A virtue is a  mature, high character trait that the fathers of sons or mothers of daughters to usually use as a benchmark for what they were trying to aspire to someday in their own character.  These virtues are originally taken on automatically through the imprinting process that in Romantic Dynamics, is called, "identification." Meanwhile, the character virtues automatically, unconsciously sought after in a mate in adult life are also imprinted in our youth, through the process of "attachment."

Unfortunately we take in the good with the bad. Vices are also taken in through those two imprinting processes in our youth.

Virtues are very universally cross-linking the various traits of maturity. They carry with them, working operations of some of the most fundamental parts of psychology skills such as mature personal boundary function, boundary doors, not boundary walls or holes, are relatively free of pathological narcissism, criminality, naivete, aggression, depression, masochism, and addiction for example.  And so a child with mainly virtuous parents will get a start in life with automatically virtuous character traits, and will have virtues installed to look for in a mate in adult life.

One may even recognize many of the classic "seven cardinal virtues" in the character of ordinary adulthood.  Due to attachment to an opposite sex parent with more virtues than vices to convey, the child may grow up to automatically, unconsciously be drawn to the "familiarity" of mates with many of these same virtues (and their attached context) that their opposite sex parent had long ago. Due to identification, they, themselves may grow up with virtues that potential mates find themselves automatically attracted to through their own attachments to an opposite sex parent with similar virtues.

In the end, through the Romantic Dynamics concept of "Two-Factor Authentication," we may arrive at a "Golden Virtue" that we look for in a mate's character, solidifying the attachments of childhood in a secure attachment to an adult mate.