Talking to your co-founder will not help, from what you have written seems like he has a personality issue and this will take a long time to correct......you first have to get him to accept the issue is with him. My advice would be to be smart, put personal feelings and emotions aside and try to engineer a way to get him out of the company or you and the company away from him. Time is so precious, you can't waste it on someone not ready/mature enough for the start up world yet, especially when you have a family.
Be careful-- We all know from experience that there's two sides to every story. The other guy's perspective could just as easily make it appear as if the OP has the personality issue.
The truth is that every founder is different and every one of them has issues. The successful team is going to be able to compensate for each other's weaknesses.
The key here is to really step up the communication-- if you do that and still nothing works out, I'd say only then start the plan to leave.
The day you believe in your heart of hearts that you did your best, but it wasn't enough to compensate, then you've fulfilled your obligation to the partner. I don't sense the OP has yet tried his true best-- or else he'd know there isn't more he could do to make it work.
Would you want him to bail/cut-out on you because he felt like you two couldn't communicate? At least without coming to you first to figure out a way to improve the communication issues?
"The day you believe in your heart of hearts that you did your best"
Sometimes when u wait that long, the opportunity has been taken by someone else, you running out of money or your customer's are just too frustrated with your business. I believe that you are correct that stepping up communication is important but we also have to keep in mind that time is money. My advice would be to put a time frame on it and if the issue is not solved start executing your plan. Also always remember that the health of the business comes first.
