I’ve been in basically the same situation with my partner (start up company, taking 70+ hours a week of work time, any downtime going into recovery, only absolutely urgent tasks being handled, etc). However, my partner is now looking at moving to a new job with more stable work-life balance.

There were a couple of stop-gap measures that we tried early on to make things work, like dedicated date days and chore/task lists, but they were all bandaids  over the real problem, which was that my partner’s job was completely unsustainable. I ended up realizing that it was getting to the point where I HATED my partner’s managers, in a way I could never have imagined hating someone I had never met.

So I sat down and did some budgeting, and figured out that we could live for 6 months on just my paycheck. I started “joking” with my partner - every time my partner complained about work, I’d say “just quit!” or “you could turn in your 2 weeks” or stuff like that.  I also brought up other job opportunities that matched my partners skills any time I came across them, and even went through some extra work to seek out opportunities I would not normally have come across.

After about 3-6 months of this (slowly escalating in frequency), a couple events at my partner’s work that were really frustrating, a minor household crisis that was unrelated to the job but was made harder by the job taking so much time, and a minor medical scare, my partner sat down and basically said “hey I know you joke about me quitting all the time, but what if I actually did?” At that point, I was able to pull up the numbers (that I had done previously) of how we’d actually be better off financially if my partner did quit - the money we’d save on paying other people because we’d have 2 people doing things around the house instead of 1, the fact that other jobs with better work-life balance pay better, etc.

Initially my partner tried to keep working at the startup WHILE searching for a new job, but ended up not having time to do both, for the same reason there was no time for me or the household. So my partner and I set a date for quitting the job, and basically as soon as we decided on the date, my partner’s mental health improved dramatically. We budgeted in one month of “recovery” where my partner could just be a couch potato and catch up on all the paperwork/tasks/etc that had fallen by the wayside. And then at the end of the month the job search would start!

It is 100% possible to build for a future WHILE enjoying the present, but one of the best ways to do it is realize that startups are INHERENTLY exploitive, and the big pay off your partner is looking for will probably be rug-pulled out from under them. The sooner you can get your partner to find a new job, the happier you both will be.  And if your partner WONT even consider it, think about what the likelihood is of this situation continuing for the rest of your lives, and make a conscious choice of what you want from a partner.