I want to clarify first that no person or situation is responsible for our emotions, those are our responsibility (which I think is very empowering) so the key is to suss this out internally, then we can act on that insight.  

Your Co-Founder relationship will continually change and evolve, just like any relationship in your life. The challenge though is that any shifts in a Co-Founder relationship also effect our business, so it has a bigger impact.

Why are you frustrated? What is it about this situation that’s creating that response? Be honest and specific. Is it bringing up a previous experience? Do you hold beliefs that you have to act fast and do more to achieve X? 

You say your partner ‘seems to want to do less’, so does that mean you’ve not actually discussed it? If you haven’t, why not? What’s holding you back?

Have a think through these questions to explore different perspectives and consider a broader view of the situation:

1 - How was the journey to get to traction? 
Stressful, exciting, consuming, amazing, hard; all that and more?
If so, rather than your Co-Founder wanting to do less, could it instead be a pause after the long journey to get here? Could the doing less be them re-grouping before moving forward?

2 - What is this traction? 
Is it new clients? Money? Partners? Marketing? 
Do you have agreed metrics to measure growth and success? Aka would they even see this traction as the same milestone that you do? 

3 - What comes next? 
Does this traction signify a change in the business and there’s perhaps a lack of clarity as to what happens now, hence the different responses to the situation?

4 - What does ‘do more’ mean? 
Do you want to use the quantity of work you do as a measure of performance? What about the quality? I know there’s multiple layers to this, but I’d challenge you to consider if you want to measure your contributions by the traditional means of hours and output, or if there’s a different way that might serve you.

I’m hoping the insight you get from these questions eases your frustration slightly as you try to understand the situation in different ways.

I’d then encourage you to take action and communicate this to your Co-Founder. Say that at this point of traction, there’s a great opportunity to align as a team and build a strong plan to move forward. 

Discuss things like:

• How do we reset roles and responsibilities as we see traction?

• What are our measures of business success?

• How do we want to track our individual performance? 

• What is our decision making process?

• How do we best align our working routines? 

Get curious! Ask each other questions! Your dynamic will forever evolve and change, so get good at acknowledging it as a team and see it as a sign that it’s time to reset and level up.