When you take over a family business you never wanted

“I never said I wanted this. But I never said I didn’t, either.”

Sunday evening. The children are asleep, and on the table is an open laptop with Monday’s figures. Fifteen years ago he thought he would “help out for a few years” in the business until his father got better. Then his father stayed at home, the staff asked who would sign off the wages, and somebody simply had to. Today he is managing director of a company he never chose. The business is doing well. He, though, has the feeling that he is living a life somebody else wrote.

I wrote about what it is like when your path is set at birth in Successor or hostage? When your path is set at birth. This post is about those who have already stepped onto that path — and stayed on it. About taking over a family business that was not a choice but something that happened. About the loyalty that holds, the resentment that smoulders, and the question that turns up somewhere between forty and fifty: is this really my life?

A decision nobody made

When people describe how they took over the family business, they rarely describe the moment of decision. They describe circumstances: a parent’s illness, a crisis, a sibling leaving, a death in the family, the sense that “there was nobody else”. The decision did not happen in a single moment — it accumulated from a hundred small steps, none of which seemed decisive.

It is striking how rarely successors actually want to return to the family business when they have a choice. The international GUESSS study, which in 2011 surveyed students from business-owning families in more than twenty countries, found that fewer than seven per cent intended to take over the family business straight after their studies. Five years after graduating, around twelve per cent planned to. The great majority, in other words, imagined a different path. And yet many of them later end up in the business — for one reason or another.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Many people return to the business because they have found something of their own there. The problem arises when the question “do I want this?” was never asked. What was never chosen is also hard to truly accept.

Four reasons why you stay

The family business researchers Pramodita Sharma and P. Gregory Irving described four different bases from which a successor remains committed to the family business. From the outside they look the same — all four people turn up at work every day. From the inside they are very different.

The first basis is affective: I want to, because this work matters to me. The second is normative: I ought to, because my parents, my family and the people who work in the business expect it of me. The third is calculative: I stay because leaving would cost me too much — status, inheritance, security. The fourth is imperative: I stay because I cannot see what else I could do.

Sharma and Irving proposed that only the first basis brings an engagement that goes beyond mere duty — a willingness to think about the business even when nobody demands it. The other three hold you in place, but they do not give you energy. If you recognise that you are in the business mainly because of the other three, that is not a verdict. It is, however, useful information about why you are so tired even though “everything is going well”.

Invisible loyalties

Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, one of the founders of family therapy, wrote about invisible loyalties. In his view, every family has a kind of ledger of debts and merits that is passed down from generation to generation. A child who received life, care and opportunities from their parents feels they owe them something. That is not an illness — it is the foundation of belonging. But when the debt is unspoken and unlimited, a child can spend their whole life paying it off.

A family business is often the most tangible form of such a debt. Dad “built all this from nothing”. Mum “sacrificed her best years”. Grandfather opened the workshop after the war. Who are you to let it go under? These questions are rarely spoken aloud. Often the child asks them of themselves before anyone has asked anything.

I wrote more about what we inherit besides genes and property in What I inherited besides genes: a family’s emotional legacy. With a business you took over, the emotional legacy is very concrete: you hold the keys, the company stamp and responsibility for people. Loyalty is entered in the companies register.

Resentment with no address

People who took over a business they did not want often describe a feeling that is hard to name. It is not quite anger, not quite sadness. It is something that builds up slowly, with every Sunday spent at the computer, every holiday that ends with a phone call, every “but you’re good at this” from a parent.

We often call this feeling resentment. Resentment is the emotion that remains when we have not told someone that something hurt us — or when we did tell them and nothing changed. For a successor it is especially hard, because it has no clear address. Whom should he be angry with? His father, who fell ill? His mother, who said “it can’t be done without you”? The sibling who moved abroad? Himself, for never saying no?

Because resentment has no address, it often spills elsewhere: onto a partner who “doesn’t understand the pressure”, onto the staff, onto the children. Or it turns inwards, into tiredness, cynicism, a sense of emptiness. It matters that you do not take resentment as proof that you are a bad son or an ungrateful daughter. Resentment is a message: something of yours has gone unheard.

“But you chose it yourself” — a short conversation

This is how a conversation between partners late in the evening might sound (composite, not a real person):

“You’ve been quiet all evening again.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired. You chose to take it over yourself.”
“I didn’t choose. I just didn’t leave.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. But there is one.”

From where she stands, his partner is right: nobody forced him. But he feels something else — that between “choosing” and “not leaving” there is a gulf, and in it lies everything he never tried. That difference matters. And as long as it stays unspoken, the couple’s conversations go round in circles: she does not understand why he complains about something he accepted, and he cannot explain why he feels trapped.

From “I have to” to “I chose”

In self-determination theory, the psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan described how the same activity can spring from very different sources of motivation. You can do it because someone is pushing you or because you fear the consequences. You can do it because otherwise you would feel ashamed or guilty — they call this introjected motivation. Or you can do it because you see why it matters and because it has become part of who you are.

Research within this theory repeatedly suggests that introjected motivation — the kind driven by guilt and shame — is linked to more strain and less satisfaction than motivation in which a person sees their own meaning. In other words, it matters why you do something. Two successors can run a business equally well, yet one is fired up by it and the other is burning out.

For a business you took over, this means something that often surprises people: the answer is not always to leave. Sometimes it is to decide again — this time consciously. To ask yourself, for the first time, the question you never asked, and to allow yourself the answer “no” as well. Only if “no” is possible does “yes” carry weight.

This process lies at the heart of what in systemic therapy we call becoming independent — not physically leaving your parents, but being able to hold your own view and stay in the relationship. More on this in Differentiation: how to stay yourself and stay in the relationship.

Where to look for meaning

Viktor Frankl wrote that a person can bear almost any “how” if they have their own “why”. For a successor, the problem is often that the “why” is borrowed. Your father’s meaning — to build something from nothing, to survive, to prove himself — is not necessarily yours. You did not build from nothing. You inherited.

Finding your own meaning in an inherited business therefore often means finding the part of the work that is yours. Perhaps it is not the numbers but the people you employ. Perhaps it is running the business differently from how your father would. Perhaps the meaning lies outside the business — in the family it supports, or in something you are building alongside it yourself.

Sometimes, though, there is no meaning in the business and there will not be. That is a painful realisation, but it is not a catastrophe. It can be the start of a conversation about what a handover, a sale or a different role in the business might look like. I write about the decision not to carry on in Allowing yourself another path: the decision not to carry on.

Exercise: two stories about the same business

For this exercise you need an hour and a quiet place. It works best in writing.

1. Write the story of loss. What did you want before you took over the business? What did you never try? What do you regret? Do not censor or justify. This story has a right to exist.
2. Write the story of choice. Which moments in recent years were truly yours? When did you do something your father would not have done, and it turned out well? What would you miss if you left tomorrow?
3. Finish the sentence “I stay because…” five times. Next to each answer, note whether it is “I want to”, “I ought to”, “I would lose too much” or “I see no other option”. Notice which dominates.
4. Choose one thing in the coming month that is yours. A small decision in the business that you make your own way, or something outside the business that you do for yourself.
5. Talk about it first with someone who is not in the business. A partner, a friend or a therapist — not a parent first. The conversation with your parent comes later, once you know what you want to say.

Both stories are true. The aim of the exercise is not for one of them to win, but for both to be given room. Resentment often eases only once the loss has been acknowledged — not before.

When the answer is not acceptance

This post is not saying that you have to find meaning in the business you took over and stay. For some people the healthy decision is exactly the opposite: to leave, to sell, or to hand over the leadership to someone else. Holding on in a place that drains you is neither maturity nor loyalty — it is just a slow loss of yourself. I do not advise on the legal, tax or business aspects of such a decision; for that you need experts in those fields.

Nor is every kind of tiredness a sign that you are on the wrong path. Sometimes it is burnout that would catch up with you in any job with the same workload. Sometimes it is depression, which deserves a check-up with your GP or a psychiatrist. Sometimes it is the ordinary midlife question that people who chose their profession themselves also ask — more on this in The midlife crisis is not a cliche: what is actually happening. If your thoughts keep circling around it being better if you were not here, do not wait: in Slovenia, call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (7 pm to 7 am), the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 (24 hours), or 112 in an emergency.

And finally: not every family wrongs a child by wishing they would carry on. Parents who hope their child will take over the business are not necessarily selfish. Often they simply cannot imagine a different future. Two people can each have a legitimate wish — and neither of them is the villain.

How therapy can help

In therapy you can look at where your “I ought to” comes from and whose voice is speaking when you tell yourself you must not leave. You can give room to resentment without letting it define you, and to grief for what you did not get to live. You can prepare for the conversation with your parents that you may have been putting off for years.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, an important part of the work is understanding how patterns are passed down between generations. In families with a business, it often turns out that the father did not entirely choose the business either — that he was proving something to his own father or running from the poverty he had known. A longer, 90-minute session, A Look into the Past, in which we draw a genogram together, is designed for exactly this kind of view. I also work with English-speaking clients in person in Ljubljana. It is often a relief to see that your story is not yours alone.

What to remember

• Taking over a family business is often not a decision but something that accumulates from circumstances — which is why it is hard to truly accept.
• You can stay in the business because you want to, because you ought to, because you would lose too much or because you see no other option — but only the first gives you energy.
• Resentment with no address is a sign that something of yours went unheard, not proof that you are ungrateful.
• The way out of feeling trapped is not necessarily leaving: sometimes it is deciding again, this time consciously — and allowing yourself a “no” as well.
• Tiredness can also be burnout or depression — in that case, seek help from a doctor, not only answers in the family story.