["Environmental Policy and Governance, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nIn this article, we explore how stakeholders navigate potential collaborative partnerships in complex social‐ecological systems. Building from literature on social‐ecological fit, collaborative governance, and resource dependence, we evaluate the degree to which (1) collaborative gaps (i.e., instances where stakeholders manage the same issue(s) but do not directly collaborate), (2) mutual partners, and (3) the potential to access social, financial, and human capital guide stakeholders' evaluations of potential partners. We organized a partnership rating activity where stakeholders involved in climate change adaptation in Columbus, Ohio, interacted with potential partners and privately rated the importance of their potential partnership. We find that participants were more likely to rate other stakeholders as important partners when they worked on more overlapping issues, but less likely to favorably rate potential partners when they shared more mutual partners. Our study describes how actors navigate complex social‐ecological systems, showing that collaborative gaps are important for partnership evaluation.\n"]