Ask HN: Choice of (romantic) partner - big impact?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629139

by throwme • 16 years ago

21 16 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi all, since my question and content is a wee bit personal I've decided to post using a temp.

I am a 28 years old male and, as many here, both interested in and involved with tech and startups. I am currently working daytime as a coder, and spend rest of the time coding/cofounding.

I have for a while now dated a girl, stunningly beautiful and eternally caring. Very much a dream come true for a mother in law... Except for one thing. One tiny yet life altering thing. She is uneducated. Very much so. She never finished elementary school (she's 21). Now don't take this the wrong way. Most of my friends don't have a higher education - that's not really of importance. I find the character beneath far more important than a piece of document. In this case though, with the girl - it makes it very difficult to communicate and share ideas. Basic math, observations about languages, cultures, history and so on - there's nothing there. What breakes my heart and has kept me from loosing interest in her is that she is very interested in learing. (Reason for her not finishing elementary is not because she couldn't handle it or dropped out. There were other issues. Family issues)

Sure we have fun and all but sometimes I feel the need to be understood. My cofounder does, perhaps that's enough?

My qustion isn't - what do you think I should do. That one I can handle myself. Rather - maybe you guys could share some thoughts and stories about the relationship between your partner and your startup.

How big of an impact have they had and in what way?

DeusExMachina2• 16 years ago

I think that what a partner should give you is moral support, not technical one. Why are you in this relationship? Because you love her or because you want someone to support in your startup? You already said that your cofounder understands the tech part. Why should your girlfriend? She is there to (hopefully) fill other parts of your life that are not work related.

I had a girlfriend last here. She was 10 years younger than me and was studying music, so she did not understand anything about math, or programming, or markets, or startups. And she needed not to. I was happy with her, she gave me the support I needed in doing my work even we did not speak about anything technical.

If I was feeling bad about something in my work, I spoke with her about what worried me and my feelings, not the technical problems I had. Girls, and especially your girlfriend, are not interested in how things work, but in how you feel. They are not interested in solving problems, but in supporting you.

Leave to your girlfriend what they are their "duties", give her the place she deserves in your life and not in your job. For tech understanding you have your cofounder, friends, fellow entrepreneurs and HN.

pmjoyce• 16 years ago

Seriously? This is 2010 and you still think like this? Seems almost Victorian in attitude.

Girls, and especially your girlfriend, are not interested in how things work, but in how you feel. They are not interested in solving problems, but in supporting you.

I find it hard to see how this isn't a huge and offensive generalisation. My wife, for example, is substantially more mathematically able than I am (she's an actuary), what do you think her reaction to your comments would be?

Leave to your girlfriend what they are their "duties"

What does this even mean? What are his girlfriend's duties as you see them?

rickmode• 16 years ago

I take the comment "don't expect your partner to be an expert in your career; rather, expect support".

The comment's wording sounds a bit like "put women in their place", but I suspect that isn't the intent.

adammichaelc• 16 years ago

I disagree that girls don't want to understand how things work. Many do, and some get technical degrees and technical careers. In general, however, based on my own experience girls tend to be more interested in strengthening and building personal relationships, discussing and understanding feelings, and taking care of others. Personally, these things don't come naturally to me so it's something of a breath of fresh air to be around women who are like this; I think it's one of the reasons I was so drawn to my wife.

Like most things, you can't paint with too broad a stroke or else you miss the details and the exceptions, as the grandfather of my comment did.

p_h• 16 years ago

Some people may interpret your words in any way that can start a conflict, but I agree with what I think you intended to say. Of course there are plenty of women capable of handling mathematical and technical discussions, but even so, in a romantic relationship people relate to each other at an emotional level.

alexkiwi• 16 years ago

The impact is more of what you make it. My girlfriend is not technical at all and can barely use facebook. She has become my "usability expert", it's an awesome way of keeping her involved and she catches a good amount of my nonsense.

I definitely get your need to be understood, but leave the business side to your co-founder. My reference experience is that if somebody doesn't ask about your startup, they don't need to know.

Mz• 16 years ago

You might try looking at the stories behind Walmart and Habitat for Humanity. My understanding:

Sam Walton wanted big time success. His wife wanted to raise her kids in a small town. He felt he needed to go to the big city to get big success but he loved his wife. So he founded Walmart which was aimed at serving small towns.

Millard Fuller was a millionaire by age 30. At some point after that, his wife told him she wasn't happy with their lives and wanted a divorce. They had originally both been Christian and lived simpler lives and were happy at first and then it all became about the toys money could buy and she hated it. He gave away all of his wealth to keep the woman he loved and then founded Habitat for Humanity so they could live out their Christian values.

I'm sure there are other true life stories out there that would be relevant. Those are just two that come to mind off the top of my head.

temphn• 16 years ago

> Sure we have fun and all but sometimes I feel the need to be understood. My cofounder does, perhaps that's enough?

Yes. Life becomes a whole lot easier once you realize that girlfriends, by and large, are not into math, computer science, politics, or abstraction.

They're into concrete things like making sure you're well fed and clothed and that you've gotten enough sleep. That's really important, and your cofounder sure isn't going to do that for you. :)

corin_2• 16 years ago

Wow. Really?

corin_2• 16 years ago

Downvoted for not being sexist, fantastic!

AmberShah• 16 years ago

Forget about it. You aren't looking for a business partner or advisor, you're looking for a spouse with whom you will have children and a life forever.

I am married to a programmer (and am one myself) so you might think that we are always talking about it, but we have different focuses and sometimes feel like we are speaking different languages.

When we do talk about work, it is usually just in what happened and how we dealt with our co-workers, not specifics of how we technically implemented something. It's rare that we'll ask each other for technical advice or have a deeply technical discussion, although it does happen.

And now that we have a child, 90% of our conversations are about him, or our parents, or our friends (usually with kids too) or our house. Trust me: the tech startup scene might seem like your whole world right now, but that shifts completely once you have kids.

wendysiu• 16 years ago

What country is she from?

SHOwnsYou• 16 years ago

If you're having problems communicating (or being understood) now, that is a big indicator of what the future may hold.

You're only 28. The most important discussion you might be having is whether or not to have to children. Wait until more serious questions about how you two want your life to unfold, or (the even more difficult) estate planning to happen. Or the painful discussions dealing with aging parents, death of family/friends, and all the other things that people rarely need to have concrete discussions on in their 20s and 30s.

If you're having problems communicating about your passion, just wait until serious topics have to be thought about.

philwelch• 16 years ago

In my experience this isn't a problem. By and large, I don't communicate with my girlfriend about intellectual shit. However, we try very hard to communicate with each other about serious life issues, including the death of my mother, her medical problems, whether we want to have kids and if so how many, how to match our career and life goals so we can spend our lives together, and so forth. Communicating about that stuff and sharing intellectual observations are two entirely different ballgames.

PeterWhittaker• 16 years ago

I've been married for 20 years and have been through big companies, startups, and consulting.

IM(NS)HO, the most important thing between spouses is the ability to communicate. She may be supportive, loving, caring, and willing to learn, but the gap between your relative cultural awarenesses is substantial. Too substantial? I do not know, only you do.

You know how it is with your closest friends, the ones you've known forever: You say one or two words of movie dialog with just the right intonation and they smile or LOL or frown or cry with you, because they know exactly what you mean. ("Temba, at rest.")

Take that and multiply it by a Really Big Number (RBN): That is the lack of commonality in your communications. Your references to biblical exegesis, music theory, FPS or MMO, economic policy, etc., etc., etc., are all lost. You do not have that shorthand communication.

You'll make a comment, say, a literary metaphor, and she will be lost.

Multiply her loss by RBN when the two of you are out with your friends.

If, IF, the two of talk about this, and decide together that the two of you will support each other through thick and thin and work together to overcome this isolation, without ever, ever, EVER, being patronizing or condenscending, if, if, IF, then the two of you can make it work.

But it starts with that conversation. If she is sufficiently self-aware, she is aware of this gap. If she is a self-motivated learner, she will overcome it.

But the day you mess up and lord your superior cultural knowledge over her is the day you lose her. I don't think that one will be apologizable.

But then maybe none of this matters to her. Perhaps her interests lie elsewhere and she is so happy being with you while developing her own interests that this present gap will in time be fill in, covered over, by the new history the two of you share.

(As an aside, if she is a self-motivated learner, the two of you might talk very seriously about discreetly acquiring a lot of picture-book or graphic-novel versions of the Bible and classics of Western literature and science. Just a thought. But discreetly, so that others don't belittle her for learning from comic books.)

All of this assumes, of course, that she is interested in developing her own interests. If you are motivated, intellectual self-starter you will never be happy with a codependent breeder love-pet. You will want an independently minded motivated self-starter with her own interests. She doesn't have to start a startup, but she does have to start herself. And the two of you have to kickstart your kids done the right path too. That requires at least some shared culture, lest one of you lord over the other.)

Ask HN: Choice of (romantic) partner - big impact?

Related Stories