Couples Therapy
Many businesses frown upon relationships between co-workers. I love them. I have my reasons. As you may know, my partners Matt & Brooke are a couple— and the way I see it, I got a sick package deal.
I’ve seen the downsides of only half a couple working for a startup — I lived them myself with my ex. I’ll give you a few real examples from my personal experience: he got annoyed with my non-stop startup stories, he didn’t like me having my laptop open while watching tv together, and he resented me for preferring to work on a Sunday evening than going to yet another never-ending dinner with the in-laws. Perhaps worst of all was when he had too much to drink and mocked me for ‘wanting to change the world’. And if that isn’t enough, there’s always the chance your partner may not exactly have an appreciation for the low (or no) pay vs equity tradeoff — or the lack a safe cushy job security.
On the flip side, here are some of the upsides of not breaking up a working couple. This is easy because I can just tell you about Matt & Brooke: for instance, Brooke doesn’t mind when I ask Matt to fix a glitch on Friday night because she gets it, and we save money on team retreats since they don’t exactly mind sharing a hotel room. Most important though is the fact that they share a mission — startups are tough, you need your partners’ support. Oh and did I mention Matt & Brooke work really really well together?
I recently found some validation for my unpopular stance while watching the McDonald’s movie of all things. In the film they specifically seek out couples to open new location, stating that couples make the best franchisees.
Now here’s where things get a little unusual. A few months after Matt, Brooke, and I became a team, my boyfriend bought a duplex. I was renting a condo at Lansdowne at the time and the lease was coming up so he suggested I move into the unit next door so we’d be close, without jumping into living together too quickly.
I moved in next door, but really we spent all our time together on his side. I basically just used my unit as my office where Matt & Brooke would come over to work. At the time they were both living with their parents, Matt in the West end and Brooke in the East end.
Daniel has a cat. As we were planning to visit his family in Germany for the holidays we needed someone to feed the cat. I asked Matt and Brooke if they wouldn’t mind stopping by to check on her and they said no problem.
A couple months later we were leaving for a long weekend, so I asked them if they could take care of the cat again. Then I had an idea. It wasn’t exactly convenient for them to have to drive over every day, so I offered that they could just stay next door, in my unit, for the weekend if they wanted. They loved the idea, like a little staycation — at the office.
Our next trip was longer. I asked Matt & Brooke if they would stay over for a couple weeks. They seemed to love the idea. Win-win. When I got back we had a lot to catch up on so I suggested they stay a bit longer so I could easily just walk over to work with them when needed.
This was incredibly convenient. Days passed. I never asked them to leave. Weeks later, they message me on Slack, asking how long they could expect to stay. I spoke with Daniel and we agreed that this was a really productive setup and that since I wasn’t really using it anyway…
‘Why don’t you just stay?’ was my answer to them. ‘Seriously?’ That’s when I realized I’d kind of inadvertently just orchestrated them moving in together so I paused, told them absolutely no pressure if they weren’t ready to live together, but if they want to stay, they were more than welcome — consider it an XPR perk.
So they stayed. And though unconventional, this setup works incredibly well: they watch our cat whenever we are out of town (fairly often), we take turns putting out the trash, randomly have meetings at 10pm, and best of all — my commute is a 10 meter walk down the hall.
