The entrepreneur and the relationship: when all the energy goes into the company

It is nearly eleven. He is sitting on the sofa with his laptop open, answering a message that “can’t wait until morning”. She is standing in the living-room doorway, already in her pyjamas, and says: “I don’t know why I even ask whether you’re coming to bed.” She doesn’t say it angrily. She says it wearily. And that weariness is exactly what ought to stop him, but it doesn’t, because in his head he is already at tomorrow’s meeting.

Many couples in which one partner is building a company know this scene. It is not a bad relationship, and these are not people who don’t love each other. It is a relationship in which, slowly and almost imperceptibly, a third party has moved in — the company. In this post I would like to look at what happens to a relationship when all the energy goes into the business, why the partner is often the biggest silent investor, the one nobody ever enters into a spreadsheet, and which conversations are worth having before silence becomes a habit.

The company as a third party in the relationship

The psychiatrist Murray Bowen, one of the founders of family systems therapy, noticed that two people often relieve the tension between them by drawing in a third. That can be a child, a mother-in-law, a friend — or work. He called this a triangle. When things are uncomfortable between partners, one of them can withdraw into something more manageable, more predictable and more rewarding.

A company is an almost ideal third. It always needs something. It is always right when it calls you. And because it is about survival, responsibility for employees and money that is often the family’s money too, it is almost impossible to say that withdrawing into it is selfish. “I’m doing this for us” is a sentence founders mean sincerely — and one their partners eventually stop believing.

In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, we always ask about the other side too: is the company only the cause of the distance, or is it also a place a person escapes to from something they don’t know how to address in the relationship? The answer is often both. The company really does demand a great deal. But sometimes its demands are also very convenient, because they spare us from staying in a conversation that is harder than any meeting.

The partner as a silent investor

When founders talk about risk, they usually mean their own money, their own time and their own reputation. They rarely consider that there is someone beside them investing just as much, only nobody writes it down. The partner invests time — evenings, weekends and holidays that have shrunk or vanished. They invest money — savings, the security of the home, sometimes their own career, set aside so that someone could be at home with the children. And they invest emotions — hope, worry and patience that build up over months or years.

Unlike a formal investor, however, the partner has no seat on the board. They get no regular reports, have no say in decisions and often do not know how well or badly the company is really doing. When I thought about this inequality, it seemed to me that a large part of the tension couples describe lies precisely here: not so much that the founder is rarely at home, but that the partner has no sense of being part of the story they are paying for.

What happens when only half a person comes home

In the late 1980s, the psychologist Rena Repetti followed air traffic controllers — a profession with days of very different intensity. After demanding shifts they withdrew more at home: they talked less, showed less emotion and sought quiet. Interestingly, this was not necessarily bad in itself; when their wives allowed them this withdrawal and supported them, the connection was easily restored. The trouble begins when withdrawal turns from the exception into the rule.

For founders, the demanding shift is often every day. A person comes home physically, but their thoughts stay with the numbers, the team and the next deadline. The partner talks, he nods. A child shows a drawing, he says “great” and looks at his phone. The researcher Mina Westman called the way one partner’s stress spills over onto the other crossover. Tension that builds up in the company does not stop at the front door. The partner feels it, even without knowing where it comes from.

John Gottman, who spent decades observing couples, described small moments he calls bids for connection: a remark about something that happened during the day, a question, a touch, a smile. He found that couples who were still together six years later had turned towards such bids around 86 per cent of the time, while couples who had separated in the meantime did so only about a third of the time. Absence is not only about not being there. It is also about being there and not noticing the bid.

When the partner answers withdrawal with reproach or a withdrawal of their own, the founder experiences home as yet another demanding environment. At least the company is clear: there he knows what to do, and there he is praised for his effort. At home it seems that whatever he does is not enough. And so he withdraws further into work. The cycle turns by itself; neither of them wanted it, yet both feed it. I described a similar pattern in the post The anxious and the avoidant partner: why these two find each other.

Financial risk is emotional risk too

I won’t write about how much risk it is wise to take on — that is not my field, and it does not belong in this post. What I can write about is what risk does to a relationship. When a company is tied to family money, savings or the home, every business decision is also a decision about shared security. And when only one person makes it, the other experiences something closer to powerlessness than to trust.

People respond to risk very differently. Some come alive in uncertainty; others can’t sleep because of it. This is not a matter of courage or cowardice, but of how life has shaped us: what kind of security we had as children, whether we ever lived through the family running out of money, how our parents talked about debt. A founder who grew up with a self-employed craftsman for a father may experience uncertainty as a normal part of life. A partner who grew up in a family where losing a job meant months of fear will experience the same uncertainty as a threat.

When these two worlds meet, the founder often experiences the partner’s worry as a lack of faith in him, and the partner experiences the founder’s calm as irresponsibility. Both are partly right. And both need the other at least to understand their fear or their courage, even if they don’t share it.

Two worlds that can’t see each other

I notice that founders often tell their partners either too much or too little about the company. Some bring home every crisis, every dispute with an investor, every sleepless worry — and the partner becomes a kind of unpaid adviser who carries the whole burden but has no influence at all. Others say nothing, because they “don’t want to burden” them — and the partner learns that things were hard only once it is over, or never.

Both approaches have good intentions and both come at a cost. The first overwhelms the partner. The second shuts them out. What most partners really need is something in between: not every detail, but a sense of knowing where the family stands, and of being told when something important changes.

The Swiss researcher Guy Bodenmann studied stress in couples as something a couple copes with together — he calls this dyadic coping. His group’s findings are consistent: couples in which one partner tells the other they are under pressure, and the other responds with understanding or practical help, are more satisfied in their relationship and are less worn down by stress. The key is that the stress is shown at all. Whoever hides it takes away the other’s chance to help.

(a composite, not a real person)
“Why didn’t you tell me we didn’t get the investment? I heard it from your sister.”
“Because I didn’t want you to worry. I’ll sort it out.”
“But it’s not just the money I worry about. I worry because I don’t know what’s going on with you. When you don’t tell me, I’m alone in this — even if you think you’re protecting me.”
“…I really did think I was protecting you.”

Everything is in this short exchange: one person’s good intentions, the other’s loneliness, and a moment when, for an instant, they both see each other. Such moments are precious, because a different agreement can grow out of them. But for them to happen, someone has to be willing to stay in the conversation even when it would be easier to go back to the laptop.

Conversations worth having

None of these conversations can be had once and for all. Companies change, children grow up, financial circumstances turn. But in my experience, couples who talk about these questions regularly find each other more easily in a crisis, because they already share a language.

• Where is the limit of risk we both accept? Not as a business plan, but as an agreement about what we will not put on the line — the home, for instance, or money set aside for the children.
• What is our time, and what happens when it runs out? Which evenings and which parts of the weekend are protected, and who says when too many of them have been lost.
• How much do you want to know? Ask your partner what level of information they would like — don’t guess.
• What will we do if it doesn’t work out? Talking about failure won’t bring it on; it does say that the relationship will survive it.
• What have you put aside for me? A question founders rarely ask: which of their own wishes, career or plans has the partner set aside — and will they ever return to them.

To get started, you can use the tool Questions for a couple’s conversation in the knowledge base. If your conversations quickly turn into accusations, it is worth first reading the post From blame to needs: how a couple learns a new language.

Exercise: twenty minutes a week

The exercise is simple, but it requires you to take it as seriously as a meeting with clients. You can start this week.

1. Agree on a fixed time. Twenty minutes, the same day every week. Phones are in another room, the laptop is closed.
2. The founder says three sentences about the company. What was good this week, what worries him, and whether anything has happened that affects the family. No more — this is not a report, it is a window.
3. The partner says how it was for them. Not about the company, but about themselves: what they carried this week, what made them happy, where they missed the other.
4. Each of you names one thing you need next week. Concretely: “On Thursday I’d like to have dinner with you without phones,” not “I’d like you to be more present.”
5. End with something that isn’t about work. A walk, a cup of tea together, two minutes of silence side by side. Don’t let the conversation end on problems.

If it doesn’t go smoothly the first time, that is to be expected. If the exercise ends in an argument every time, that is information too — and perhaps a sign that it would be good to seek help from a third party that isn’t the company.

When the company isn’t the real problem

I want to be fair to the other side, too. Not every distance in a couple is caused by the company, and not every demand for more time is justified.

Sometimes the company is only the visible part of an older pattern. If one partner withdrew into work even before the company — into studies, a job, sport — they will keep withdrawing after the company is sold or closed. Then the answer is not less work but understanding why closeness is so hard for them. I wrote about how patterns travel from our family of origin into our relationships in the post Why we repeat the same patterns in relationships.

Sometimes the problem lies in different values, not in the schedule. If one partner wants a calm, predictable life and the other wants to build something big, neither of them is necessarily wrong. Some differences can be bridged with agreements; others first need to be acknowledged as real. That too is part of differentiation: being able to be myself while staying in the relationship.

And sometimes the company is behind nothing at all. If there is control, humiliation or violence in the relationship — economic, emotional or physical — it is not a consequence of stress at work, and stress does not excuse it. If you recognise yourself in this, the first step is safety: in Slovenia, the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence is available on 080 11 55; in an emergency call 112, or the police on 113.

Where couples therapy can help

Founders are used to solving problems themselves or with experts they hire for a specific task. A relationship, however, can’t be fixed by someone “solving” it for the two of you. In couples therapy we don’t look for a culprit — neither the founder who is never home nor the partner who “doesn’t understand”. We look for the pattern you have both been caught in, and try to understand what each of you is protecting within it.

It often turns out that the founder is not running away from the partner but from the feeling that he is not good enough at home, and that the partner does not reproach because they want control, but because they are afraid of losing him. When they hear this from each other, a conversation about schedules becomes a conversation about closeness. It also often helps if the founder comes to a few sessions alone and looks at what the company means to him — I wrote about the pressure founders carry in the post on founder anxiety. If the tension is already showing as constant exhaustion, it is also worth reading Burnout is not laziness: signs your nervous system is asking for a break and the explanation of chronic stress. I also work with English-speaking clients, so if English is the language in which you can best talk about this, you are welcome to write to me.

What to remember

• A company can become a third party in the relationship — a place to withdraw to because everything there is clearer than at home.
• The partner is a silent investor: they invest time, security and emotions, yet have no vote, no reports and no seat at the table.
• Stress from the company spills over into home, even if you never talk about it. Absence also lives in unnoticed bids for connection.
• Different attitudes to risk are often written into our life stories — understanding helps more than persuading.
• A short, regular conversation is worth more than one big conversation a year, when it is already too late.