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A dark and frightening way to predict what might happen in your relationship with a new person is to ask them what happened to them in their childhood. Often, we stand to hear a sad and sombre tale in which our partner was cast in the role of a victim, as children typically are. For example, at a young age, their parents turned against your partner and diverted their attention to a younger sibling. They became deaf to their calls for attention and treated them unreliably, and then denied that they had done so, scrambling the poor child's sense of reality. Or their parents didn't give them warmth and care and left them feeling that there was something wrong with them for wanting love. Or their parents humiliated them for not being good enough, perhaps not sufficiently cultured or sporty, sociable or tidy. In the early days of a relationship, we are liable to be extremely sympathetic to these stories. Our heart reaches out to the younger version of our companion, whom we would have wanted to hug tightly and reassure. However, it can be a long time – as many as three to four years – before something more alarming comes into view, which we very often aren't able to analyse or interpret, let alone prevent.
要預測你和新人之間的關係可能會發生什麼,一個黑暗而可怕的方法就是問他們童年發生了什麼。通常,我們會聽到一個悲慘的故事,在這個故事中,我們的伴侶扮演著受害者的角色,就像兒童通常扮演的角色一樣。例如,在你的伴侶很小的時候,他們的父母就反對他們,把他們的注意力轉移到弟弟妹妹身上。他們對孩子的求助充耳不聞,對他們不依不饒,然後又矢口否認,這讓可憐的孩子失去了對現實的感知。或者父母沒有給他們溫暖和關懷,讓他們覺得自己渴望愛是有問題的。或者他們的父母羞辱他們不夠好,也許不夠有教養、不愛運動、不善於交際或不愛整潔。在戀
Our partner may, unconsciously, start to enact in our relationship the very same dynamic as they experienced in their childhood, but with one key difference. This time, they are in the role of the perpetrator and we, unwittingly, are cast in the role of their victim. So, for example, our partner may mysteriously cool on us and begin to get highly attached to a friend or colleague. When we complain and ask for their love back, they pretend that we are imagining that they are being distant or unreliable, leaving us puzzled as to what might be unfolding. Or our partner may withdraw from us emotionally and sexually, leaving us knocking at the castle door, hoping to be let back in. Or our partner may start to become snide and mocking about our apparent insufficiencies, calling us uncreative or uncultured, which had never appeared to bother them before. What on earth is going on? The explanation may run like this. In the deep minds of our partner, it appears that there really are only two positions that one can adopt in a relationship. Either one is the perpetrator or one is the victim – that is, after all, exactly what their childhood taught them. And in the choice between these two, rather naturally, our partner has decided to adopt the exclusively safe stance that their parents once enjoyed, the perpetrator role, and then cast us as their victim. We must suffer in the way they did, for only then can they feel, in the recesses of their psyches, that they are not going to be tormented all over again. Their behaviour is letting us know what they had to go through – and are dementedly keen never to have to endure again.
我們的伴侶可能會無意識地開始在我們的關係中製造與他們童年經歷相同的動態,但有一個關鍵的不同點。這一次,他們扮演的是施暴者的角色,而我們則在不知不覺中扮演了受害者的角色。是以,舉例來說,我們的伴侶可能會神祕地對我們冷淡,並開始對朋友或同事產生濃厚的感情。當我們抱怨並要求他們重新愛我們時,他們會假裝我們是在想象他們疏遠或不可靠的樣子,讓我們百思不得其解。或者,我們的伴侶可能會在情感和性生活上遠離我們,讓我們在城堡的門前叩門,希望能被重新放進來。或者,我們的伴侶可能開始對我們明顯的不足之處冷嘲熱諷,說我們沒有創
The way out of this horrific possibility is to become hugely aware of it, to bring it into circulation in the couple and to search for evidence of it in oneself and the other.
要擺脫這種可怕的可能性,就必須強烈地意識到它,讓它在情侶間流傳,並在自己和對方身上尋找它的證據。
More profoundly, the task is to start to see that, unlike what childhood may have taught, there is in fact very much one central and redeeming alternative available to being a victim or a perpetrator. There is a role that, tragically, no one showed a child as their mind was forming, but that is the true goal of all genuine loving relationships – that of being the nurturer, the one who heals, who offers, who comforts and who cares, the one we are all craving to have – and, in our healthier moments, are all longing to be.
更重要的是,我們的任務是開始認識到,與童年可能學到的東西不同,除了成為受害者或施暴者之外,其實還有一個重要的、可以救贖的選擇。可悲的是,沒有人在孩子的心智形成過程中向他們展示過這樣一種角色,但這正是所有真正的愛的關係的真正目標--成為養育者,成為治癒者、提供者、安慰者和關懷者,成為我們都渴望擁有的那個人--在我們更健康的時候,我們都渴望成為這樣的人。