For the cofounder who has outgrown the partnership, it feels tight. You notice yourself getting smaller in meetings. You wonder whether the partnership is worth it. Eventually you stop giving feedback, because what's the point, and the resentment piles up. People in this seat often leave.
A friend of mine lived a version of this. He was carrying most of his company's day-to-day operations when he walked away.
On the surface, the conflict with his two partners concerned go-to-market strategy, and they had debated it repeatedly without resolution. Underneath those debates was a shift in an agreement the three of them had never stated aloud.
The Deal Nobody Says Out Loud
When he joined the company, his partners were roughly 20 years his senior, considerably more experienced, and already financially successful. He was early in his career and still working toward his first million.
The terms of their arrangement were never written down, yet all three understood them. He would defer to their judgment, and their opinions would carry more weight. They would serve as his mentors, and he would turn their ideas into a functioning product.
His partners found meaning in the mentor role—giving back to a younger founder was gratifying for them. He received an education he could not have purchased, and in exchange he declined other opportunities and accepted reduced income while the company was not yet profitable. For the first few years, the arrangement held.
In Marital Tensions (1967), the psychiatrist Henry Dicks, drawing on his work with couples at London's Tavistock Clinic, described what he called unconscious working agreements: unspoken contracts shaped by how two partners' needs and defenses fit together. Neither partner designs such an agreement intentionally, yet both maintain it. Dicks termed this shared maintenance collusion, a word that refers to joint participation, largely outside of awareness.
Founders often describe the beginning of a partnership as chemistry. Some of that synergy reflects genuine liking for one another and complementary skill sets. Some of it reflects two sets of unconscious needs fitting together, and those needs change over time.
When One Partner Outgrows It
Two or three years in, my friend had internalized how his partners thought and began developing views of his own. He was also carrying a disproportionate share of the operational load, which tends to sharpen one's opinions quickly. He came to see their go-to-market thinking as outdated, and he said so.
The original agreement had no room for that. It had been built for a junior partner, and he no longer occupied that role.
This is the dynamic founders tend to underestimate. They revisit equity and titles as the company matures. But the unspoken agreement rarely receives the same attention, largely because no one remembers entering into it.
For the partners on the other side, the change can register as betrayal, as though someone were breaking terms that were never stated. What they are losing may be something they would never admit to needing, such as being looked up to. Between one partner's constriction and the other's sense of betrayal, an honest conversation becomes considerably harder to begin.
So why does a shift in power show up as a fight about a business-related issue? Because that topic is safe to talk about. Most partnerships run on operational language: targets, roadmaps, tasks. Talking about status and need requires a different vocabulary, and using it requires vulnerability.
For my friend, the honest version would have sounded something like this: I've learned a lot from you, I now disagree with you on some big things, and I need that to be okay. Saying that aloud carries genuine interpersonal risk, but creates the opportunity for the group to evolve.
Instead, he challenged their strategy. Because he never named the shift in power, his objections did not land, and eventually he left.
Updating the Deal
These deals are hard to see from the inside. One useful clue is a reaction that's out of proportion to the issue. You replay the meeting at night. You vent to your spouse, your friends, your coach. That intensity often means something under the surface is asking to be updated.
Therapists who practice acceptance and commitment therapy sometimes describe two climbers on separate mountains. From across the valley, I can spot the boulder on your trail more easily than you can, and you can spot mine. Cofounders are climbing the same mountain, which is part of why an outside view from a specialist helps.
Before you talk to your cofounder, it helps to get honest with yourself. Think back to when you started. What were you counting on them for? Energy, encouragement, being the one who knew more? And what did you quietly offer in return? Some of those terms probably still fit. Some were written for people you no longer are.
Then have one conversation, in plain language. You don't need clinical terms, and you don't need to be a therapist. Open by saying you'd like to talk about the recent disagreements and about how the partnership itself has changed, and that you want to hear their view too. Then speak for yourself: Say what has changed in you, and that you know it has created friction. Then ask what they've noticed.
From there, make one concrete change to how you decide things, such as who has the final call in which areas. Try it, then adjust. Write it down, and look at it again in a year. The original deal may never become fully conscious, and that's fine. What matters is that the partnership catches up to the people in it, so your next disagreement about the plan can actually be about the plan.