The Essential Virtues of Successful Love and Marriage

This morning, a great friend of ours sent along an article that we were really taken with. For those who have read our book, Golden Anniversaries: The Seven Secrets of Successful Marriage (2008), you may recall a chapter entitled, “A Tribute to Lasting Love” (pp. 271-274). In this chapter we highlighted the wonderful six-decade marriage of Sandy and Pris, whom we had interviewed for our book.

Over the years, Sandy and Pris have been advocates for “character education” for young people. They have been very philanthropic when it comes to this passion of theirs.

As we thought about the article by Dr. Tom Lickona based on his book entitled Character Matters: How to Help our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues (Simon & Schuster, 2004), we were struck by the similarity of the “virtues” he believes essential for “strong character” and the virtues we have discovered in our research over the years about successful loving relationships.

To read the rest of the article