Why Developing Serious Relationships in Your 20s Matters

Is your relationship authentic if you're forcing to put yourself in one before you hit 30?

Define a serious relationship! What's the significant property? A duration over 6 months? Or you already moved together? That's a difficult thing to do.

As far as I understood, Elizabeth is somewhere near her 40ies and I'm not sure if she even developed her serious relationship in her 30ies, as she is quite ambitious herself and comments, that she met her significant other at work... that happens a lot. But what really surprised me, that this almost got her and/or the other fired. I know a large amount of couples, who work at the same place and everything is fine!

And most importantly: What if, there was not this girl. This guy?

For me there was not this girl and I am 30. Of course, I had serious beautiful relationships with all the grinding imposed by one or two ambitious humans and also the nicer sides. But in the end, I'm single now and love to work on ambitious projects where I meet ambitious people!

Be, who you are and be proud of that. Love will hit you anyway and there is no need for a "task" or the hassle of developing serious relationships in your 20ies. It can happen to you any time, no matter of age. Even in your 80ies. If you are not convinced, watch this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602620/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

The broad point here is a very important one.

I came to Silicon Valley in my late 20s. I'd already had a lot of relationship ups and downs. I got married not long after getting here. I'm now, um, older...

It's great for folks who are fresh out of college that a bunch of middle-aged VCs who missed the boat on Zuckerberg because after the dot.com boom they were "playing it safe" backing their MBA buddies in startups which went nowhere, are now desperately trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted and find the next Zuckerberg by investing in very young entrepreneurs. It's great. There is some brilliant innovative consumer apps that have come from this - diamonds in a pile of rhinestones admittedly, but they're real.

When I was 22 and my best friend were 21 we were being laughed out of every funding source we could find by suggesting that (this is in 1993/4 mind you) we set up an "Internet Service Provider" because we were European Physicists when the world wide web was created by and for European Physicists and we thought it was going to be big. "What is this Internet thing? ...It's an American fad, going nowhere... you're just two young techies with no business experience... etc." I am genuinely glad the environment is better today than it was then.

However (yeah there's a but)... it's breeding a generation of young technical talent burnt out on mediocre over-angel-funded startups with little real world life or experience. It's not that either end of the spectrum is right - it's that we've gone too far past a happy medium.

I used to run an internship program and I'd advise the young undergrads that they should get out and do the things they want to do after college, take risks, travel while you can and while you're young. So long as you have a good narrative, have learned a lot from your experiences, and take the opportunity to grow up and gain perspective on the world, people will forgive almost anything before you're thirtieth birthday so long as you're prepared to knuckle down and focus by then.

I don't think that's true today. We've created an environment where to be a first time entrepreneur over thirty is seen as questionable. By 40 even with experience if you haven't already had a home run it's VERY difficult to get financial backing right now. This is irrational of course. The idea that real world experience dulls your blade which would otherwise have been fresh, right out of college, is silly.

I am happy that I didn't spend my 20s just getting burned out. After we couldn't get our startup off the ground, we finished our degrees, did some real world work, got some life experience, and I don't think either of us was worse for it as a person.

I meet a lot of people looking around in their thirties and realizing, like this article says, that they've never really learned the broad range of interpersonal skills and relationship skills outside of the startup bubble.

Do what you love to do for work. Absolutely. But don't lay on your death bed wishing you'd worked less and loved more. Really. Don't do that.

I find this article a little condescending and trite, most of the things you "need to learn" are skills you develop from interacting with people in general, not just in personal romantic relationships.

I don't think that is what the OP's saying at all. I think the point is that shutting yourself in to work on code 24/7 startup after startup for year after year (which is very easy to do in Silicon Valley - you look up and five years went by) is going to limit you at a time when the most important skills you need for your long term happiness are being learned.