The book implicitly presents marriage as a school of virtue, a domain that requires tact and restraint along with open and honest communication, kindness and gratitude along with assertiveness and autonomy. Take the matter of fighting. Good marriages are not free of conflict. However, the conflict is governed by a respect for the partner's deepest vulnerabilities. No matter how fierce the anger, it stops short of the cruelest cut.
Spouses learn what the relationship can tolerate without breaking.
At the same time, marriage requires the exercise of moral imagination. In another sense, too, good marriages are expressions of the imagination. Many express admiration for their partners' conscience or honesty, or praise their courage in overcoming earlier obstacles in life. Much of what I have described is never made explicit. In fact, one of the nice things about The Good Marriage is its modesty.