How entrepreneurial couples make their businesses and relationships work

Trust yourselves: Couples say one of the biggest joys of this arrangement is being able to trust that your business partner has your best interests at heart.

Talk all the time: Doubling up on work and relationship means that communication is even more important for entrepreneur couples than for other couples “Marriage is complicated enough, and when you add your business life on top of it, you’ve just added many, many more situations that are going to have to be talked about.”

Divide the labor: You both need to be devoted to the success of the work, but that’s about where your responsibilities should diverge. You need to delineate your different roles clearly so that you can each have a domain within the enterprise where the other doesn’t interfere. That may be easier than it seems: Since opposites often attract, your relationship has probably made you used to complementing one another.

What about the children?: Most advisors say you should try to keep your kids’ lives away from the company and the business out of purely family concerns such as child rearing and vacations. “Having kids forces you to define these two parts of your life very clearly

Be wary: Some experts strongly warn that you “should not try this at home.” It’s too difficult to keep the work and relationship roles separate, so you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, “by working together, there is not time that couples also are apart – so they don’t bring any freshness or diversity of life into their relationship.” And when one of the pair dies, “the other is very lost because so much of their life has been intertwined.”

A way to hedge your bets is for one partner to pursue the business full-time while the other sticks with what he or she was already doing. still working nearly full-time. “We felt it was unwise to put all the stress on the business right away as our sole source of income,” “The job keeps us in benefits. And we’ve been gradually transitioning.”

Exit strategy: Face the possibility that, despite your best efforts and intentions, your dreams of sharing work and home just might not unfold perfectly. And because most people believe that their relationship is far, far more important than a particular business venture, your company could be at risk. So you might have to alter your plans.

Starting a business together can be the ultimate experience in marrying your work and professional lives, but its not without risks - be aware of them up front and plan accordingly.