Here’s a star sighting of sorts: Bernalwood contributor Elizabeth Weil wrote a piece for the Modern Love column in last Sunday’s New York Times. In it she explains her awkward quest to, as she puts it, “make my good marriage better.”

So what’s the secret? Here’s how Elizabeth describes her formula for marital improvement:

The lesson finally sank in. The key to a better marriage, for us, was not to hew closer to the general, to try to grind away the quirks or to more faithfully try to emulate the early-21st century marriage ideal. The key was to embrace, not blunt, the specifics — specifics that in the end we couldn’t blunt anyway. Despite all of our trying, Dan and I had not ground smooth our individual flaws. Yet our marriage still seemed better, changed. Maybe through our striving we had become more generous.

Elizabeth has more wisdom to impart in her forthcoming book: “No Cheating, No Dying: I Had a Good Marriage. Then I Tried To Make It Better.”