Why Dating Is Especially Hard For Entrepreneurs
Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Wednesday, October 19 2016 @ 10:06 am
Last modified on
There’s a lot to love about entrepreneurs. They’re creative. They’re passionate. They’re positive. They’re ambitious. They’re often confident and extroverted. Any one could be the next Elon Musk or Richard Branson.
You wouldn’t mind dating someone with a private island, would you?
Thought not. The problem is, entrepreneurs come with a special set of challenges that can make dating hard - even harder than it is for non-entrepreneurs. Starting a business takes an incredible amount of time, energy, and concentration. Entrepreneurs eat, sleep, and breathe their projects - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
In other words, date an entrepreneur and you’re also dating their business. Even the most dedicated employee will never reach that level of commitment with their work. As a result, dating an entrepreneur can be exciting but frustrating, and being an entrepreneur who’s trying to date can be confusing or discouraging.
These are a few of the most common problems that plague entrepreneurs in the dating pool:
- They treat romance like a business transaction. Running a successful company requires rationality, extreme attention to detail, and decision-making that isn’t based on emotions. But when it comes to relationships, hyper-logical, emotionless thinking tends to be a buzzkill (if not a total relationship exterminator). Many entrepreneurs find it difficult to think one way when their brains are so well-trained to think the other.
- They hire quickly and fire slowly. Startups make this mistake all the time. You don’t want to hire a new employee or start a new relationship without thoroughly testing their suitability for the role. If it’s not working out, all parties are better off when it’s acknowledged in a timely fashion and everyone can move on. With so little spare time on their hands, entrepreneurs have a tendency to hold on to relationships even when they shouldn’t by rationalizing that it’s better to have someone around than no one, and it’s easier to keep the current wrong person than find someone better.
- They have no free time. Back to that last point: entrepreneurs are consumed by their work in every way possible. They dedicate most of their hours to it and it takes up most of their mental energy. At the end of the day, they’re exhausted both physically and spiritually (and that’s if their day ends at all - many entrepreneurs work around the clock). It’s a grueling schedule that doesn’t leave much room for Cupid.
- They refuse to settle. In some ways, this is what makes entrepreneurs great. They dream big, they’re perfectionists, and they believe they can achieve their wildest goals. They refuse to “settle” in their professional lives, and they don’t want to settle in their personal lives either. That’s not always a bad thing, but it becomes a problem when the entrepreneur is always convinced there’s something better out there and can’t see the good in front of them.
All that being said… you don’t have to swear off dating entrepreneurs, although it won't be right for everyone, and you don’t have to swear off dating if you’re an entrepreneur. The right match will be understanding of the situation, be supportive and encouraging of professional goals, and be willing to take positive action if any of these pitfalls show up. For entrepreneurs interested in trying online dating, using a dating service like eHarmony which uses a matchmaking algorithm to partner people based on personalities may be your best option.