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Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

>I can't even mention to potential dates that I run my own long term R&D oriented company and work nights and weekends quite often; doesn't matter if they work in the tech industry either.

If you don't mind me asking: why not?

Both you and the author paint a very romantic picture of your work. I can see how it would make maintaining existant relationships difficult, but this kind of thing makes twentysomethings who don't know you swoon in my experience. I'm probably not fully grasping the extent to which these feelings are debilitating. I feel like this as well from time to time, but it always passes quite quickly.

On the bright side: hang around art school kids and you will be worshipped :)

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Hours later I regret this comment but it's too late to delete it, so I'll just put here that I now recognise that this is an outrageous humblebrag which adds nothing to the conversation and serves simply to boost my ego. I am ashamed of it and I'll try harder to restrain myself from giving out fatuous advice to people with real problems in future. :(

I think the issue with the romantic ideal of burning the midnight oil while working on your dream is that it's not very conducive to actual relationship building with dates.

You may find someone special who really digs what you do, but you can only ignore them and keep them at arm's length for so long before they leave to find someone (perhaps less romantic) who will treat them as if /they/ were that important.

Certainly there are exceptions (mariner's wives come to mind) but I think this would be true of your normal random date. So, romantic? Sure. But the appeal has to eventually wear off and then there'd better be a part of you that you can devote to your partner.

Art school students and cool.. ;P

There are always trade offs in life.. On the dating front at least. If I spent more time in general hanging out and out and about on weekends goofing around like many folks I'm sure things would work out differently. One has to consider that for me often I'm left to just generally low stakes / OkC derived meet ups.

Statistically speaking at this point I can say that coming across as passionate about ones life's work and mentioning that entails a day job at times and often night / weekend effort doesn't set the tone of being emotionally or otherwise available even though that may not be the case nonetheless it is best to can it on the first meetup... That is all.. It's bad enough being an introvert in an extrovert's world.. :)

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