The last day

maybe have a think about what a perspective is.

By its nature each person will have a different perspective because from where they are, it occurs differently.

It is the right perspective for you, but may not be for others. That is a moral side of the debate which is a different story

"You are disquieted at the level of privilege displayed."

Spoken like a true data security professional.

There is a right answer. As some other commenters are saying, there is an objective right and wrong. If someone trusts and commits to you as fully as they do when they marry you (or common law marry by prolonged cohabitation), there is absolutely no excuse to damage that trust and that love for a selfish satisfaction of running a successful startup.

When you enter that type of relationship with someone, you commit, at the very least implicitly, to make your SO the primary priority in your life. If you want to run a startup, you have to work it around your relationship and not vice-versa. The amount of pain that's inflicted on many different people when a relationship that has all the trappings of permanence, lacking only the discipline of the participants to enforce that permanence, is extreme, and far worse and farther reaching than having a company fail or losing a bunch of investor money.

I understand that over the last several decades, individual "fulfillment" (aka undisciplined selfishness) has become the primary attainment for people, regardless of any social structure or moral definition. Marriage has been nullified and diminished to the point where most youth don't even see a point in it anymore. People have been taught, essentially, to worship themselves -- to put temporary individual interests above permanent social cohesion and the good of the whole, and really, the long-term interests of the individual as well. But that doesn't make this correct, and it definitely doesn't make a valid excuse to betray the trust of those closest to you -- triple especially if children are involved. True familial love is worth more than all the money in the world could purchase, including the money your startup may or may not generate, and this is an objective reality.

If this is in the general vicinity of "Worst. Day. Ever." for you, your life is pretty effing awesome now isn't it. One Thanksgiving a year seems inadequate under the circumstances.

(I respectfully suggest that anyone unable to put death of a startup in perspective invest some effort in rekindling ties with folks outside our little bubble. Again, it's Thanksgiving, so you've got a built-in excuse.)

The point is made. One will always find people with worse situation than us and who suffer more. Does this help ? Of course not.

Does it mean that if something hurt us we can't tell it, share it or complain about it ? It's not an easy question.

My impression is that saying that something hurts you provides some relief, especially if the people around you have some empathy or offer help. On the other hand, if the people you say it to, suffer as much or more, than it will hurt them. This is the short term effect.

On the long term, the real benefit of sharing such types of feeling is that other people get prepared for the hurting feeling in a similar situation. This generates an inhibition effect which is today best transmitted by films. This is not entertainment. We learn from it and get prepared and accustomed to it.

This doesn't address the question if the hurting situation is unfair, could be avoided and how. There are very hurting situations we can't avoid like cancer or an invalidating accident. But there are hurting situations we could have avoided and so sharing the experience has an education effect. You might not benefit from it, but there will always be one that will profit from the education effect.