“Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’” — Morrie Schwartz
Topic: Marriage — What makes a partnership last through forty-four years and beyond
This Tuesday is different. Mitch brings his wife, Janine, to meet Morrie. Janine is a professional singer, and when Morrie learns this, he asks her to sing for him. She hesitates — it feels strange to perform for a dying man in his study — but Morrie insists.
When Janine sings, Morrie closes his eyes and weeps. The tears are not of sadness. They are the tears of a man who is still moved by beauty, still capable of being overwhelmed by something as simple and profound as a human voice making music. This moment captures everything Morrie teaches: stay open, feel fully, let beauty penetrate you.
Morrie and his wife Charlotte have been married for forty-four years. Charlotte, who teaches at MIT, is Morrie's anchor during his illness. She manages his care, coordinates his visitors, and maintains the household while watching the man she loves slowly disappear.
Morrie speaks of Charlotte with deep tenderness and respect. Their marriage is not a fairy tale — it is a partnership that has survived decades of ordinary challenges. But it has endured because it is built on foundations that do not erode.
Marriage, Morrie teaches, is not about finding the perfect person. It is about finding someone whose imperfections you can live with — and whose values align with yours on the things that matter most. The foundation is not passion, though passion matters. The foundation is respect.
Morrie distills his understanding of marriage into a set of principles — not romantic ideals, but practical requirements for a partnership that lasts:
Morrie emphasizes one requirement above all others: both partners must share a common set of values. Not identical opinions — Morrie and Charlotte disagreed on plenty — but a shared understanding of what matters. If one person values career above everything and the other values family, the marriage will fracture along that fault line.
The most important shared belief, Morrie says, is the belief in the marriage itself. Both people must be committed to making it work. When both partners treat the relationship as sacred — not in a religious sense, but in the sense of "this matters more than winning any argument" — the marriage can weather almost anything.
Morrie does not talk about love as a feeling alone. He talks about it as a practice — something you do every day, not something you have once and then coast on. Love is an active verb: listening, compromising, showing up, forgiving, choosing your partner again and again even when the initial excitement has faded.
Charlotte demonstrates this practice every day as she cares for Morrie. She does not do it because it is easy or pleasant. She does it because their forty-four years of mutual investment have built something that transcends comfort. Their marriage is a structure built of daily acts of love, and it is strong enough to hold the weight of dying.
Love should be effortless. If it's hard, it's wrong. Find someone who makes you happy all the time.
Marriage takes work — daily, deliberate effort. Love is a practice, not just a feeling. Choose your partner again every day.
In your closest relationship, are you practicing love as a daily verb — or are you coasting on the assumption that the feeling is enough?