The partner model is an SIS epidemic in a population with random formation and dissolution of partnerships, and with disease transmission only occuring within partnerships. Foxall, Edwards, and van den Driessche [7] found the critical value and studied the subcritical and supercritical regimes. Recently Foxall [4] has shown that (if there are enough initial infecteds $I_0$) the extinction time in the critical model is of order $\sqrt{N} $. Here we improve that result by proving the convergence of $i_N(t)=I(\sqrt{N} t)/\sqrt{N} $ to a limiting diffusion. We do this by showing that within a short time, this four dimensional process collapses to two dimensions: the number of $SI$ and $II$ partnerships are constant multiples of the the number of infected singles. The other variable, the total number of singles, fluctuates around its equilibrium like an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process of magnitude $\sqrt{N} $ on the original time scale and averages out of the limit theorem for $i_N(t)$. As a by-product of our proof we show that if $\tau _N$ is the extinction time of $i_N(t)$ (on the $\sqrt{N} $ time scale) then $\tau _N$ has a limit.