The first part: How important is it to have a partner who is also a serious Dhamma practitioner? In the normal retreat, Day seven morning, I often talk about having a good, kind, wise spiritual friend as making a practice one hundred percent. It is pretty easy to really see how this works, if you have a partner who is really into the Dhamma, you are going to be able to talk about it at home, you are going to be able to practice together, you are going to see teachers together, you listen to Dhamma talks together, it is going to make everything grow at a faster pace.
Say you have a partner and they are not interested one bit, they don't want to hear anything about it, they want to watch TV every night, they want to drink alcohol, take drugs, etc. It is easy to understand the difference here. So the importance of finding a Dhamma partner can be very major for many people, if not everyone.