We get it.  As an entrepreneurial couple, Gina and I understand what it is that pulls the relationship downward.  We go through it weekly - sometimes daily. 

As therapists, we know what is happening and yet we still find ourselves in the throes of emotional and psychological chaos as we work to provide for our family in our chosen manner.  Because we know these principles, we are able to work it out, but it is not easy and has tested us greatly at times.  Not to sound trite, but even though it is hard it is worth it.  Having a loving and committed companion to share the entrepreneurial journey is a great blessing.

I have always been an entrepreneur.  I did not always know it, or recognize it as such, but I have been building plans, sketching ideas, and mapping outcomes for years.  Maybe I get it natural. Maybe I get it from my dad who has been involved in one business venture or another for as long as I remember. His dad and his brother are the same.  Now I watch as my daughter has it as well – The entrepreneurial bug.

I admit that fighting the urge to launch off on my own and explore my dreams has not come easily and it has not come with a rags to riches success story.  It has cost us, dearly.  It has been hard.  At times I have resented and distanced myself from Gina because I felt she was the cause of my indentured service to the State jobs I found safety in, or holding me from jumping off the cliff too soon or too unprepared.  She is not an entrepreneur at heart.  My constant thinking scheming, dreaming, and lack of satisfaction with a JOB has been a strain on the relationship. 

30+ years ago, I watched the stress and frustration of entrepreneurial life take its toll on my own parents.  The rise and fall of income stability, long periods of my father’s absence from home, and the never-ending separation in the relationship ultimately spilt my parents and broke our home.

This can make you wonder “is this really what For Better or For Worse meant?”

Not long after Gina and I married, I watched again as the demands and the pressures of entrepreneurial start-up began to tear down her parents’ relationship.  Financial insecurity, long hours, and stress carried from office to home all take their toll on the ability for us to focus on the relationship.

As I have aged and the kids have come and are now going there is wisdom in finding a safe and stable career somewhere, especially if you are not fully committed to the work that building a successful and supportive business takes.  Or more specifically, if you are not ready for the toll this will take on your marriage.  We weren’t.  I mentioned to Gina when we started this project that maybe we needed to have a sub title or at least a disclaimer somewhere that says,

“If you are an entrepreneur
who is not married now,
DO NOT Get Married!!”

We both realized that this was not realistic, but still a truth that must be wrestled with. 

I am by training a Licensed Social Worker and Gina a skilled and trained Marriage therapist.  Knowing the tools and advice in this book, we still struggle at times to hold it together.  I think the only reason that the entrepreneurial way of life has not destroyed our marriage is that we never lost focus of what is real and most important and we never quit.  I think it was said best by these two quotes.

As I watched entrepreneurial drive and insecurity rip my parents apart and what that has done to my family, I made a commitment that I would never get a divorce.  That I would devote myself to my wife above any personal desire.  This has not been easy and it has cost me in the way of personal satisfaction with my professions and vocations.  My own inner desire and drive for the entrepreneurial life was continually stuffed and abated in order to attempt a “normal” and “safe” life as a salaried employee for the State of Idaho. 

During this time, I wrote a patent and was awarded the U.S. Patent Office seal of approval that my creation was unique.  A co-worker (a closet entrepreneur himself) and I constantly schemed and dreamed of ways to make money so we could break out of the indentured servitude of Civil Service.  The drive to create my own path and materialize my constant mental creation was consuming.

It is not that I did not like my jobs.  Working as a Professor at the University and teaching was incredible.  Watching the young minds mold and expand to take on new insights and develop their own ideas and realities is amazing.  The years I was a Felony Probation/Parole Officer was very rewarding with adrenaline filled moments that often led to stress for Gina.  There we times she called me and I would say in a hushed and direct tone, “I cannot talk to you right now!” (She always knew that meant there was an arrest, search, or some other potentially dangerous situation).  

The time I spent in Maximum Security prison in group with a sex offender is when I really gained my understanding that mindset, beliefs, held patterns of thinking, and old rules given to us from someone else are destroyers of success – nothing new to an entrepreneur. Watching how the slightest shift in mindset and belief patterns can change lives is amazing.  Sitting as a Felony Officer next to the offender in that group, seeing how the concepts and principles were changing him, changed me.  I loved teaching those concepts later in the local jail and watching young felons change their lives. The very same is true with your marriage and love relationship.  What you have locked onto, what you believe, about your love partner will impact your romance the same way that mindset alters business.

But…like most entrepreneurs, nothing about working for any type of bureaucracy, with its rules and insane thought processes, is a place I could really feel settled.  Few entrepreneurs are very well suited for this type of life.  The stifling, repetitive work was monotonous and I found that I was drowning is a sea of mediocrity, and continually goaded by the ever-present need for creativity and possibility which never left me.  The problem generally comes down to following rules – THEIR rules.  

No, entrepreneurs in general are not very good with compliance to norms and structure.  Not that we aren’t structured.  Successful entrepreneurs are very structured.  Clients play on our terms.  Access us on our schedule.  We script and outline every aspect of our day and business.  The unsuccessful ones don’t.  This is why neither entrepreneur does well in marriage. It is something with rules that must be followed, and if there is no structure, it falls apart.