Why It Is Impossible For (Most) Entrepreneurs To Have Girlfriends | Hacker News Reader

Why It Is Impossible For (Most) Entrepreneurs To Have Girlfriends

stevenmoody.com

15 pointssmalter10 comments

My challenge isn't finding a girlfriend... it's that I've been married for 20 years. I have to ease my spouse into the career change, without upsetting her more than necessary. That means I can't be careless. I'm selling to her as much as to investors or to customers.

This is the kind of difficult dance that happens with long-term relationships. On one hand, if I was given a choice between her and the company, I'd choose her, in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if she made me choose, it would probably ruin our marriage. She sees this is something I must do, so she lets me do it and supports me as much as she can. I am obligated to be as respectful of her concerns as I can be.

Assuming, of course, that "entrepreneurs" are a: male, b: heterosexual, and c: unmarried.

Surely, any decent programmer knows the difference between "majority" and "all", and the algorithmic failures that occur when you mistake one for the other.

The author is writing with heteronormative patriarchal assumptions in his ("Steven's") language, which is unfortunate. There are people doing good work to challenge this when it is institutional.

Most of this advice applies to any relationship, though.

I wouldn't be so polite as to call it "unfortunate". It's lazy, and it's careless in the kind of way that leads to serious error.

As I pointed out, lots of entrepreneurs (including me) are in committed relationships when the urge to create a new business strikes, and face entirely different challenges. That goes beyond the heteronormative, patriarchal language failures and into a general failure to understand real people.

Maybe I am being overly diplomatic, but this author is responding to an article that includes the following paragraph:

  Women are attention whores. They hear you have money, and they flock to you.
  They can’t understand that the entrepreneurial life comes first. You
  might have to cancel your dinner plans. You might forget an anniversary.
  Drop a ho, your priorities are straight.

This article could easily withstand some combination of s/girlfriend/relationship/ and s/girlfriend/partner/ other than that its title is directly addressing the original article. The original article is fundamentally conceptually broken.

(insert political reference about a primary challenge from the left. pick your battles?)

Option D: reject society's model and find your own path

Us Queers have been doing this since, well, ever. Even in places and times were people were not open about sexuality, we still found each other and had long lasting relationships. Since we were already working outside of the societal norm, this made other options even easier. I generally find that LGBT+ folk are more openly into kink, and polyamorous relationships are fairly common, in a number of different forms.

Just like in startups, constraints on relationships are a blessing, not a curse. The difficulties and differences are not what will make relationships work, but what in fact will ultimately make them /work/.

Because I don't have enough spare time/energy to

A) Get out and find one.

B) Spend time with her.

I thought so too, but then

A) I found one.

B) I enjoyed being with her enough that I made more time for her.

Generalizing from my experience, if you just take a chance you'll find that you have more time than you think and that the time you aren't spending on other things isn't missed.

Good to hear ! How did you manage A :)

"Why It Is Impossible For (Most) Entrepreneurs To Have Girlfriends"

uh..because they're geeks?

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