Name: 我們的合作伙伴能否改變？ (Can Our Partners Change?)
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T15:52:39.000Z
Duration: 5 min 45 s

情態副詞

In many relationships, we may find ourselves asking, with continually renewed frustration, puzzlement and pain, why can't they change? We ask because there's so much at stake, because we've invested so much in them and they in us. We ask also because we know that they're intelligent, they understand so much, they follow arguments, they ordinarily communicate in fairly sophisticated ways. Surely, then, they will be able to hear us and grasp what needs to be done. It isn't, after all, very complicated. We need them to be more reliable. We need them to call us when they say they will. We need them to kiss us more. We need them to ask us about our day. We need them to initiate sex sometimes.

在許多人際關係中，我們可能會發現自己帶著不斷翻新的挫敗感、不解和痛苦問：為什麼他們不能改變？我們這樣問是因為這關係到很多事情，因為我們在他們身上投入了很多，他們也在我們身上投入了很多。我們這樣問，還因為我們知道他們很聰明，他們懂得很多東西，他們能聽懂爭論，他們通常能用相當複雜的方式進行交流。那麼，他們肯定能聽懂我們的話，明白需要做什麼。畢竟，事情並不複雜。我們需要他們更加可靠。我們需要他們說給我們打電話就給我們打電話。我們需要他們多親吻我們。我們需要他們問我們今天的情況。我們需要他們有時主動和我們做愛

程度副詞

We need them to be softer and more focused. These are the signs that we need from them and upon which everything else hangs, the survival of a relationship or a marriage, where children go to school, who owns a house, what's in a will. The pain and strangeness is deepened because they don't say a flat-out no. They insist, repeatedly, that they do love us. At points, they appear to listen to us. They don't want the connection to unravel either. The things we're trying to get them to do have an elemental simplicity, a few more words here and there, not those annoying behaviours, some more gestures at key moments. You'd think this was entirely obvious. So many people, we included, have absolutely no problem with such matters. They come to us as readily as to some does the gift of mental arithmetic or a facility with language. We suffer because we can't, unlike in other areas of endeavour, see or grasp the effort required to change psychologically.

我們需要他們更柔和、更專注。這些都是我們需要從他們那裡得到的暗示，也是其他一切的基礎，關係或婚姻的存續，孩子在哪裡上學，誰擁有房子，遺囑裡寫了什麼。痛苦和陌生感之所以加深，是因為他們沒有一口回絕。他們一再堅持，他們確實愛我們。有時，他們似乎在聽我們說話。他們也不希望這種聯繫破裂。我們想讓他們做的事情其實很簡單，就是在這裡和那裡多說幾句話，不要做那些令人討厭的行為，在關鍵時刻多做一些手勢。你會覺得這是顯而易見的。很多人，包括我們在內，在這些問題上完全沒有問題。就像有些人擁有心算天賦或語言能力一樣，我們也能輕

反身代名詞

We know it's hard to climb a very tall mountain. We know the limitations of our limbs and intuit how hard those granite sides will be. And so we don't find ourselves crossly saying, just go and climb K2. But in the emotional realm, there are no visible markers of challenge.

我們知道攀登一座很高的山很難。我們知道自己肢體的極限，也知道花崗岩有多堅硬。是以，我們不會趾高氣揚地說，去爬 K2 吧。但在情感領域，卻沒有明顯的挑戰標誌。

Why don't they just reach out to us more, think of us more, hold us more? It's so simple. Except it's not. Not for them, at least. It would be as hard for these people to take this on board as it would be for us to run up a cliff face, levitate a car or fly between buildings. The difficulty may be traceless, it's every bit as real and as incontestable. We have to accept something beyond the evidence of our senses, in the way we have to accept a principle of physics that defies the naked eye. We have to accept that for a certain sort of person to say a sentence like, I can't live without you,

他們為什麼不多接觸我們，多想想我們，多抱抱我們？就這麼簡單但事實並非如此。至少對他們來說不是。讓這些人接受這一點，就像讓我們在懸崖峭壁上奔跑、讓汽車懸浮或在樓宇間飛行一樣困難。困難可能是無跡可尋的，但它同樣真實，同樣無可爭議。我們必須接受超越感官證據的東西，就像我們必須接受違背肉眼的物理學原理一樣。我們必須接受這樣的事實，即某類人說出 "我不能沒有你 "這樣的句子、

I need you so much, though it's made up of ten commonplace, non-syntactically arduous words, is as much of a challenge as would be lifting up a tree with one's little finger or flawlessly translating a text from Finnish to Korean in an instant. When we protest and say, why don't they just? In our disbelief, there is so much that we're not at that moment seeing. The decades, especially the first one, that very slowly, over thousands of small incidents, with some of the patience of water-shaping stone, moulded them into who they are now. We're not seeing the small boy or girl who had to cope with a father who left the family or a mother who undermined them across long years. We're not seeing how they had to adapt to make it through and why certain learned responses made sense.

I need you so much"（"我如此需要你"），雖然只有十個普通的、非句法艱澀的單詞，但其難度不亞於用小手指擎起一棵樹，或者在瞬間將一篇文章從芬蘭語完美無瑕地翻譯成韓語。當我們抗議說，他們為什麼不這樣做呢？在我們難以置信的時候，有太多東西是我們當時沒有看到的。這幾十年，尤其是最初的幾十年，在數以千計的小事件中，以水磨石般的耐心，慢慢地把他們塑造成了現在的樣子。我們沒有看到小男孩或小女孩不得不面對離家出走的父親，也沒有看到母親在漫長的歲月裡對他們的傷害。我們沒有看到他們是如何適應環境以渡過難關的

We're not seeing that character is a substance as tough as catgut and as hard to alter as muscle. This has nothing to do with intelligence in the standard sense of an ability to understand an argument and respond to information. They can do this extremely well every day in their work as we know. But this is of another order. It has to do with the way they were assembled as an emotional being. It touches on the wiring of their soul. We can no more just become a person who runs at a certain emotional temperature than we can be a person who just competes in the Olympics or just changes their eye colour. The difficulty doesn't signal itself.

我們沒有看到，性格是一種像腸子一樣堅韌、像肌肉一樣難以改變的物質。這與標準意義上的智力無關，即理解論點和對資訊做出反應的能力。我們知道，他們每天在工作中都能很好地做到這一點。但這是另一種意義上的智力。這與他們的情感組合方式有關。這涉及到他們的靈魂線路。我們不可能僅僅成為一個在某種情緒溫度下奔跑的人，就像我們不可能僅僅成為一個參加奧運會的人或僅僅改變眼睛顏色的人一樣。困難不會自己發出信號。

It is every bit as concrete and as unbudgeable as the most strenuous feats of the visible world. We shouldn't add to our suffering by believing that we are up against some kind of stubbornness or willfulness, that they're doing it on purpose, that we're destroying years on something that could change tomorrow. We need to dignify our problems. Our lives haven't become unmoored by a haphazard matter or a nastiness of character or a streak of spite. We're up against what we might as well learn to see as one of the central trip wires of existence. We're facing the pyramids of Giza or the direction of flow of the Rhine.

它與有形世界中最艱鉅的壯舉一樣，都是具體的、不可觸摸的。我們不應該認為，我們所面對的是某種頑固不化或一意孤行，他們是故意這樣做的，我們在一些明天就可能改變的事情上浪費了很多年，從而增加我們的痛苦。我們需要讓我們的問題有尊嚴。我們的生活並不是因為一件草率的事情、一種齷齪的性格或一股怨氣而變得支離破碎。我們所面對的，是我們不妨學會將其視為存在的核心絆腳石之一。我們面對的是吉薩金字塔或萊茵河的流向。

They function in one kind of emotional way, we function in another. Despite a lack of visual evidence, we are fundamentally different people. We would, to change them, need to put them in a time machine, fly back to the past and give them an entirely different upbringing.

他們以一種情感方式發揮作用，而我們則以另一種方式發揮作用。儘管缺乏直觀的證據，但我們在本質上是不同的人。要改變他們，我們需要把他們放進時光機，飛回到過去，給他們完全不同的教養。

We're insulting ourselves and the process by which people become who they are to keep assuming that a few more paragraphs or one or two more chats will do it. If we need to leave them, and we may, let's not compound our suffering by assuming it's caused by negligible factors. We were trying to remake a human being, we were trying to bend the laws of time and space, we were attempting to retool emotional DNA with our bare hands.

如果我們一味地認為多寫幾段文字或多聊一兩次天就能解決問題，那就是在侮辱我們自己，也是在侮辱人們成為他們的過程。如果我們需要離開他們，而且我們可能會離開，那麼我們就不要假設痛苦是由微不足道的因素造成的，從而加重我們的痛苦。我們試圖重塑一個人，我們試圖彎曲時間和空間的法則，我們試圖徒手重塑情感 DNA。

How noble and how brave of us to try. How very normal that we ran into difficulties.

我們的嘗試多麼高尚，多麼勇敢。我們遇到困難是多麼正常。

字幕列表影片播放

我們的合作伙伴能否改變？ (Can Our Partners Change?)

assume

sophisticated

evidence

character