lunch at least once during the week
      - Sunday brunch at home (a big production)
      - date night, at least once each weekend
      - something special in town once a month
      - something special out of town once a month

~~~
mcu
My girlfriend and I had almost the exact same schedule!

She's in med school (I would not wish this on my worst enemy) and I'm boot-
strapping. Making dinner together and then sitting down to watch Brian
Williams and Joepardy! is our most sacred tradition.

~~~
himmel
I'm interested to hear more about this one... I'm working for a startup and my
wife is in med school

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bhousel
I was given some great advice recently. My priorities are now: 1. Health, 2.
Family, 3. Work

You may be able to make short term sacrifices in any of them, but long term
you will be miserable if you don't take care of things _in that order_.

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patricia
I have the opposite being a woman. The men I date always think I am not into
them because I never have time for them.

What I tell my friends who have this issue with their husbands is that a good
life requires that much work, that if you want a guy who can make sure he can
give your kids a nice school and take the family to Hawaii every year, this is
what it takes. There is not one person I know who is successful that's not
working a lot.

Also try to live in slivers -- sneak away little bits of time to hang out when
you can, even if it's an hour. Make it special.

What has worked for me has been to date men who are also founders.

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modoc
My advice is to use a calendar app to remind you of things so you don't
forget/cancel.

Schedule a weekly date night and a monthly date weekend. You need a break as
much as she needs time with you, so it works out pretty well.

Try to make time you spend together high quality time (i.e. don't be on your
iPhone checking e-mail/facebook, don't just sit on the couch and watch TV. Go
to a concert, go on a picnic, take scuba lessons.)

These are things that have really helped with my wife and startup fighting for
time and attention.

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foxtrot
I am starting a few little projects at the moment, so my time is becoming more
limited as I work on different things. The problem is my girlfriend doesnt
really do anything for her self, she works and goes out maybe once or twice
every fortnight with her friends. I fear that once my projects really get
moving she wont understand that I am trying to make something of my self, and
that idea may be holding me back from forging ahead in my ideas. Is that dumb?

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cubes
Startups are, typically, all consuming. Of course that's going to have an
effect on your relationship with your significant other. I think it's really
important to keep the plans you make. Yes, sometimes the servers will crash,
and it has to be fixed now, but, barring emergencies, make a concerted effort
not to cancel plans you make.

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cmos
I think being with someone who also has an all consuming passion for something
would help. Then both of you have an addiction, er, obsession about something
and it's a little less awkward when you'd rather be doing that on a Friday
night.

That being said, I haven't found someone like that.

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run4yourlives
Like all things in life, this is a question of priority.

All conflicts can be resolved in one fashion or another so long as you have a
proper understanding of what priority things in you life are at, and you
refuse to allow two competing interests to occupy the same space.

Choose wisely.

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subpixel
Your question falsely assumes that HN readers are all male.

~~~
Concours
Hmmm, my bad, I just assume saying Partner in the title would have been
misleading as many peoples will understand this from the title as Business
Partner, co-founder , Vcs.... my bad. that's why I'm talking about partner in
my text.

~~~
seiji
The term "significant other" can help you here.

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NEPatriot
I deal with it by setting aside time. Setting a date night. And agreeing ahead
of time that we will spend 3-4 nights/week together.

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bradleyland
If it hasn't you're not really a startup.

