The Troubled Mind Of Elon Musk

Exploring realms beyond the earth is not rocket science for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, but his mind is a different space altogether. And, relationships, for him, are much more complicated than rockets. Here's decoding Musk's complex mind

- Stephen Armstrong

It is so hard for me to even meet people. I am looking for a long-term relationship. I am not looking for a one-night stand. It is not like I don’t know what that feels like: being in a big empty house, and the footsteps echoing through the hallway, no one there—and no one on the pillow next to you.

Elon Musk,

Entrepreneur, seen here at a presentation of his Tesla Motors' new products.

Last year, Elon Musk was at a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine, and a stylist asked him to wear a black turtleneck. He refused, forcefully. “If I was dying and I had a turtleneck on,” he said, “with my last dying breath I would take the turtleneck off and try to throw it as far away from my body as possible.”

The black turtleneck, of course, was the trademark garb of the eccentric Apple founder Steve Jobs, and there are three men who Elon Musk hates being compared to: Jobs, the fictional billionaire turned Iron Man superhero Tony Stark and Errol Musk, Elon’s estranged father. He clearly has a complicated relationship with men.

He also has a complicated relationship with women. He fathered six children— a son, who died at ten weeks in 2002, twins and triplets—with his first wife, the Canadian author Justine Wilson. He met his second wife, actor Talulah Riley, in 2008, married her in 2010, divorced her two years later, remarried her the next year, then filed for divorce again, then withdrew the filing, then refiled for divorce and finally followed through with it in 2016

And friendship? That’s complicated. Musk was viciously bullied in school. Once he was beaten so badly he was taken to hospital. The hardest part, he recalls, was that “they got my best friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that hurt.” Despite, or perhaps because of, his problems with people, he has dedicated his life to saving the human race.