She's understood it long enough to let you pursue the dream of your life at great costs for her, maybe now it's time for you to do some sacrifice for her and go work for someone?
You're not the first one to have to do that and, you know, survive.
Seriously.
So did one of the commenters: [1]
Sorry it didn’t work out.
“I can’t go much longer without a paycheck. But, I can’t imagine working for somebody else. I wish my wife understood that.”
Change your perspective on this.
I’m a co-founder of a successful and growing business. I’ve got around $2M liquid and who knows what on paper. I’m decently rich headed for pretty damn rich. In the last week, I’ve changed light bulbs, picked up bugs with my hands (no tissue close, wanted to get it and call the bug guy before people saw it), swept the floors, took box trash out to the dumpster, cleaned some toilet stuff (will leave it there) and just generally served people on my team in any way I could. I find ways to do it because they are talented, could work anywhere and choose to work here. So I serve them. Also, I have deep relationships with them and I love them. I want to win with them.
From your words, I worry that you don’t understand the point of the game you are playing. If you want to run any successful team be it a business, a non-profit, a 5th grade little league ball club – you are servant in chief. Others exist in the world. You aren’t really ever by yourself or for yourself. Work on being and building a team. Make meaning and tie it to production. Start by being the best teammate you can be. Being an employee in an intense and well managed company is a good place to learn this skill.
To me the key point was this:
If you want to run any successful team…you are servant in chief.
Most managers completely miss the "servant in chief" bit.
[1] http://startupsanonymous.com/story/were-shutting-down-and-im...
Build the cash reserves, get back on a stable financial ground and go ahead and try again.
Sometimes the myopic tendencies of these stories really drives the point of how self-absorbed one can get with this. Working for someone else likely means a nice office, nice chair, nice desk, nice computer and monitors and the ability to sit down for 8-9 hours a day and use your mind and likely a decent salary.
I think for the vast majority of people in the workforce that do don't software development, that's not surviving but thriving.