The Anna Karenina principle as it applies to marriages.

As I write this, I am trying to save a marriage, all the while wondering if it is worth it. The couple is close to me. I’ve known them for decades. I know them both independently, which makes it difficult because, for a change, I can see both sides of the argument. This isn’t normally true. When my husband and I fight, I am convinced that he is being pig-headed and I am being reasonable, indeed logical. Persuading him of his errors takes a lot of energy: yelling-and-screaming, mockery, sarcasm, and swear words. I usually cite past examples of when I was right and he was wrong, and for good measure, I always bring his family into it. The weird part is that he takes the same approach.  He too, for some reason, is convinced that he is right and I am wrong. Reaching an impasse after all the shouted words, screams and tears saps us of time and energy. Every time we fight like this, both of us wonder out loud whether our marriage is worth all this unpleasantness. And yet, it has endured for close to three decades.

My friends—the ones who are fighting – are both different and similar. They are younger than us, both in their early forties. They have been married for just over a decade. If you look from the outside, their marriage is no different from mine. They have a few common interests and friends. They are opposite in personality, disagree with each other, vent about each other, and yet are able to laugh and joke about things. It may not be a great marriage, but then, which marriage is, right? The only difference between their marriage and ours is that this couple is ready to give up on their relationship. They don’t want to stay married. They feel that life without the other will be a lot better. I am not sure that is true, which is where this column began.

What keeps a marriage together? I am not sure if it is love. There is a principle that caught my attention because it is based on literature.  It is called the Anna Karenina principle, because it is derived from the famous opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which states: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The Anna Karenina principle was made famous in Jared Diamond’s seminal book, “Guns Germs and Steel,” which everyone needs to read. Historically, it has been applied to several situations, particularly domestication of animals. The broad idea is that a group of factors need to come together and align in order for success to happen. In order to fail, just one of the factors needs to misalign. It can apply to startups: Successful startups are all alike and require a broad range of factors to align. Failed startups can fail because of their own unique problems. So too with marriage. In order to succeed, a marriage requires a harmonious alignment in many critical areas. Failure in just one of these areas can lead to unhappiness. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy marriages share certain foundational elements, whereas unhappy marriages are unique because they fail due to different combinations of these factors. Which begs the question. What are the necessary if not sufficient requirements of a healthy marriage? Here is an incomplete list that I’ve come up with.

1. Communication: This is essential, and this is where most of us, even people who make a living from communication (like me) fail.
2. Trust: This is a base-level confidence in each other’s fidelity, honesty, and reliability. Unless you have trust, a marriage will not get off the starting point. This is not just high level stuff, but applies to the everyday: when your partner gives you an opinion or restaurant recommendation, do you trust her choice?
3. Shared Values: Here too, it can be all or none, or somewhere in between. In my marriage, we have some shared values, and some opposite ones. Over time, we argue and negotiate so that our values are broadly on the same page. This is a process and implies that you need to come to an agreement on fundamental principles like family priorities (should we invite/include extended family or remain nuclear?), lifestyle (frugal or opulent?), and ethics (is telling white lies okay?).
4. Emotional Support: We need our partner to support and if possible, enable us. Again, this is not true in many marriages. Sometimes the man doesn’t know how to give this support and sometimes the woman pulls back. Many times, the extended family and in-laws get involved and usually, the woman (daughter-in-law) suffers and simmers with resentment.
5. Conflict Resolution: Very hard. This is the reason most couples fight again and again about the same things. They don’t know how to negotiate, or manage disagreements constructively without lingering resentment, which makes them bring up old grievances time and time again.
6. Intimacy: This is a quixotic one. Sure, you need intimacy, but in India, we don’t know what this is, given our aversion to public display of affection. Have you ever seen couples in your parents’ generation ever hug each other? Does this mean they have bad marriages?
7. Financial Compatibility: Lots of couples fight over spending, saving, and managing money.
8. Shared Goals: Should a couple be aligned on long-term plans such as children, career aspirations, and retirement? Do couples talk about this stuff? Should they?

The Anna Karenina principle states that a breakdown of any of the above factors can lead to an unhappy marriage. Happy marriages, on the other hands, require the presence of pretty much all these key components.

So what can we do? Why do certain marriage work and others fail? Can the Anna Karenina principle be applied to fixing a breaking relationship? I think it can. I think you can identify the top factors in the above list and figure out how to apply them. In this negotiation lies the inner workings of a marriage.

The novel Anna Karenina has two endings as it were. The heroine Anna commits suicide after a loveless marriage. The other protagonist, Levin, on the other hand, sticks it out in his marriage, and discovers God and finds meaning and balance in his life. Which ending do you want?