In response to a Quora question, “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson?” Justin Musk, Elon Musk’s ex wife shared her thoughts.

“Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things,” she explained. While you don’t “have to be Richard or Elon to be affluent and accomplished and maintain a great lifestyle,” you do have to be extreme. Not only extreme, but obsessed. “Be obsessed. Be obsessed. Be obsessed.” she urged.

Don’t forget to play your ace cards too. Lean in to what makes you, you. That’s what extreme people do, and it works. “They are individuals with bold points of view who exploit their very particular set of unique and particular strengths,” she explained, speaking of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Richard Branson. “They transform weaknesses in ways that create added advantage,” she said. They “seek partnerships with people who excel in the areas where they have no talent whatsoever.”

Justine Musk’s advice to founders on how to deal with stress

Where stress is concerned, she had some more advice, presumably learned from eight years of being married to Elon Musk. “Learn to handle a level of stress that would break most people.”

For Elon Musk, it’s not about avoiding stress. Not trying to reduce it. Just being able to handle more. Expanding your comfort zone and reframing what counts as stressful.

How do you do that? It starts with purpose. “Follow your obsessions until a problem starts to emerge; a big meaty challenging problem that impacts as many people as possible, that you feel hellbent to solve or die trying,” she explained. Play the long game, because “it might take years to find that problem.” You have to “explore different bodies of knowledge, collect the dots and then connect and complete them.”

Extreme people get extreme results. Face stress head on, and don’t let failure hold you back. Successful billionaires reframe it all. “They do not fear failure — or they do, but they move ahead anyway,” added Musk, who said that these people will experience spectacular and often very public failure, but “find a way to reframe until it isn’t failure at all.” This unique experience means they “learn things that other people don’t and never will. They have incredible grit and resilience.” Pressure cracks eggs but makes diamonds. You get to decide what it does to you.

Follow Elon Musk’s example: How should founders frame stress?

Learn how to handle a level of stress that would break most people, because you’re not most people. Reframe what you see as stressful, expand your comfort zone, and strive for achievement and excellence, not drama and turmoil. Accept that problems and challenges will continue to come your way when you build your business, grow your audience, and push the boundaries of your potential.

Stress doesn’t have to break you. No adverse news, macroeconomic shocks or trolls on the internet should cause you worry or make you lose sleep. Anger, fear and anxiety don’t belong in the world of a founder looking to make a difference. Whether you love or hate Elon Musk, give his method a try. The growth you seek is outside your comfort zone.

---

After his 2008 divorce from Justine Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder dated Amber Heard and Grimes

Elon Musk has had his fair share of high-profile romances through the years.

The Tesla CEO first married ex-wife Justine Musk in 2000. The couple had six children together before divorcing in 2008. Musk went on to marry English actress Talulah Riley in 2010, though the two later divorced and remarried again. Their second divorce was finalized in 2016.

He has also been linked to actress Amber Heard and singer Grimes, the latter with whom he shares three children. He also fathered twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis in November 2021, just weeks before his second baby with Grimes was born. Musk later welcomed a third child with Zilis in early 2024.

Now a father of 12, Musk joked that his growing brood could solve the “underpopulation crisis.”

“Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” Musk tweeted in 2022.

From his college relationships to his marriages, here’s a look back at Elon Musk’s dating history.

Jennifer Gwynne

In the mid-1990s, Musk met Jennifer Gwynne while they were both students at the University of Pennsylvania. Gwynne later told PEOPLE that she was attracted to Musk’s “quiet intensity,” but he occasionally had a “silly” side. The couple dated for about a year, but during that time, they were serious enough to introduce each other to their families. Musk even gifted Gwynne a gold and emerald necklace for her birthday.

Shortly after Gwynne returned from studying abroad, she and Musk called it quits. Gwynne explained that Musk was “not very good at a long-distance relationship,” and talking on the phone “seemed like a waste of time to him.”

In 2022, Gwynne auctioned off items from their time together, including several photos and a handwritten card, to help pay for her stepson’s college tuition. Ahead of the auction, she recalled that her time dating Musk was “amazing.”

Gwynne said: “His brilliance and his vision was balanced with a bit of wide-eyed wonder back then. … I can always tell the stories of Elon predicting the future of electric cars well before I passed them on the road every day. But I also have the memories of Elon’s family welcoming me into their home in Toronto during the holidays in 1994. I know Elon, Kimbal, Tosca and the gracious supermodel Maye Musk are a tight tribe, but for a brilliant couple of days that winter, they let me be part of it.”

Justine Musk

Musk first met Justine Musk (née Wilson) while they were both studying at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. At the time, Justine was a freshman and Musk was a sophomore. He approached her after noticing her across the common room.

“He invited me out for ice cream. I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door,” she wrote in a 2010 Marie Claire essay. “Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in an overheated room in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Musk was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands. He’s not a man who takes no for an answer.”

Although Musk later transferred schools, he continued to pursue Justine. However, they split before Justine moved to Japan for a year to teach English as a second language. A week after she returned home to Canada, he happened to call her. Justine moved to California to be with Musk, and they soon became engaged. In 2000, the couple tied the knot.

Looking back on their relationship, Justine wrote that there were early “warning signs” about their future, including Musk’s comments about being an “alpha.”

She claimed: “In the months following our wedding, a certain dynamic began to take hold. Musk’s judgment overruled mine, and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking. ‘I am your wife,’ I told him repeatedly, ‘not your employee.’ ‘If you were my employee,’ he said just as often, ‘I would fire you.’ “

In 2002, the couple welcomed their first child, Nevada Alexander, who died at just 10 weeks old of sudden infant death syndrome. In her essay, Justine shared that the couple grieved in vastly different ways but decided to try to get pregnant again as soon as possible. They later welcomed twins Griffin and Vivian in 2004 and a set of triplets — Kai, Saxon and Damian — in 2006.

Justine recalled that they had a “dream lifestyle” filled with extravagant events, multimillion-dollar homes and a staff that catered to all their needs. However, she felt a lack of “intimacy and empathy” from Musk.

She wrote that a car accident served as a “wake-up call” for her. “I barely recognized myself,” she said. “I had turned into a trophy wife.” Shortly after the accident, the couple tried counseling, but after just a month, Musk allegedly gave her an ultimatum: to live life as they had or get a divorce. He filed for divorce the next day.

Following their 2008 split, the couple went through a complicated divorce, ending with shared custody of their five children. Justine also received the couple’s home in Los Angeles and spousal and child support from Musk, he wrote in 2010 for Business Insider.

Talulah Riley

Shortly after Musk filed for divorce from Justine, he met actress Talulah Riley. The pair first connected at a bar in London, according to Business Insider. Riley later recalled that she didn’t know who he was at the time.

“I remember thinking that this guy probably didn’t get to talk to young actresses a lot and that he seemed quite nervous,” she told biographer Ashlee Vance. “I decided to be really nice to him and give him a nice evening. Little did I know that he’d spoken to a lot of pretty girls in his life.”

Just six weeks after Musk filed for divorce from Justine, he and Riley were engaged. Riley moved to L.A., and they tied the knot at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland in 2010. Musk filed for divorce just two years later.

“It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day,” he tweeted.

But their relationship didn’t end there — in July 2013, Musk and Riley tied the knot for the second time.

Musk filed for divorce again in 2014 but withdrew the petition seven months later. In March 2016, Riley filed for a divorce, which was finalized in November.

In 2022, Riley told The Independent that she knew it was “strange” to marry and divorce Musk twice. Despite their split, she added that they remained friendly.

She told the outlet: “I suppose the reason to get remarried was just because it felt silly to be together unmarried after having been married. You know, it’s like a habit. We were saying, ‘This is my husband.’ ‘This is my wife.’ ‘Oh, wait, no, we’re not that anymore. We better be that again.’ “

Riley married actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster on June 22, 2024. The couple wed in front of family and friends at St. George’s Church in England.

Amber Heard

While Musk and Riley were separated in 2012, he reached out to director Robert Rodriguez, asking to set up a dinner with actress Amber Heard. (Musk and Heard both appeared in Rodriguez’s film Machete Kills.)

The pair arranged a dinner, but Heard, who was dating Johnny Depp at the time, did not show up. It would be several years before they connected, although exactly when their relationship turned romantic is unclear. While Depp claimed in court papers in his 2022 defamation trial against Heard that Musk and Heard secretly began dating in 2015, Heard said in court she was not acquainted with Musk until the 2016 Met Gala after Depp “stood [her] up” on the red carpet.

“I didn’t recognize [Musk] until we started talking and he reminded me we had met once before,” Heard recalled during the trial. “He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice. He sat at a nearby table and we got to speaking that night and eventually became friends.”

Heard filed for divorce from Depp just a few weeks later. In July 2016, she and Musk began to spark romance rumors.

In April 2017, they made things Instagram official during a trip to Australia. By May, insiders shared that the couple were “very serious about each other,” and Heard had already met Musk’s children.

However, in August 2017, the couple called it quits. Sources told PEOPLE that their busy schedules were to blame for the split, which was allegedly initiated by Musk. Musk left a comment on one of Heard’s Instagram posts, writing that things ended amicably.

“Although Amber and I did break up, we are still friends, remain close and love one another,” he wrote. “Long distance relationships, when both partners have intense work obligations are always difficult, but who knows what the future holds.”

Shortly after, the pair were spotted together again and released a joint statement to clear the air. In a message shared with PEOPLE, the couple wrote that distance had been tough on their relationship, but they still had the “utmost respect” for each other.

In November 2017, Musk opened up about their breakup in an interview, sharing that he had been “really in love” and it “hurt bad” when they went their separate ways.

The next month, Musk was spotted with Heard again. Although they were photographed kissing, sources said they were “just friends.” Days later, Musk and Heard were spotted vacationing together in Chile, and by January, it appeared that their relationship had taken a romantic turn.

The pair split for the second time in February 2018; a source told PEOPLE the “timing wasn’t right” for the couple. In an interview later that year, Heard spoke positively about Musk and shared that they had bonded over their “intellectual curiosity, ideas and conversation, a shared love for science.”

She said, “Elon and I had a beautiful relationship, and we have a beautiful friendship now, one that was based on our core values.”

Grimes

In April 2018, Musk sparked dating rumors with musician Grimes (née Claire Boucher) after they shared a flirty interaction on Twitter. Just a few days later, the couple made their red carpet debut at the Met Gala.

“They’ve been seeing each other but have been keeping their relationship under the radar,” a source said.

In August 2018, the couple reportedly unfollowed each other on social media, leading to speculation that they had broken up. Despite the split rumors, Musk and Grimes were spotted in October at a pumpkin patch in L.A. with his children. In December 2019, Kim Kardashian included the pair in a group photo from the Kardashian-Jenner family Christmas party.

In January 2020, Grimes announced her pregnancy and confirmed that Musk was the baby’s father.

​​”It’s sacrificing your body and your freedom. It’s a pretty crazy sacrifice and only half of the population has to do it,” she said in an interview. “It was really profound to me when I decided I was going to do it, to actually go through the act of unprotected sex. … I do actually just really love my boyfriend. So I was like, ‘You know, sure.’ “

In May 2020, Musk and Grimes welcomed their first baby together, a son named X Æ A-12, or X for short. Musk shared that Grimes had taken on the majority of parenting duties in the first few months, but he looked forward to being able to be more involved when X was older.

The couple made a joint appearance on Saturday Night Live in May 2021; though they had “semi-separated” by September of that same year.

“It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in L.A.,” he told the New York Post‘s Page Six. “She’s staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room.”

Despite their separation, the couple welcomed their second baby via surrogate in December 2021. Grimes confirmed the birth during an interview with Vanity Fair in March 2022, sharing that they welcomed a baby girl named Exa “Y” Dark Sideræl. She also shared that she and Musk were back together.

“There’s no real word for it. I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid,” she said. “We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time. … We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it.”

On the same day Vanity Fair published the story, Grimes shared that the couple’s relationship status had changed since the interview.

“Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article,” she tweeted. “But he’s my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now, I think Devin [Gordon of Vanity Fair] wrote that part of the story rly well. Sique – peace out.”

In September 2023, journalist Walter Isaacson’s biography about Musk revealed that the entrepreneur and Grimes had secretly welcomed a third child — son Techno Mechanicus, who also goes by “Tau.”

Shivon Zilis

In July 2022, Insider reported that Musk had fathered twins, Strider and Azure, in November 2021 with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink. While the parents originally were secretive about the babies’ names, Insider acquired Texas court documents that showed the pair had requested that the infants “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name.”

One day after news of Strider and Azure’s birth surfaced, Musk addressed the situation on Twitter. “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” he wrote. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far. Mark my words, they are sadly true.”

Zillis has claimed she was never romantically involved with Musk and that the twins were conceived with IVF, according to Reuters, which cited multiple people familiar with the situation.

The twins were born just weeks before Musk welcomed Y with Grimes.

In June 2024, Musk confirmed that he and Zilis had welcomed their third child together. The baby’s name and birth details were not disclosed.