False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Musk’s success comes with a turbulent 
personal life.
Throughout these blinks, we’ve seen that Musk 
isn’t always an easy person to get along with. 
Even his marriages are a testament to this.
Married three times, twice to the same woman, 
Musk is romantic and hot-headed. His first 
marriage was passionate. However, he wasn’t 
always a compassionate husband – Justine 
recalls how she once reminded him, in 
exasperation, that she was his wife, not his 
employee. Musk responded by telling her that if 
she was his employee, he’d have sacked her.
According to Justine, Musk gave her an 
ultimatum in June, 2008: they would either fix 
their marriage that day or he would file for 
divorce the next morning. Justine asked to wait 
another week, so Musk bulldozed ahead and 
filed for divorce the following day.
Nevertheless, 
Musk 
suffered 
emotionally 
following the divorce, and his friend Bill Lee tried 
to lift his spirits with a holiday to London. There, 
Musk met the then 22-year-old actress Talulah 
Riley who became his second wife.
He divorced Riley in 2012, stating that he “would 
always love her but wasn’t in love with her 
anymore.” They remarried directly after the 
divorce was finalized, when he found it 
impossible to date while maintaining his 
unbelievably busy schedule. (By his calculations, 
a woman requires a minimum of 10 hours per 
week.). In late 2014, they divorced again.
Many think Musk can be tough to the point of 
being mean and capricious. Some even say he 
lacks empathy completely citing the dismissal of 
his most loyal assistant, Mary Beth Brown, as an 
example. Practically doing everything for him, 
she had long been the only link between Musk 

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and all his interests. Yet, when she asked to be 
compensated on par with other SpaceX execs, 
he told her to take two weeks off and that he’d 
take on her work to gauge whether the request 
had merit. When she came back, he told her that 
he didn’t need her anymore.
Yet, despite these personal failings, those 
closest to Musk say that he is a loving and 
caring person at heart. And Riley claims that, 
despite his incredibly busy schedule, he always 
tried to get home to have dinner with his family 
and play computer games with his children.