MUSE

The founders of Billguard applied anti-virus and anti-spam technology to create a service that goes through your statements to find (sometimes recurring!) fraudulent charges.

This question caught my eye.  Every relationship is different and what worked for us doesn't necessarily work for everybody.  Fred and I have been together for 32 years.  That is a long time. 

There are a few key things.  We have always had the same goals.  Recently when we moved back to our apartment after the flood I was going through a few books that I have made Fred in college.  We were both driven in the same way even back then.  We wanted to take over the world.  Kind of funny reading something today that I wrote at 19 so many years later.  We also enjoyed the same things.  We love to ski, we love to travel, we love staying on top of the music scene and we love concrete.  We have both willingly given up control of certain things and are happy to have the other one steer the ship in those areas yet we make sure that we keep each other up to date on the direction we are going.  We agree on how to raise our children.  All these things have made the road pretty easy. 

There is one thing that I really do believe has been key is our mutual respect for each others abilities.  I stayed home a few different times with the kids and that was a group decision but Fred always knew that if I wanted to, I could play at his level.  That is probably one of the keys to our partnership. He saw me as his equal on every level. 

So what would my advice be to my daughters?  Find someone who challenges you intellectually and has complete respect for everything you bring to the party.  Be with someone who enjoys the same kind of things you like.  Find a real partner not a micro-manager.  Make sure he doesn't mind doing laundry, changing diapers and washing the dishes.  Relationships take work but it shouldn't be that hard.  If it takes that much effort then it might not be the right one.  Your partner should be your best friend. 

Wining and dining, drinking and driving, Excessive buying, overdosin', dyin', On our drugs and our love, And our dreams and our rage. Blurring the lines, Between real and the fake. Dark and lonely, I need somebody to hold me. We will do very well, I can tell, I can tell, Keep my safe in his bell, Tower, hotel. Money is the anthem, Of success. So put on mascara, And your party dress.

"I was a big drinker at the time. I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so fucking cool. A great deal of what I wrote on Born To Die is about these wilderness years. When I write about the thing that I’ve lost I feel like I’m writing about alcohol because that was the first love of my life. My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else. I was like, 'I'm fucked. I am totally fucked'. Like, at first it's fine and you think you have a dark side – it's exciting – and then you realise the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it. It's also a completely different way of living when you know that...a different species of person. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me."