I don’t envy the spouse of an entrepreneur. It’s a thankless job that they never signed up for when they married or paired up with you.
I always say it’s like being in a blindfolded passenger in the back car; you have no idea where you are being taken. At the same time, it was hard for me to share the daily ups and downs with my spouse when I was running my businesses; I just didn’t want to relive them when I went home at night. In reality, this was probably unfair to my spouse.
A recent letter form “Mrs. Small Business Owner”
Recently, I got this letter from the spouse of a small business owner that made me rethink all of this:
“The reason I did not copy and paste and send to my small business owner spouse is because you represent the spouse as an uninvolved passenger and kept in the dark about the business. You did not address the spouse, usually the wife, who works a full time job outside the business and is expected to pick up all the things a business owner leaves behind such as child care, household responsibilities and being a spouse in general when the business owner is busy obsessing over his business. The left behind spouse is still expected to be head cheerleader, head of household and free office help after hours. Which I was for as long as I could but having the business become “the other woman” is hard. I would like to see an article on how to deal with being asked to move out for saying something sarcastic about the business when bill collectors are calling at home because paying bills for that home have ceased to be priority for the business owner.
Something else that would be helpful is how to respond, without fighting in front of the kids, when said spouse had a bad day at the office and finds fault with how supper was cooked, how the yard looks bad and myriad of other minor details that did nothing to cause his bad day. Most wives willingly listen about a bad day, myself included. We do however find it disheartening to know that no amount of emotional support, well cooked food or anything else will improve how they treat us. The only thing that will make the food taste better and the yard to look wonderful is a positive number in the office check book. Advice for that would be print-out-and-put-on-his-office-chair-worthy. I have had this partially composed email since 2017. In that time, I hoped things would get better. They have in that myself and kids have learned to be “single” and do everything without him and love it when he is home. I have also learned to not say anything about my experiences during food pantry shopping and free medical card office visits.”
How would you respond?
I realize now, I should not have kept my spouse in the dark about so many things. I think I was afraid of disappointing her more than myself. She had her hands full taking care of our two small kids. I had hoped that whatever difficult or failure happened today, it would be offset by a success the next day. In this way, I could celebrate the successes without exposing her to the failures (that I did not want to admit to myself).
To be an entrepreneur, you must let go of the bad times and not carry them with you. By not sharing this , it was how I tried to let go. Fast forward 20 years later this was probably not the best strategy especially if you are trying to build a long term relationship with your spouse. Fortunately for me, I was successful in selling my last business and my marriage lasted.
