AITAH for spending less time with my GF so that I can build my online business?
Me (27m) and my gf (27f) have been dating for nearly four years and moved in together recently.
Several months ago I built an online app/business. It’s doing alright and is bringing in several hundred dollars a month, ranges anywhere from like $500-900. I’ve been coasting on it but I came to the realization recently that if I put more work into it and fully flesh out the product and add more features, I could get more users and thus more revenue.
I have a work from home 9-5 already. The time I’m budgeting for this work is an extra 3-7 hours per week. I took the plunge and got an AI subscription to help speed up the coding - I can code but I prefer to review the output from Claude myself to verify that it was done right.
The problem is that my girlfriend doesn’t like this because it means we’re spending less time together. I’ve cut out other things like going to the gym or seeing my friends less often, but it doesn’t seem like that’s enough for her. To make things worse, she will be actively talking to me or wanting me to do things while I’m working on this project. She doesn’t do this at my 9-5 but I guess maybe she just doesn’t see this as real work that requires focus and concentration. Again, this is an extra 3-7 hours a week on top of my 9-5. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
This came to a head today while I was trying to fix a difficult problem and she kept trying to show me TikTok’s and IG videos. I wasn’t paying much attention and she just kept coming with the videos, so I snapped and said can you please leave me alone to work. It made her quite sad and we had a conversation about it later on, and she says that she feels that she doesn’t spend enough time with me anymore. I explained to her that I’ve already given up some things to spend more time with her at home, and I get that it doesn’t feel great but I need this time to build something that I feel could potentially be great. She said that she would prefer it if I take a step back from this work to spend more time with her, and I said I don’t think that I can do that because I have something thats important to me and I don’t want to give up on it.
So now we’re at an impasse. I’ve been encouraging her to see her friends and family more but, that doesn’t seem to work for her.