I love my husband and we’re celebrating 20 years together next month by re-creating our first four dates in Burlington, VT (his idea, still the romantic!). But I doubt very much I could work with him every day – or he with me. Some marriages are better when those in them find their vocational joy separately.

If you’re someone who does work with your spouse or partner, or thinks you might like to, then I recommend the good advice available over at Inc.com.

How to work with your spouse – and not kill each other is a brief slideshow with seven tips, including:

Work together before launching a business
“Collaboration on something as simple as a home remodeling project can offer some insight into whether a couple can coexist in the business world. If you can’t get through that, you might want to rethink launching a company side-by-side. ‘If one person was away on business often and worked late and the other person had their own career, although they may be married and live together, when you haven’t interacted on projects together you can only hope for the best,’ says Max Beckwith, co-founder of The Little Author.”

Oh, and those first four dates of ours? Hiking Mt. Hunger, picnicking at the Burlington Boathouse, canoeing to Burton Island, and dinner followed by a theatre production at St. Mike’s Playhouse.

Conflict Zen® by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.