Are you in your twenties? Are you an entrepreneur? Did your friends, advisors, and colleagues tell you it’s time to build your own life and stop worrying about having calm and having children? Is this especially the case for entrepreneurs?
That makes sense, doesn’t it? This is the only time in your life when you don’t have a tie, a mortgage, and a child to support. This is the only time you can do anything really ambitious. And face it, you’re not ready, anyway. You are busy building your business and understanding who you are and what you want. You lie down regularly. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a “life of love”.
And everyone around you agrees. all! Now is the time to live! They moved to New York. Either San Francisco or another city. Or Palo Alto. Or Boston. It has a rational purpose of building something. This is a noble cause. Nothing is more professionally satisfying than building something. Something you love. Something that “stands behind”.
“But ... there was this girl. This guy Um, screw it in. You’re busy. There’s something more important.
This is the problem: I know you. You are probably one of the many people I have taught and hired. He explained several times that he was so busy with work that he didn’t have time to get to know someone (I’m your crazy aunt, but I don’t think so). This is a complete fallacy. Work and relationships are incompatible. (Ask Mark Zuckerberg.)
The reasons are: Like programming and management, finance and marketing, relationships have a learning curve. They need to learn the basics of “relationship giants” (yes, I made that word): how to deal with sexual etiquette, mediocre, how to schedule and make the right plans, The person who pays for dinner, or the person who cooks. These are the basics. And if you learn them in your thirties, it will be much more difficult.
In a few years, no matter how young you feel (30 years old anyway?), You are approaching middle age and not as adaptable as before. Your body does not react in the same way. I have a knee problem that didn’t exist when I ran the track as a sophomore. The same liquor caused many times more hangovers than before, so I can’t go out until 4 am. And you’ll never appreciate a nice, soft pillow anymore. And if you think you can stop these things with diet and exercise, you should probably buy a good book on the aging process or find a professional athlete in your thirties to talk to. You talk to a massage therapist about bone density and the dietary supplements you need. These things can be mitigated, but not completely avoided.
But it doesn’t matter
It’s important to note that 30 (or 32 or 35) is not the age at which you want to try a serious relationship for the first time. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to build meaningful and sustainable relationships and keep them healthy. Go beyond the basics — how to talk about sexual negotiations and decisions about who’s clothes go where and about ex-boyfriends. You need to understand how to fight well, how to negotiate major conflicts of values (if possible-some are impossible), and how to deal with the inevitable things that come your way.
And this inevitability is many. At some point, when someone else turns the head of you or your partner, you and your partner experience a period of disillusionment. Maybe you’re having an affair, but maybe you’re not. Ultimately, one of you will have a far more successful career than the other. This is the point of tension. The same is true for the income disparity that usually accompanies it. At some point, you will disagree about how to raise your child and you will use your child as the ultimate weapon in the fight of will. (I only do my best for our children!) And at some point, a big life where one of you sacrifices you all or almost everything (cancer, financial ruin, various crises) Have a problem, and the other must decide to commit or not.
You must date some scary people. Sometimes you have to be someone you don’t like yourself. Learn not to be a disliked person. Partners have to spend a lot of time together-sometimes you feel indistinguishable and spend so much time finding both relief and embarrassment. Fight a vicious fight, knowing that it doesn’t end you, that you have to work to fix it, and that it’s worth the effort. These take time.
Be careful, I don’t suggest you settle down in your twenties. I don’t think you live on a suburban ranch, feeding toddlers Cheerios and organic mashed carrots, or going in and out of family soccer practice. I’m just saying that your romantic relationship is worth seeing naked. Work on relationships the way you work for your work. Spend time. Please try.
Practice is required. You need to learn.
Some of you keep yourself single another 10 or 20 years. And some of you may be rare singles or singles who do not intend to have a serious and devoted relationship. But most of you are not. This is especially true if you are assuming your spouse and children before you collect social security. You need time and it’s a lot.
And you need to remember that work is not everything. I met my fiancée at work, but that’s not the way Detached Professional Me encourages anyone to meet people. Under such circumstances, we had to decide fairly quickly whether we were ready to be fired. What was more important: work or relationship? I chose the latter. Fortunately, no one was fired. But if I was sent to the pack, I wouldn’t regret it. Jobs are interchangeable. The one you really love is not.
I think it’s fair to say that without scientific evidence, it’s rare to say “if I worked in the office 20 hours a week!” To the wish of the deathbed, but this guy, this girl?? You may regret it.
