Editor’s note: An entrepreneur’s life is not easy. It is a long grinding journey full of turmoil. Personal relationships often take a bashing and it is important to have an understanding partner to keep the boat sailing. Here is a perspective of a entrepreneur’s better half on the whole situation. Names have not been disclosed on request.
An entrepreneur would never ask his other half before starting of a new journey after reaching a goal. He (or she) would wake up with an idea in his mind or it would come to him at any given point of time. With that moment, he starts on this journey of following his (new) call. As a life partner, you are not involved most of the times in this sparking moments and you don’t usually have a say. That would be against the nature of a free-spirited entrepreneur. Ideas come at any given point of time and no one would know which idea he follows next. Often, without even knowing, you would find yourself in the first steps of the journey and then realize. When he reveals it, your intuition most of the times would have already told you. In the end, you know him better than he know’s himself.
Once he’s clear about his next step, he automatically starts the engine that is required to get on the road to make this ‘one thing’ happen. You would see him nights over nights thinking, making notes, calling people, running into endless rounds of discussions in coffee shops around the city. Joining meet-ups of every form to figure out the right people who can contribute or support him on this journey. He would be relentless and hardly find any sleep. He won’t spare a minute until he puts the dots together, until the right people are chosen and on it’s way with him.
If a relationship wasn’t already hard work, then you have no idea of the chaos that you get into with an entrepreneur. He’s always on the go, always in the hurry to finish a task, to do one more call, answer one more email.
There are times when he won’t talk, his mind and attention would be so fully occupied that he would hardly notice anything else. He would not switch off the laptop in the night and run out without breakfast as the next meeting is already waiting for him. When starting a company, there is a lot that he needs to pay attention to. You would have had no idea unless you’ve been on that journey with him. You even start picking up tasks for him in case your background allows you to help. You will be even surprised how even an experience in a different field can help you to get things done for him. You’re the one with the outside view as you don’t sit over the project 24/7 and can initiate one or two sparks. Don’t get discouraged if he doesn’t want your help. He just doesn’t sees it. Through living with him (or her), you start breathing his ideas too and you will develop a valid opinion too. Anyways, you’ll end up falling in love with the idea and will make them your own. His journey becomes yours in a very different way. You’ll learn more about life and yourself than you could have imagined before.
He will use long weekends to finish pending tasks, while you may want to have a long drive holding hands and dreaming in the middle of nowhere. You’ll have to show understanding on each and every level and I mean every – his business, his friends, family, his team, investors and himself. He won’t ask you to pick up this task, nor he would go without you, it’s just that his mind is always working on something else. You’ve to bring up all the strength to run all the shores behind him, hold the family together, your relationship and yes, yourself. There are times when your patience will be stretched beyond limits without him even recognising it. The only advice I can give you, go on with your life and your love for him. He won’t know it maybe during the journey or in specific moments, but he needs your support. No matter how many people praise his efforts and no matter who gives him a kudos for this great idea, it’s always your support that means the most. You’re the one who reminds him of his overall goal. If he stumbles, you’re the one who puts him up on his feet on a bad day, you’re the one who believes in him when he feels that he’s losing the biggest game in his life. That’s when he needs to hear you the loudest of all. I hope before you met him, you had opportunities enough to practice how to cheer 
And if we were to talk about qualities, you’ve to learn to listen more than you talk. Because he is the one who will keep talking, improving his presentation skills, talking out loud all his ideas, brainstorming, repeating his meetings minutes and to do list, listing out all his hiring challenges and client queries. In case you’ve the feeling he will forget something that he mentioned, then keep it like me and write a reminder e-mail. It might get unnoticed in his full inbox, but in some cases he will appreciate it.
I could go on and on… In the end one thing is for sure, all entrepreneurs are workaholics and they stay it throughout their lives. They work so much that it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like who they are and what they do. They feel alive when they work. If you don’t buy into that part your life together won’t end up very happy. But what you can do and have to do, because he won’t see it, help him to understand that life doesn’t only happen in front of the laptop or when you check another ‘to do’ off the list. There are moments that will give him strengths that won’t happen in his office. He won’t know this and that’s why you are here! You help him to fall in love with LIFE! You remind them that when he gets the next round of big funding or sell the business, that it doesn’t mean only to invest again in the next big idea, but also to donate some or recharge on the long overdue trip to Bhutan and come back with a fresh mind to jump on the next project. You remind him that it’s great to have goals, but they are the details. Your vision is the ultimate dream and you help him keep dreaming. Always keep dreaming together.
All said and done, his entrepreneurial journey works out better with you on board. He needs a net under him, (believe me he will find it out or he knows it already) and perhaps the only one who can ever provide that is a wife.