The Paradox Of Love

The storm in any relationship tends to revolve around one or both individuals trying to change the other, not accepting them for who they are. It is part of the Human condition to have this illusion that our way of seeing the world is the right way. Statistically we tend to be attracted or fall into relationships with people that are similar to us.

Obviously we don't fall for everyone similar to us, and it is still largely a mystery to modern science as to what causes attraction.However, some of the richest most rewarding relationships do happen between complete opposites. By definition the rewards can be so much greater, yet it requires a proportional level of trust and acceptance as these very traits run counter to our intrinsic belief systems.

In the book Dostoyevsky's Reminiscences, his second wife Anna recounts one of the greatest love stories in modern history. Dostoyevsky, perhaps the worlds greatest novelist, whilst in the middle of Crime and Punishment, was immersed in one of his darkest moments.

Besieged with his deceased brother's debts, facing a lengthy prison sentence (he had already served 4 years in a Siberian Gulag, for reading banned books), his only way out was to finish his novel and within a year produce another - The Gambler. This was the deal with an unscrupulous publisher who had taken on Dostoyevsky's debts in return for the novels. Taking most of the year to write Crime and Punishment he now only left with one month to write from scratch The Gambler.

A friend who owned a stenography school sent him his best student, 20 year old Anna. Against all odds they did manage to complete the book, in what must have been one of the most productive writing collaborations ever.

Well to cut a long story short, after the book was written, they realised they would miss each other terribly and in a most socially awkward way Dostoyevsky asked Anna (who was more than half his age) to marry him. To his great surprise she accepted. Now everything didn't go happily ever after, they were beset by financial hardship and tremendous tragedy, including the death of their two children. But their love for each other was un yielding. Anna took it upon herself to learn everything about publishing, creating Russia's first self published author, She herself probably goes down as Russia's first business woman.

Reflecting on some of the secrets of their enduring love Anna writes-

"In truth, my husband and I were persons of “quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views.” But we always remained ourselves, in no way echoing nor currying favour with one another, neither of us trying to meddle with the other’s soul, neither I with his psyche nor he with mine. And in this way my good husband and I, both of us, felt ourselves free in spirit"

"Fyodor Mikhailovich, who reflected so much in so much solitude on the deepest problems of the human heart, doubtless prized my non-interference in his spiritual and intellectual life. And therefore he would sometimes say to me, “You are the only woman who ever understood me!” (That was what he valued above all.) He looked on me as a rock on which he felt he could lean, or rather rest. “And it won’t let you fall, and it gives warmth.”

"It is this, I believe, which explains the astonishing trust my husband had in me and in all my acts, although nothing I ever did transcended the limits of the ordinary. It was these mutual attitudes which enabled both of us to live in the fourteen years of our married life in the greatest happiness possible for human beings on earth."