- I met my future husband online, and we started a business together.
- We fought often and even broke up and tried to maintain our professional relationship.
- The business eventually failed, but we're married today.
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One fateful day, I surprisingly signed up for an online dating service after several failed relationships.
My future husband, Gary, was late to my online dating party. When he found me and expressed interest, I'd already booked several initial coffee dates with others. I messaged him that I had a "full plate" and wasn't scheduling any more dates.
Gary responded, "Well when you take that plate out of the dishwasher, I'd love to meet you." I was intrigued by his response and humor, so we spent the entire day messaging back and forth. By the end of the day, I had canceled all the other guys.
From there, our relationship — both romantic and professional — has been anything but smooth.
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Our first date was magical, and it started a roller coaster journey
Gary was on a mission to nail our first date, probably because I told him if our date went well, I had front-row seats to a concert the following week. When I opened my door on date night, there stood Gary with a massive display of exotic flowers. I literally had to look around the flowers to see his face, and thankfully, he looked like his photos.
From there, we walked out to a waiting limo and fell in love on the ride to our first dinner together. At the five-star restaurant, a box of red roses awaited me on the table.
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We became inseparable. We fell in love that night, and it was the start of our whirlwind romance. A year in, we broke up for the first time because I couldn't stand his snoring, but we eventually came back together and started dating again.
But then we started a business together
I had been working on a side startup project. I needed Gary's expertise to bring it to life. One day I proposed that he partner with me so we could build out a prototype. He accepted.
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Days turned into months as we worked side-by-side on evenings and weekends. We bantered around creative ideas and fed off of each other. It was mostly fun, except for when we disagreed. I elected myself the final decision-maker since it was my idea. That proved challenging for both of us.
After several arguments over the business, we broke up again. I told Gary I still wanted to work with him and have him keep his ownership in the business even though it was not yet fully launched. He agreed, and we continued to work side-by-side, but without the "benefits" of an intimate relationship. It was awkward, to say the least.
The business took off, and so did our relationship
We quickly fell back into our "intimate" relationship and started therapy. Along the way, I secured funding for the business, and we launched full-scale. We hired several employees and started building out our software and web platform. It was exciting, exhausting, and the equivalent of a jungle safari without a guide.
The lines between our personal and work relationships blurred into an endless fog. We struggled to leave work conversations out of our personal time, and usually, it was an epic fail.
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Eventually, the business failed, but our relationship didn't
Just as our business was getting close to actually making money, the economy did a major nose-dive. Our advertisers pulled out. We blew through our funding. The business had to be shut down. Our business dream and finances went "poof." We were left numb.
Most couples would have annihilated each other. But we had grown as a couple throughout the highs and lows of our breakups and hardships. We had learned to have each other's back and to maneuver the tough decisions together. A bond had been created that grew stronger with each bomb tossed our way.
We recovered, got married, and others say our relationship inspires them. If only they knew what we weathered in order to become unbreakable.
