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?

[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.

[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

[terryjsmith]

I second this; my wife and I are living apart from each other for a year while I work and she finishes school and I find this is especially important. We talk when/if we can almost every night, see each other twice a month (once I go to her and once vice versa) and on Sunday mornings we put the webcams on and one of us walks the other through a recipe for breakfast.

Edit: For long distance, don't forget to see the same movie on the same night and then talk about it afterwards.

[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.

[mitchellhislop]

With balancing college and startup life, I have done almost the exact same thing with my girlfriend. We even use shared GCals to manage all this, so that either of us can see if the other if free

[Concours]

This sounds great, I'll try this. Very great advices.

[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.

[Concours]

She will probably kill me if I pick my laptop for a trip or to a coffe, won't work for me. She hates computers at this point.

[petervandijck]

What are the not so obvious ones?

[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.

[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!).

[Concours]

Yeah, I'm already using this, she wish a 50 m long swimming pool, so I just use to say, if you really need the pool, you know, I have to work hard for that, it's working for not complaining about me spending too much time behind the computer, but not always.

[jaxn]

Or maybe that the late nights now mean a chance at vacations in the future. You might be one of the lucky ones.

[retube]

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

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[subpixel]

Your question falsely assumes that HN readers are all male.

[jpablo]

You could also say that his question falsely assumes that HN readers all have a startup.

The thing is the question is just being asked to the subset of HN readers that are male and have a startup.

[gamache]

Women can have wives and girlfriends! (It's true, there are pictures on Google)

[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.

[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.

[bradleyland]

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