I can write intelligently about entrepreneurial marriages having founded two start-ups while married. I can also talk about surviving hard times, having lived during a global banking crisis (“The Great Recession) of 2007-2008 when my business involved the housing industry and the worldwide pandemic when 85% of my business was in-person.
I can remember the day back in 2007. I grew to hate the sound of that phone ringing 8-12 hours a day. Until it stopped.
The phone simply stopped ringing.
One day past. Then two days went by. It never started ringing again.
For those of you who lived through that then, or are living through whatever this is now, you know one thing: panic.
I can tell you where I was that day, in 2007. And I can tell you where I was in March of 2020 because I knew something terrible was happening and that our businesses were one of perhaps millions worldwide that would never be the same again.
During the Great Depression, people didn’t know that was what they were living through. They just knew that whatever they once had materially, they no longer had. And yes, they blamed themselves. They blamed each other. Some jumped out of windows. I’m sure a few, like Jim Hollinger in the season 3 finale of the critical acclaim TV series, White Lotus, felt that their families couldn’t live without wealth either, and made horrific plans for their futures.
Then there were those who said “We’re not poor. We just don’t have any money.”
The entrepreneur’s marriage faces unique challenges during times like these, because we often have blurred lines between our business and our personal life. To say that work intrudes on personal time and space is an understatement. There are constant struggles not only on personal time but also space.
Our first business had desk chairs that literally bumped each other if we each got up at the same time. And we had literature we’d send to clients that took up more space than our pet supplies.
1. The Blurred Lines Between Business and Personal Life
And while most couples go to work and return home, our work was our home. For many couples I see a “mixed marriage” of one employee (or stay-at-home parent) and one entrepreneurial business owner. In these marriages the fights about time can be intense. One gets off at 5 pm, and wonders why their partner doesn’t.
Spending time together, meaningful time, becomes a stand-in for how you feel about the other and it can lead to bitter fights and disappointments.
And while researchers call it “boundary management,” for dual entrepreneurial couples there is no management. There is only taming.
Entrepreneurs as Employees
Many entrepreneurs make poor employees I believe, because they are often innovative perfectionists. I remember during my transition from Boston to San Francisco, before graduate school, I took a temp job in a bank with a roomful of other temps doing one of the most boring tasks in the world.
The manager told us it would take us 3-5 days to complete the task. I looked at the pile, and knew that was crazy. After a brief “time and motion” study with 5 people near me, I went in with my findings to the manager. “It is going to take at least two or more months according to my calculations.” He hired a lot more temps, and offered me a job. I declined.
I believe we make poor employees when we aren’t allowed to innovate, and we’re impatient with incompetence. If we think we can do something better, we’re often truth-tellers in a corporate world full of “business as usual.” And we’re horrible at “killing time.” I knew a man who’s job was to waste time because he had a set quota on a union job. Once he was done with the quota, he spent the rest of the time napping or listening to music in his truck. It was hard for me to fathom life under those conditions.
2. When Time Becomes Your Scarcest Resource
Research is clear that entrepreneurs work significantly longer hours (averaging 60+ hours weekly) than employees. The joke is “We work 60-80 hours to avoid working 40,” but it’s not a joke. During the highs of the start-up, especially if you are working with a well-functioning team, there is no better way to spend your life hours. That “go-go” phase of a business is exciting and rewarding. But for the spouse who’s not involved? It can often be like listening to your partner talk about his mistress. The time, attention, passion, obsession is directed elsewhere instead of you.
3. Financial Risk and Relationship Security: The Constant Balancing Act
Longitudinal research has demonstrated that financial uncertainty in entrepreneurship creates unique relationship stress that employees don’t experience. Of course there is the potential for job loss, but as a business owner, financial strain impacts not only you, and your family, but the lives of many others.
The distinction between what is “ours” and what is owed to the business is often blurred. During hard financial times, you are weighing what you can carve out as your family’s “wellbeing” versus the businesses “wellbeing.” Those interests often overlap as a failure of your business can dramatically impact your family’s current and future financial wellbeing.
But the lines are sometimes poorly drawn. Guaranteed outcomes aren’t provided. You can “fold” early to preserve your family’s wealth, and never know whether you made the right decision. You can borrow against your family’s wealth to insure survival during downturns and it can pay off handsomely. And of course you can borrow from lenders, but early on, these debts are often in your name anyway.
4. Self-Identity and Entrepreneurial Identity.
As mentioned earlier, our business had to close when circumstances beyond our control forced our hand. You can’t supply builders when no building is going on. Anywhere. And no banks will loan you a cent.
My partner and I experience the devastating impact of crushing business defeat that felt like personal failure. There is also the real terror of mounting financial debt, and the uncertainty of one’s future livelihood. Then there’s the mortgage.
We were facing something utterly overwhelming, that had no clear end in sight. An international banking crisis. A global pandemic. It was on an unimaginable scale. It wouldn’t end anytime soon.
I think, it pales to what we face now. I’ll talk about that later, but let’s talk about some common challenges most business owners face that directly impact their marriages.
5. Factors that Impact Marriages When You Run a Business
Decision Fatigue
Many business owners are faced with impossible decisions that have to be made in an ever-changing economic climate. Small or medium-sized business owners make decisions now that will take effect later. Here are a few:
Cash Flow Challenges
- Do you “front-load” inventory–import extra materials before the tariffs take effect?
- How will that impact working capital and cash flow management?
- How will those decisions impact your personal finances?
Competitive Pressures
- Will you pass costs on through pricing?
- Will you select lower-cost alternatives?
- Will you pass through these costs and face losing market share to competitors who do not?
Global Market Loss:
- Do you deal with international customers?
- Will they give up their trusted business relationship with you for more cost-effective local purchases?
- Will they hold you personally responsible for leadership decisions beyond your control?
Consumer Spending Decline:
- With stock market decline, many people are choosing to hold off on discretionary spending, thus reducing demand for your products or services.
- How long with this reluctance last?
- Should you reposition your services or products?
Household Financial Strain:
- You and your family are also consumers. How will this turn of events directly impact your household finances?
- What tension arise about basic living expenses?
- How do the needs of your children for vacations impact your business needs for all the capital it can get?
6. Tarriff-related Financial Stress and it’s Impact on Couples
Conflicts
- Couples will have different risk tolerances when facing crisis. One may want to take aggressive action while the other advocates for a more conservative approach.
- Financial stress often leads to longer working hours and less quality time as couples try to solve pressing business problems.
- Limits on personal resources dash plans for future projects like home remodels or dream vacations to celebrate important anniversaries or birthdays.
- Future planning challenges like retirement is bumped into the future.
- Mental health impacts like increased anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances and substance abuse can all be the result of a combined strain on business uncertainty and financial insecurity.
- Impulsive decision-making to relieve the strain, like extramarital liaisons, extravagant purchases or second mortgages that weren’t discussed. These become explosive and corrosive marital disputes that strain the very fabric of the marriage.
Communication Breakdowns
- Information Silos: Here partner stop discussing financial issues entirely. While tension remains, misunderstanding intensify as both have an incomplete understanding of the other’s situation.
- Blame and Criticism: Hindsight is always 20/20, and it is easy to see earlier business decisions that now seem unwise in the light of current tariffs.
- Dismissed Concerns: When tensions are high, some want to express their worries and concerns while the other copes by dismissing and minimizing. It’s hard to settle on a common agreed-upon reality. They’ll argue about what’s too “pessimistic” or “optimistic.” Each consults their favorite “experts” to prove their points.
- Catastrophic Thinking: I’ve also seen partners spiral into worst-case scenarios, with chronic conversations that heighten anxiety without producing decisions or solutions.
Power and Control Issues
- Financial Secrecy: One partner hides financial realities from the other to “protect” them or avoid confrontation. The reveal creates deep feelings of betrayal.
- Rigid Control Dynamics: Financial pressure causes one partner to exert excessive control over all spending. This can be taken to extremes. Their mate is labeled “financially irresponsible” for advocating ongoing expenditures like the housecleaner or lawn service.
- Decision Paralysis: Fear of making the wrong move in uncertain economic times prevents any decisions at all. Not only does this lead to missed opportunities, but also deep regret about outcomes that result from decisions not made.
- Inequitable Sacrifice Distribution: One partner makes all personal sacrifices while the other continues as before. I’ve seen one partner cut off the entrepreneur from shared wealth in an effort to “protect” the family’s assets. Inherited income can also create marital struggles.
Emotional Disconnection
- Emotional Withdrawal: The partner handling business operations becomes emotionally distant as they fixate on problems. Some people link their self-worth to their business success. They distance to prevent loss of status or esteem.
- Displacement of Anger: Business frustrations get redirected toward the relationship. Minor issues trigger disproportionate reactions. Threats of divorce are possible.
- Public Face/Private Reality Split: Maintaining a successful appearance externally while privately facing potential bankruptcy creates emotional exhaustion. Appearances can be costly including the pressure to keep up with charitable donations, social clubs or private schools and other activities for children.
- Competitive Suffering: Partners may engage in “who has it worse” competitions. Instead of reducing each other’s stress and being supportive of one another, they worsen it.
Resource Allocation Conflicts
- Competitive Business Priorities: Some household run two separate businesses with differing tariff impacts. Fight can occur as they compete for family resources rather than making unified decisions.
- Disproportionate Household Burden: The partner whose business is most affected retreats into work problems, leaving the other to handle all domestic responsibilities.
- Short-Term Thinking: Financial pressure causes desperate short-term business decisions that undermine long-term stability.
- Relationship Neglect: Couples indefinitely postpone quality time and relationship maintenance, viewing them as unaffordable luxuries during financial stress.
Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms
- Neglect of Self-Care: Both partners stop healthy habits like exercise and proper sleep in favor of overworking.
- Substance Use Increase: Stress drives increased alcohol consumption or other substance use as coping mechanisms.
- Comparative Envy: Resentment develops when comparing themselves to others less affected by tariffs.
- Identity Threats: Business cutbacks forcing identity-changing decisions create grief and identity loss that couples don’t process together.
The Current Climate
After living through an international banking meltdown (“The Great Recession”) and a global pandemic, you would think I’d be well practiced in financial challenges.
This one is different.
The first two seemed reality-based. The entrepreneur knew the storm ahead. The expectations were clear. This one appears first, self-inflicted and second, very national instead of international. And it has no clear path forward. Will it all blow over and will we head back to January’s highs in the financial markets? Will we face unprecedented alienation on the world’s stage?
Capitalism relies on predictability. Even if we knew we faced certain ruin during The Great Recession, we knew the direction. Now, every day brings new surprises.
Value What is Real
According to research, the average millionaire lost three businesses before they made their first million. And this happened all while remaining married to the same spouse.
There is a story I’ve never forgotten about a man on the witness stand on trial for a charge he considered deeply political. In response to a question from the prosecuting attorney, he chuckled. The judge got enraged and challenged him. “You aren’t taking this seriously!” The man replied:
“Your honor, I don’t take it seriously because it isn’t serious. The day I got married, that was serious. The day each of my children were born, those were serious events. This, your honor, is not serious.”
I’d like each of you to take your marriage and your family very seriously. Know that world events will impact you, sometimes dramatically. But what can ground you is the quality of your relationships with those closest to you. People lived through the Great Depression. People survived the Great Recession and the Pandemic. And we’ll live through this one.
But will your marriage?
You will no doubt invest greater time, attention, and energy to your business over the upcoming weeks and months. But never take your eye off what is truly valuable, truly serious.
If you find yourself caught up in any of these destructive patterns, don’t wait. Invest in your marriage.
And if we can help, don’t hesitate to reach out.
