IT’S one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person.

这是我们最怕遇到的事情之一。我们会竭力避免。然而结局还是一样：我们选错了结婚对象。

Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”

这在一定程度上是因为，当我们试图接近另一个人时，会有一系列令人晕头转向的问题出现。我们看上去挺正常，但那只是因为别人不太了解我们。如果生活在一个比现在更明智、更自知的社会，任何交往初期的晚餐约会上都应该问一个标准问题：“你有什么毛病？”

Perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us or can relax only when we are working; perhaps we’re tricky about intimacy after sex or clam up in response to humiliation. Nobody’s perfect. The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don’t care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with.

我们也许有一种被人反驳时会发怒的潜在倾向，或者只有在二人交往顺利时才能放松；也许我们难于接受性事之后的亲密接触，或在受辱时会选择沉默。谁都不完美。问题在于，我们在婚前很少去探究我们复杂的一面。在关系尚不稳定时，每当我们的缺陷有暴露的危险，我们就会把错推到对方身上，分手了事。至于我们的朋友，他们不会在意到愿花大力气去点醒我们的地步。因此，独立生活的其中一项好处就是，我们真心认为我们是很好相处的人。

Our partners are no more self-aware. Naturally, we make a stab at trying to understand them. We visit their families. We look at their photos, we meet their college friends. All this contributes to a sense that we’ve done our homework. We haven’t. Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.

我们的伴侣也不见得比你更有自知之明。我们理所当然会去试图理解他们。我们去他们的家中拜访。我们看他们的照片，我们见他们大学时的朋友。这些都让我们感觉，我们是做了功课的。但我们没有。到头来，婚姻是两个不了解自己、也不了解对方的人，开始一场充满希望的、宽宏的、无比亲切的赌博，把自己和一个他们无从想象的未来捆绑在一起，并且他们还一直小心翼翼地避免去探究那个未来。