The Science of Compatibility In Industrial Society & Reflection on Modern Indian Marriage Fixing Social Structure.

Sections of the essay will have the following major themes:

·      Traditional Narratives of Marriage: How older generations idealized endurance and treated marriage as an unquestionable duty.

·      The Collapse of the Old Scaffolding: How technological, economic, and social upheavals have dismantled the conditions that sustained traditional marriages.

·      Neurochemistry and Personality Types: Why innate brain chemistry and temperament, as described by Helen Fisher, shape compatibility inescapably.

·      The Tragedy of Habitual Marriages: How marriages lacking respect and compatibility deteriorate into stagnant, demotivated arrangements.

·      Why Happy Marriages are Necessary: Why genuine happiness, respect, and shared purpose are essential for modern families to thrive.

·      The Urgent Need to Reform Matchmaking: The case for overhauling how marriages are arranged to account for compatibility and scientific understanding.

·      Closing Vision: A call to redesign marriage as a union rooted in truth, preparation, and respect for both timeless and modern realities.

Model: https://www.aniketawasthi.com/compatibility-matrix

“You can change your friends but not your neighbours.”

-Atal Bihari Vajpayee

“You can change your partner, but you cannot change your neurochemistry”

-Author

This realization, simple in its phrasing yet profound in its implications, is something our society has long refused to confront. We have inherited a view of marriage that treats it as a uniform template, a vessel whose success depends only on the capacity to endure. This belief is still repeated in countless households and reinforced by many respected voices.

I recall a conversation in my office with a devout ISKCON practitioner, who lamented the decline of society’s moral fibre. He spoke of his grandparents who, though they fought bitterly, never separated, and of women in earlier generations who remained loyal to their husbands despite suffering indignities and neglect. For him, endurance itself was the highest virtue. Likewise, I recall a CEO of a large enterprise telling me, “Ab logo ko nibhāna nahi aata hai.” In his day, he explained, women tolerated constant humiliation and friction but never contemplated leaving their marriages. In both accounts, the failure to persist is interpreted as a failure of character.

But such narratives, however nostalgic, are dangerously incomplete. They fail to recognize that while the institution of marriage has retained its outward form, the environment in which it exists has been transformed beyond recognition.

In the world of our grandparents, life was simpler, narrower, and more predictable. In a nutshell it was a peasant society and not an industrial society. One could expect to spend decades in the same occupation, embedded in the same social milieu, adhering to a clearly defined set of expectations. There was little exposure to alternate ways of living or relating. In that context, personal fulfilment was a secondary consideration, often subordinated to family prestige, economic consolidation, and lineage continuity.

Today, that entire scaffolding has collapsed. In the industrial society, artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and globalized value chains are reshaping every dimension of human endeavour. No profession, no industry, no economic class is insulated from disruption. Individuals must adapt, reskill, and reinvent themselves repeatedly. A marriage that does not provide psychological safety and emotional stability becomes not merely a private disappointment but an active liability—an obstacle to survival in a turbulent economy.

In prior generations, the extended family served as a buffer that diluted personal dissatisfaction, but today, the nuclear household must absorb every strain without relief.

Yet while the environment has changed beyond recognition, human neurochemistry remains unchanged. Here, Helen Fisher’s pioneering work is especially instructive. She demonstrated conclusively that each of us is governed by a dominant neurochemical system that shapes our temperament, bonding style, and tolerance for routine or novelty.

Builders, whose brains are serotonin-dominant, are cautious, conventional, and disciplined. They find security in predictability and are often best suited to traditional arrangements. Explorers, driven by dopamine, crave novelty and stimulation. Routine and predictability quickly feel oppressive to them. Negotiators, governed by estrogen/oxytocin, are empathetic, introspective, and drawn to emotional depth. They are disillusioned by shallow or purely transactional connections. Directors, whose personalities are shaped by testosterone/vasopressin, are analytical, decisive, and often impatient with ritual for its own sake.

No amount of cultural indoctrination can alter these neurochemical realities. You can change your partner, but you cannot change your fundamental wiring. To pretend otherwise is to guarantee failure and frustration. Yet our society has persisted in treating everyone as if they were Builders, expecting uniform tolerance for monotony, unquestioning loyalty, and a willingness to endure whatever conditions marriage might impose. Explorers are called fickle, Negotiators are mocked as over-sensitive, and Directors are dismissed as arrogant. But the flaw lies not in these temperaments, but in the failure to respect their legitimacy.

Helen Fisher’s research on neurochemical personality types shows that compatibility in relationships often follows predictable patterns rooted in brain chemistry. Builders, who are serotonin-dominant, value structure, loyalty, and tradition, and typically pair best with other Builders who share their preference for stability and routine. Explorers, driven by dopamine, are curious, energetic, and novelty-seeking, and are most compatible with other Explorers who match their appetite for adventure and stimulation. Negotiators, characterized by high estrogen activity, are empathetic, imaginative, and oriented toward emotional connection, and tend to be strongly attracted to Directors, whose testosterone-driven decisiveness and analytical thinking complement the Negotiators’ social and verbal strengths. Directors, in turn, often prefer Negotiators because they balance the Director’s focus and logic with warmth and relational insight. In essence, Builders match with Builders, Explorers with Explorers, and Directors and Negotiators frequently form complementary pairs—an arrangement driven not by social convention but by the inescapable influence of neurochemistry on attraction and long-term compatibility.

It is little wonder that so many marriages in our society eventually degrade into mere habits. They endure because they are easier to maintain than to reexamine. Within such arrangements, partners gradually abandon the desire to inspire, impress, or even care for one another. They resign themselves to decline—physically, emotionally, and intellectually. This is why it has become common to see people slip into stagnation, becoming the caricatures of “dad bods” and “aunty figures,” their self-care dissolved in the absence of genuine respect or passion.

This is why, in the modern world, happy marriages are not a luxury. They are a structural necessity. They alone acknowledge the unchangeable force of neurochemistry, the unprecedented demands of an AI-driven economy, and the reality that our children will need not just food and shelter but also sophisticated models of healthy attachment and psychological safety. Kathleen Gough once defined marriage simply as a relationship that legitimizes children in the eyes of society. In her era, that was sufficient. Today, it is wholly inadequate.

Children now require more than legitimacy. They need a home that teaches them how to think, how to care, how to adapt, and how to believe that respect and affection are possible. They must see that conflict can be resolved without contempt and that a partnership can be both pragmatic and joyful.

Happy marriages are not merely emotional conveniences but essential pragmatic systems for raising children under a K-strategy paradigm—characterized by low birth rates and intensive parental investment. Unlike the r-strategy, which relied on producing many offspring with minimal care, modern societies demand that each child be nurtured to achieve optimal mental, physical, and social well-being. A healthy marriage provides the stable emotional climate, cooperative caregiving, and consistent modelling of respect and adaptability required to cultivate resilient, cognitively agile individuals capable of thriving in complex, volatile environments. Thus, sustaining a genuinely happy marital partnership is no longer a sentimental aspiration but a structural necessity for producing the calibre of human capital the future demands of industrial society.

This is why our entire matchmaking system demands urgent and systematic reform. We must replace the haphazard rituals and superficial criteria with an approach that prioritizes what truly sustains a marriage over decades. Matchmaking must aim to maximize happiness, love, sexual compatibility, mutual respect, and a shared sense of responsibility toward children and family. At the same time, it must rigorously account for the risks posed by incompatibilities in financial habits, intellectual ability, emotional maturity, neurochemical temperament, conflict resolution styles, and alignment on parenting philosophy.

We need an acknowledgment that parents are newbies in fixing the marriages. They are as good or as bad as a rookie when it comes to fixing the marriage. Not because of ill intent but because of inexperience. Basic training is essential for parents and prospective spouses alike—education that is scientific, candid, and unromantic. Marriage is no longer an event management exercise to be judged by the splendour of the catering or the decor. It must be treated as a deliberate, evidence-based design process. I still remember how so many people would boast, “Humari shadi ka function bohot accha tha,” even as their marriages quietly decayed into loneliness and resentment.

We often marry just to comply to the parents and to make them happy. However, it is oxymoronic in a way because a failed marriage would make the parents miserable and moreover it makes them feel guilty of running the life of the their child. Hence, blind compliance to parents in case of marriage should be thought over again.

We must create systems that prepare couples to understand not just the language of love but the reality of responsibility. They must be educated on the types of personalities defined by neurochemistry, taught how to assess intellectual and emotional compatibility, guided through discussions about sexual expectations, and trained in the skills necessary to resolve conflict without psychological injury.

If we wish to build marriages that last—and deserve to last—we must abandon the comforting illusions of the past. We must embrace the science that explains who we are and what we need. Because in this age, and the age that is coming, only marriages built on truth, compatibility, and conscious preparation will endure with dignity. And only those marriages will be worthy of the next generation who must learn from them how to love and how to live.

Change is always welcomed in original Sanatan philosophy. I will conclude with this saying

“Chir Puratan, Nitya Nootan”

-Aniket A

27/06/2025