What would a better marriage look like? More happiness? Intimacy? Stability? Laughter? Fewer fights? A smoother partnership? More intriguing conversation? More excellent sex? Our goal and how to reach it were strangely unclear. We all know what marriage is: a legal commitment between two people. But a good marriage? For guidance I turned to the standard assessments. The Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test instructs spouses, among other things, to rank themselves along the “always agree” to “always disagree” continuum on matters ranging from recreation to in-laws. This struck me as scattershot and beside the point. For all the endless talk about marriage — who should have the right to be in one, whether the declining numbers of married-parent households are hurting America’s children — we don’t know much about what makes a marriage satisfying or how to keep one that way. John Gottman, in his Love Lab in Seattle, claims that he can analyze a conversation between spouses and predict with 94 percent accuracy whether that couple will divorce over the course of six years. But many academics say that Gottman’s powers of prophecy are overblown, that he can’t truly predict if a couple will split. Those not selling books, workshops or counseling admit to knowing surprisingly little. Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, likens our current understanding of “relationship science” to the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant. One blind man “feels the tusk, inferring that elephants are hard and sharp-edged, like a blade. Another touches the soft, flexible ear, concluding that elephants are supple, resembling felt. A third imagines massive strength from grasping the pillar-like structure of the leg. The perspective of each person touching the elephant is valid, as far as it goes. . . .” But no one understands the whole beast.