How to Save Your Marriage from Your Startup
Heavy work pressures can infect any long-term relationship. Here’s how to stop the rot — whether you’re a CEO or not, and whether you work in a startup or not
It took a question from my three-year-old son one morning at breakfast to make me realise how much harm my startup was doing to my marriage. The night before, I’d come home late from work (as usual), tired (as usual), stressed (as usual), and in a filthy mood. And I hadn’t been very nice to my partner.
For the past two years, as I’d been building a startup and taking it towards an IPO, she’d been a model of calm, patience and kindness. But when my behaviour finally crossed a line, she wasn’t left with many options. I was in the kitchen, being mean and nasty about something, and stepped outside into a closed-in patio to smoke a cigarette (yes, the need to do that was a symptom too). So she… locked me out. Then she opened a window on to the patio, looked me in the eye, and said, “You can come back in when you’re ready to be reasonable.”
But I wasn’t ready; I was angrier than ever. And I took out my anger on the nearest thing: a group of plants in pots that we’d nurtured together into a tiny but beautiful private jungle. I picked up a pot, dropped it on the tiled patio, and watched her reaction as it shattered into shards, spreading earth everywhere. Then I picked…
