Table of Contents
Life Summary of a Startup Founder
Startup founders are often busy solving great business and technology challenges. The founders are to work against so much of odds, from hiring, to financing, to marketing, to technology, that they seldom have any time for themselves. Startups are 24×7, 365-day affairs, for years if not decades. During the time one is building the startup, one almost suffers a relationship struggle parallel to the struggle of the startup. Many founders end up broken not only by the business but also by their relationships. Why it is so hard for the founders to balance their love life?
The Main Reasons Behind Love and Relationship Failure of Startup Founders
- Sustained Prolonged Stress.
- Financial Crunch.
- Lack of Time.
- Emotional Trauma.
- Neglect for things other than business.
- Responsibility of too many people.
- Misplaced expectations from the partner.
Sustained Stress
90% of the time a startup fails. However, it takes away a minimum of 2 years of a founder. The initial years of a startup are so hard, that it takes a life toll on any person. The founder can hardly have any sleep. The founder is always under extreme stress. He is under sustained prolonged stress for a very long period of time. Their body gets weak and he is left with no energy. He feels tired and wants to sleep in whatever little time he gets for himself.
Therefore the founder has no time for dating, wooing partners, or romantic talks. The founders lose interest in literally every other thing other than the business.
He doesn’t have time to talk, doesn’t have an affinity for news, any affinity for entertainment. All his entertainment is his work. Even when he talks, he talks about the startup.
Financial Crunch
There is always a crunch for money. Even when the startup is funded, there is pressure to grow the business. Financial crunch is one of the commonest problems or hazards that come with startups. You never have enough money to run the business. You are constantly trying to arrange for the money to pay salaries to your employees. You hardly take any salaries. You have to manage your family also with little or no money. When you see your friends posting photographs of dining out in hotels or going on vacations, you often feel left out.
This is the same with the partner of the founder. In the modern society of comparing and complaining, your partner often compares her life with the life of others. The partner often hears sympathy from the others as to how much she is suffering. All these talks by the others, and social media posts of fake happiness, and no time from you convince her that you do not care for her. Leave apart gifts, she convinces herself that you are incapable of even meeting her basic needs.
Lack of Time
Arranging for the funds, solving business problems, solving hiring challenges, meeting the ends, building and testing technologies, pitching, meeting people for partnerships, and there are too much of threads on any given day. You just do not get any time for yourself. It becomes irritating at some times. Then you just convince yourself to fight one more day.
All along, you remain so busy with the business, that you have no awareness of the person who is close to you. You can’t decode her emotions, you can’t see pain or happiness in her. You can’t identify and address her concerns. You rarely have time to talk. Even when you talk, you talk about the business. You don’t want to deal with daily small routines.
Finally, she feels neglected, isolated, and parted. She feels disconnected. She thinks she has no value in your life. She feels unacknowledged. She feels is not needed. She sees you as a struggling selfish individual in pursuit of a dream.
In the initial years, she stands by you. But, there is a limit to everyone’s patience. Over time she feels that she is wasting her best years of life waiting for your love and success. She convinces herself that you just do not have what it takes to be successful, and she gets worried about the future.
Emotional Trauma
The startup is all about handling rejection. A founder goes through daily rejections, from the investors, partners, clients, friends, family, and partners. Due to fund crunch, many employees leave. He feels rejected by people. Business is hard to come by at the initial phase. He feels betrayed, cheated, and rejected. Dealing with such a great volume of rejection consistently by each passing day is hard.
These rejections create an ocean of negative emotions in the founder. These negative emotions become frustration after some time. The frustration is turned into anger. The founder gets frustrated even with the smallest of things. So, you the founder start reacting to small triggers. You appear as an unhappy irritating person. Your partner doesn’t feel comfortable accompanying you anywhere(not that you are too interested to even leave your desk). Your love partner slowly loses interest in interacting with you because you have no positivity to spread.
Neglect for Things Other Than the Business
There is huge peer pressure for entrepreneurs, to succeed, to succeed big, to succeed fast, and show people that they can do it. When you are with your love partner or life partner, you are lost in thoughts. If you are married, you forget even the basics like paying electric bills. It gets harder with each passing day.
You forget the school fees. You forget the important events. You do not have time to attend family functions. You do not want to participate in any family events. It is all screwed and skewed.
More and more you will appear to be selfish, caring less and less about your partner, and small things in life. Even when she brings up the topic you end up saying “I am doing this for you guys only”.
Responsibility of Too Many People
A founder has to take on a lot of responsibilities. Not only the team but also the partners, vendors, clients and customers, and investors. Everyone has different sets of concerns and challenges. It is not only dealing with rejections, or arranging funds, when people back up a founder, and decide to stand by the founder, the founder feels the responsibility of each one of them. You feel that you do not have one family now. You have several families to take care of. You feel the pressure of making all these people successful.
Once your priorities are shifted from one partner one family to hundreds of families, your own family feels neglected. Not that it has any significant truth behind it, you still care for your family, but the exclusivity is diluted.
You may see him avoiding you more and more, going into a shell. He may appear abnormal, not smiling or crying the way he used to. He will appear insensitive to your needs.
On the other hand, this entrepreneur will expect more and more of your support. He will want to share his struggle story, without any importance to yours.
Misplaced Expectations from the partner
Being rejected so much, under so much pressure, stress and struggle, you expect your partner to understand you, and stand by you. You have no time to understand her. It is unidirectional expectations. You want your partner to give you positive emotions, handhold you, and be empathetic to you. You often forget that empathy is not a one-way street. You end up expecting sympathy.
You want your partner to take care of the small things, while you are taking care of the problem for humanity. You forget that by doing so, you are reducing the growth of your partner. You often lose the sense of the basics that every human being needs to grow spiritually and intellectually. You expect your partner to mother you, and take care of you as she would of her son. You forget that even she needs a man to hold her.
Conclusion
You appear immature, irresponsible, ignorant, irritating, intimidating, ideological, instead of being practical, empathetic, smiling, and charming, considerate. You appear too invested in your own dream to care about the real world around you. You have the responsibility of the entire world, but not the person living with you.
Your emotions are for your business, investors, and customers, but not for the partner. Your quest remains to arrange money for the employees, not for your family. All your smiles are for the team, and tears are for the partner. You are invested in yourself and not the partner. The partner is just an extension of you. You denounce the individuality of the partner. You feel that when you will be successful, it is your family who would be benefited.
You feel that you deserve love, respect, acceptance, acknowledgment, admiration, and adulation for all the sacrifices you are doing. It is all about you. So, you often end up living with “you”.
You need to become more conscious and aware of yourself and the environment to grow your love life, along with growing the business. Read our article on awareness and consciousness to understand how to improve them.
