There is more to a great partnership than just getting along.  After over twenty-five years of marriage we think that we have a pretty good idea of what makes a successful partnership.  Obviously for a marriage to work, you need to love one another, but there is a lot more to it than just loving each other.  For any type of partnership to work, you need to have compassion and empathy for your partner.  You have to care about their feelings and opinions and do your best to understand how they feel.  A successful partnership also means challenging one another, which can cause tension at times, but allows growth in the relationship.  We’re not going to tell anyone else how their marriage or partnership has to work, but we can share what has worked for us.  First and foremost, we are best friends who truly enjoy each other’s company and share common interests.  Those common interests weren’t necessarily there when we first met, but because we wanted to understand what each other liked, we learned to care about the same things that we wanted to spend our time doing.  Also, we very much have an “us against the world” mentality.  It isn’t that we’re literally combative towards other people, it is just that we have to solve whatever problems we face, and there will be problems, as a couple.  Nobody else can fix it for us.  We decided to share this photo of us from the time that we were in Spain for this week’s challenge on partners.  However, we also wanted to share the picture of the two lion cubs working together to get a fresh drink of water, what teamwork.