But this is as nothing next to the monumental bad luck of encountering people who do all this to us while also being extremely skilled at pretending that they aren’t.

但是這與碰到對我們做了那些事後還能非常熟練地假裝他們不是這樣的人相比，簡直是小巫見大巫。

Those master manipulators who are at once innocent-seeming, and deep down, profoundly scheming.

那些大師級的人心操縱者表面上看似無辜，但內心深處卻充滿算計。

These people won’t only hurt us.

這些人不僅會傷害我們。

They will do something far worse.

他們會做出更糟糕的事。

Rob us of our understanding of ourselves, strip us of basic trust and along the way, for a time, make us lose our minds.

剝奪我們對自己的了解與信任，並在這一過程中讓我們心慌意亂。

However good we might be at fighting overt antagonists, many of us are constitutionally unprepared to detect ones that have entered our intimate lives.

無論我們多善於對抗那些顯而易見的敵人，但多數人還是對那些已經偷潛入其親密生活的人毫無防備。

We expect and can deal with enemies at the office, but the bedroom feels like a sanctum where our guard is down.

在辦公室，我們能作好準備並且能夠與所碰到的敵人打交道，但在臥室，我們卻會卸下心防。

Yet this doesn’t mean that some very dark things can’t unfold there.

然而這並不意味著人心的黑暗面不會在臥室發生。

There are people we can take up with who have been so badly hurt by something in their early lives that they are committed to exacting revenge on anyone who comes too close to them.

有些人他們可能早年被傷得很重，因此總會將仇報在那些和他們關係親密的人身上。

They may semi-consciously be seeking to exorcise on their partners a latent rage against a dead or depressed parent.

他們或許半自覺地在伴侶身上尋找能驅除對死去或抑鬱父母所潛藏的憤怒。

They may want to punish a bullying sibling or release themselves from a sense of intolerable vulnerability created by an incident of early abuse.

他們可能想懲罰欺負他們的兄弟姐妹，或從因虐待事件而產生的巨大的無助感中釋放自己。

Such dark possibilities are rarely spoken of in useful terms.

這樣的黑暗面很少用常用的詞彙來描述。

There are plenty of popular references to "psychos" and "lunatics,"

而經常以「神經病 」和 「瘋子 」來提及，

but far fewer patient analyses of how exactly other minds can be distorted and how widespread longings for vengeance may be beneath smiles and good manners.

但很少對於患者的分析能解釋他們的心裡到底是如何被扭曲的，以及微笑和禮貌下對於復仇的渴望又是多麽氾濫。

When we meet with difficulties, we have two explanations to fall back on.

當遭遇困難時，我們會依循兩種解釋。

The first is to doubt ourselves.

第一個是懷疑自己。

The second is to wonder whether, and how, the other person might be ill.

第二個是想別人是否，或是如何是有問題的。

If we almost always pick the former, it’s because of how familiar and reassuring it is not to take our own sides.

如果幾乎都選擇前者，是因為我們習慣不偏袒自己，那樣也讓自己覺得踏實。

It is so much easier for us to think that we are, as they also quickly tell us:

我們很容易就認為問題在自己身上，就像那些人很快就會告訴我們的：

irrationally prone to anger, over-excited, insane and complaining for no reason, rather than deep in a relationship with a cruel soul.

你易怒、過度興奮、有病、又無緣無故地抱怨，他們不會說你被困在一段有毒的關係中（因為造成有毒關係的就是他們自己）。

Those who are most prone to being gaslit in adult love are sadly of course, the very people who may have been gaslit by their own parents.

不幸的是，那些會在關係中進行情緒勒索的人們，都是那些可能被自己父母情緒勒索過的人們。

The idea sounds yet more curious, but parents too can be adept at polishing their reputations and will insist that they are kind while simultaneously expending enormous hostility on their thoroughly confused child.

這種說法聽起來更奇怪，但事實是父母也會擅長一邊在孩子還懞懂無知時就在他們身上施加傷害，一邊又美其名曰為了孩子好。

Despite decades of training in self-doubt, we may need to do a remarkable thing:

儘管經過十幾年的自我懷疑訓練，我們可能還需要做一件重要的事：

Trust in what our unhappiness is telling us about those we think of as good.

相信我們的不快樂就是在告訴我們那些我們所認為的好人並非如此。

The test isn’t whether they tell us they love us, it’s how at peace they make us feel.

這個測試不是在於他們是否告訴我們他們愛我們，而是他們如何讓我們感到平靜安心。

We may have to accept that the world is filled with some very dangerous people who look entirely safe to our fatefully untrained eyes.

我們或許要去接受這個世界就是充滿一些非常危險的人，而那些人在我們天生就缺乏看透人心的眼中被視為是安全的。

We may need to think a bit less badly of ourselves and substantially worse of some sweet-seeming characters who claim with great sincerity to love us and don’t.

我們或許需要減少對自己的負面想法，並認清那些表面看似人畜無害又會真摯地說愛我們，而實際上卻並非如此的人們其實並非善類。