Sorry, this is long, but hopefully it'll be useful. My first startup was a "ramen profitable" ISP in central Canada during the mid-90's. I was very young and f

Sorry, this is long, but hopefully it'll be useful. My first startup was a "ramen profitable" ISP in central Canada during the mid-90's. I was very young and foolish, IMHO; I had just entered a relationship with a woman I'd met at University, I was coming up on the end of a semester that was going to result in my being politely asked to take a year off to get my priorities straight, and I was making furious plans with the folks who became my co-founders to regain the Internet service I was about to lose due to said scholastic problems. We turned this desire for Internet service into one of the first commercial ISPs in Manitoba, in a completely unplanned burst of entrepreneurialism. During initial bootstrapping of the company, I got married. The next four years were probably the worst of her life; I prioritized the business above myself and her, without question. I was too busy to see what were obvious signs of our relationship becoming poisonous; signs my friends and co-founders were very aware of, but didn't mention in order to keep peace. Tempers flared constantly. We exited, selling the company to a local competitor, and I took a position with a mid-sized ISP in Chicago (it warmed my heart to see a mention of Enteract in tptacek's post; not many independent ISPs left in Chicago anymore). My wife and I moved, we suddenly didn't have any of the stresses of business operation hanging over us, and I think we assumed our relationship would improve. It didn't; after four years of fighting, we just didn't know how to deal with each other any more, and didn't have any interest in figuring out how. Within a year, she moved back to Canada, and I filed the divorce paperwork that we drew up together, resulting in an amicable and fair attorney-free divorce. I've since remarried, and my wife and I have a very different relationship to that of my first wife and I; when one person is being unreasonable, the other calls them on it, and we work out problems in good faith. And we assume good faith; we trust that the other person has our mutual best interests at heart, and that's a place that took us a while to get to. I'm not sure if this story helps at all, but just be mindful of the fact that you need to make yourself spend time on your relationship. If that means scheduling time for each other where the cell phone and computer will be off, you do it. It is very easy to take the other person in your life for granted, and assume they know how important they are to you.