雷霆战机金箍神铁好吗:亲爱的，我们得谈谈……

——简短一句话对婚姻可能有着致命杀伤力

                                                 By Tanith Carey

 作者：坦尼斯·凯里（Tanith Carey）

When Susie Clements rang her boyfriend and told him: ‘Darling, we need to talk’, she hoped it would be a turning point in their relationship. Both were saddled with hectic work schedules, so Susie wanted to find ways for them to spend more time together. But instead of opening up the lines of communication, Susie says her suggestion to boyfriend Simon had the opposite effect.

    苏西·克莱门茨（Susie Clements）打电话跟她男友说：“亲爱的，我们得谈谈。”她本意是想改进两人之间的关系。他们工作都很忙，苏西希望能有更多时间在一起。但是，她说的那句话并没能在男友西蒙（Simon）身上产生预期的效果。

‘As a couple, the time we’d spent together over the previous months had been magical,’ says Susie, 52, a striking blonde divorcee from Lincoln.‘But we were both busy people — and I wanted to work out a way where we could have more of those good times.'When I rang Simon and told him I wanted to discuss where we were heading, there was a long pause. Abruptly, he said he was on his way to play squash and he’d call me the next day.’

    苏西说，“刚结婚的头几个月，我们在一起过得幸福极了。”她今年52岁，长着一头漂亮的金发，刚跟丈夫林肯（Lincoln）[译者注：即西蒙·林肯Simon Lincoln]离了婚。“但是，我们两人工作都很忙，我很希望以前那么开心的日子能再多一些。我打电话给西蒙，说我想跟他谈谈我们的将来。电话那头儿沉默了好一会儿，然后，他突然说，他正要去打壁球，明天再打给我。”

It's not good to talk: Experts say it can be more beneficial to communicate in other ways

Looking back, Susie, who runs her own importing business, realises it was a turning point  — but not the one she was hoping for. She says: ‘We had a row about his attitude and after that he grew distant. I tried to bring it up again when we next saw each other — but he just looked at me blankly and said: “You’ve lost me.”’ 

    苏西经营着自己的进口业务，现在回过头来想想，她觉得那句话的确是婚姻关系的转折点——不过不是她预期的那种。她说：“因为他当时的反应，我们俩大吵了一架。可是，那件事之后，两人之间的关系似乎更疏远了。等我们再次见面时，我试着旧事重提，可他只是看着我，面无表情地说‘我不明白你想说什么’。”

‘In retrospect, I wish I’d never uttered those words, because it was the beginning of the end.‘However well a relationship is going, I always find men get that panicky look in their eyes when you say you want to talk, because they know what’s coming next. They just assume they’ve done something wrong before you’ve even said a word.’ 

    “现在想来，我宁愿自己当初没有说那句话，也许就不会变成今天这样了。而且，我发现，不管一段关系进展得有多顺利，男人一听到另一半说我们得谈谈时，就会流露出惊慌失措的表情。他们不知道接下来会怎么样，即使你只字未提，他们也会以为自己做错了什么事。”

Like so many who have felt lonely within a relationship, Susie had come up against that age-old scenario: a woman, feeling distant from her partner, wants to discuss how she’s feeling. But instead of hearing it as an opportunity to improve their union, her man hears it as a criticism. 

    跟很多在亲密关系中感到被冷落的人一样，苏西遭遇了许多人都经历过的那一幕：女性感觉离另一半越来越远，想要跟对方谈谈自己的感受。但是，对方听了这句话，并没把它当作一次改善关系的契机，却以为这是一种责难。

A new study by researchers at the university of Missouri has found that most men, rather than being too inhibited to share their feelings, think that endlessly talking about problems is weird, unattractive — and plain unhelpful.So could it be that talking is not the marital cure-all it’s cracked up to be? After all, despite our obsession with communication and counselling, eight out of ten marriages still fail because couples ‘grow apart’.

    密苏里大学（the university of Missouri）的研究者所做的一项最新研究表明，大部分男人并未自制到无法与人分享感受的地步，只是觉得不停地诉说很奇怪、很无聊，而且毫无帮助。那么，是不是可以说，交谈并非包治婚姻百病的灵丹妙药呢？毕竟，虽然我们痴迷于通过沟通和咨询来解决婚姻问题，但是仍有80%的问题婚姻会宣告破裂。

A best-selling U.S. relationship book How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It by Dr Patricia Love and Steven Stosny turns the long-accepted notion that you have to talk to improve your relationship with your partner on its head. 

    由帕特丽夏·拉维（Patricia Love）博士和史蒂文·斯托斯尼（Steven Stosny）合作撰写的一本美国畅销书《改善婚姻关系：此时无声胜有声》（How To Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It）中，对那种一直为世人所接受的观念：为了改善关系，你必须跟另一半话说从头、深入谈心，作者表示反对。

Battle of the sexes: 'We need to talk' can lead to arguments as women become frustrated and men get defensive (posed by models)

  

两性之争“我们得谈谈”会导致争论，女人会有挫败感，男人会有防御心（图为模特表演）

Dr Love says: ‘How many women can honestly say that the response they’ve had to the words, “I want to talk” is: “I  thought you’d never ask.”‘In reality, most women expect their men to get distracted, fidgety, defensive, irritated, or roll their eyes. It all ends up worse than when it started.’

    拉维博士说：“有多少女性愿意坦白地承认，她们说‘我想谈谈’时指的是‘你从来都不过问我的感受’。”“大多数女性认为自己的丈夫心不在焉、难以取悦、防御心重、容易发火或总是一副无所谓的样子，实际上，这种情况通常都会变得越来越糟。”

The reason talking doesn’t help is down to basic biological differences between men and women, says Dr Love. Because of their roles within the pack, the genders are hard-wired differently to cope with stress and intimacy.

    谈话起不到什么作用的根本原因在于男女之间生理上的差异，拉维博士说。正是由于这种两性角色的差异，男性和女性天生就以不同方式应对压力和亲密关系。

Dating back to pre-history, a woman’s more vulnerable role as childbearer meant she had to depend on the support of the group for security and survival. And thousands of years on, women still deal with fear by sharing their worries.

    遥想史前时期，作为子女孕育人，女性更脆弱，需要得到更多的群体支持才能安全地生存下去。几千年过去了，女性仍然通过与人分享焦虑来应对恐惧感。

Men, however, are hard-wired to see their roles as defenders, says Dr Love. ‘Males know females choose them for their ability to protect and provide, so a man rates himself on how well he fulfils that role and how happy his partner is.‘When a woman suggests there’s a problem with the relationship, he feels he’s not providing well enough.‘It makes him feel ashamed, so he withdraws emotionally.’

    而男性天生被看作保护者，拉维博士说。“男性清楚女性是因其提供保护和供给的能力而选择他们的，所以，男性以完成这一任务的好坏及另一半的满意度为自我评判标准。”“女性说他们之间的关系有问题时，男性会觉得他没能扮演好供给者的角色。这会让他感觉羞愧，于是他就会表现出感情上的退缩。”

Research has found that even the way males and females respond physically to emotional stress is different, says Dr Love.‘Talking about feelings is soothing to women. But it makes men physically uncomfortable. Their bodies flood with the stress hormone cortisol. There’s more blood flow to muscles. They get edgy, so that women think they’re not listening.’

    研究发现，男性和女性对精神压力的生理反应也不同，拉维博士说。“谈论感受对女性来说是一种放松，却会使男性感觉身体不适。应激激素皮质醇[注：在压力状态下分泌的荷尔蒙]随血液流遍全身，股肉充血让男性感到紧张。男性的生理反应会让女性会以为他们根本没在用心听。”

The theory is borne out in studies that show women and men respond differently to stress from the moment they are born.‘When a baby girl hears a loud noise or gets anxious, she wants to make eye contact with someone,’ says Dr Love. ‘But a baby boy will react to the same sound by looking around, a fight-or-flight response.’It’s easy for couples to slip into negative patterns because their different vulnerabilities are almost invisible — and the miscommunications run so deep.

    一些研究证实了该理论：女性和男性从出生起对压力的反应方式就不同。“听到巨大声响或感到焦虑时，女婴会与人保持眼神接触，”拉维博士说。“而男婴会环顾四周，作出战或逃的反应。”由于人们很难意识到这种天生的差异，再加上彼此之间缺乏有效沟通，所以，夫妻双方就很容易陷入一种消极互动模式。

The key to satisfaction, says Dr Love, is to find ways to connect without words: ‘Everyone needs to learn that before we can communicate by speaking, we need to connect non-verbally through touch, sex, and doing things together, which is when the deepest moments of intimacy occur.’

    拉维博士说，满意婚姻的关键在于，找到非言语的交流方式：“夫妻双方都要明白一点，在言语交流之前，需要先有些非言语交流，比如抚摸、做爱以及做些其他饱含浓情蜜意的事。”

'When I said, "We need to talk" my partner's immediate reaction was to think "Oh goodness, what have I done now?"'

    你说“我们得谈谈”时，你的另一半心里马上就会有那种反应“哦，天啊，我又做错了什么？”

Despite the fact many women believe men are only interested in touching during sex, Dr Love says every man she has ever counselled privately admits he would like to be caressed more at other times too.It means the best way to improve intimacy is to simply touch your man more. 

    虽然很多女性认为男性实事上只有做爱时才对身体接触感兴趣，拉维博士说，但是，她一对一访谈过的每一个男性都承认自己在其他时间也愿意得到更多爱抚。这意味着，增进亲密关系的最好方法就是，与你的丈夫保持更多的身体接触。

Dr Love recommends giving your partner a full-body hug six times a day — and for at least six seconds each time — which is how long it takes for the calming, feel-good hormone serotonin to kick in. ‘It may sound a lot, but the six-times-six formula brings a new level of closeness,’ Dr Love says. ‘The hugs may start out feeling forced, but they soon become genuine.’

    拉维博士建议，每天跟你的另一半全身心地拥抱六次，每次至少持续六秒（这是让人放松、感觉良好的激素血清素生效的时间）。“天天这么做听起来有些多，但是，6×6模式能为你的婚姻营造一种崭新的亲密氛围。”拉维博士说。“刚开始可能需要你刻意这么去做，但要不了多久你就会心甘情愿地去拥抱对方。”

Sex also makes couples more willing to forgive — without words. ‘Oxytocin, the hormone that triggers orgasm, is like a miracle drug that makes you move closer. ‘After sex, it also has an amnesiac effect that lasts for four to six hours afterwards and enables you to forget the bad stuff — like how he forgot to pay the credit card bill.’

    仅通过做爱也能让夫妻之间更容易达成相互谅解。“催产素（一种引发性高潮的荷尔蒙）就像一副让夫妻双方更加亲密的魔药。”“做爱也会导致四到六小时的遗忘，能让人忘记那些不好的事——比如，你老公可能会忘记为信用卡帐单花掉的那些钱。”

Newly-wed Shona Clark, from Grantham, agrees that confronting men over emotional issues doesn’t work. She met her funeral director husband Andy, 37, on relationship site eHarmony.co.uk and they married last October.But she found that pinning Andy down for ‘big chats’ was counterproductive. ‘Between us, we have five children,’ she says. ‘So at times the communication was not great. But I recognized that when I said, “We need to talk”  Andy’s immediate reaction was to think “Oh goodness, what have I done now?”‘Now, instead of startling Andy, if I need to bring something up, I get to the point immediately. It takes work as I don’t think it’s something that comes naturally to women.’

    结婚不久的休娜·克拉克（Shona Clark）（娘家姓格兰瑟姆Grantham）也认为跟男人谈论感情问题根本行不通。她在交友网站（eHarmony.co.uk）上结识的丈夫安迪，他今年37岁，是个丧葬承办人，两人去年十月份结的婚。她发现简直不可能跟安迪好好地谈论问题。“我们两人有五个孩子，”她说，“所以，沟通是少不了的事。可是，我一说‘我们得谈谈’，安迪马上就会有那种‘哦，天啊，我又做错什么啦’的反应。”“现在，我不再说那句会让安迪受到惊吓的话了。如果非得说些什么，我就直奔主题。不过，对女性而言，这么做真是不太容易。”

Phillip Hodson, of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says that while brain scans indicate that the genders process emotions differently, it’s not reasonable to expect women to tip-toe around their men if there’s a problem.‘Men are adults, too. If they commit a crime, they need to deal with it. When a man crosses a line in a relationship, he also needs to be accountable. But on less serious day-to-day issues, it’s true that handing out ultimatums causes resentment,’ he says. 

    英国心理辅导与治疗协会（the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy）的菲利普·霍德森（Phillip Hodson）说，脑部扫描显示两性的情绪处理过程是不同的，指望着有什么问题时，女性能直截了当地跟丈夫说出来是不太现实的。“作为成年人，男人明白：如果犯了罪，就得承担后果；如果越了界，就得负起责任。但是，在日常琐事上，感到对方咄咄逼人，他们就会十分恼火。”他说。

Rather than being a one-sided manifesto that lets men off the hook, Dr Love says her book is a plea for both genders to respect one another’s insecurities.‘What men don’t understand about women is how much pain they experience when they feel neglected. ‘What women don’t understand about men is that the slightest indication that their mate is unhappy is humiliating.’If you build your relationship on what you do, not what you say, Dr Love says the man in your life will feel more in tune with you, less threatened and there will be fewer issues to sort out. ‘When couples feel connected again, men want to talk more and women need to talk less,’ she says.

    拉维博士的书并非只站在男性的立场宣扬一种观念，她说，她希望两性能够相互体谅。“男性体会不到女性感到被忽视时承受的痛苦有多大，女性也不清楚男性会认为，即使有一丝迹象表明其配偶生活不幸福也是对他们莫大的羞辱。”

    如果通过行动而不是言语来增进夫妻感情，拉维博士说，男性会觉得更和谐、更安全，夫妻之间的争端也会更少。她说：“夫妻间亲密关系恢复时，男性会主动说得更多，女性也不必为此唠唠叨叨了。”