本文原载于 《卫报》 

译者：高浦铭 & 黄倩霞 

校对：倪婷

Why do relationships end? You asked Google – here’s the answer

你问谷歌：为什么一段亲密关系会走向结束？答案在这里

Lingchi, or death by a thousand cuts, may have been outlawed in China by 1905, but the practice is still very much alive and well in the kitchens, bathrooms and Homebase car parks of disintegrating couples. We may have swapped knives for shopping receipts, blades for damp washing, swords for unwashed cups, but the principle is just the same: death by a series of injuries too small in themselves to kill.

凌迟（通过千刀万剐来处决罪犯的行刑）已在1905年被清朝废除， 但是当夫妻双方间出现裂痕，类似于“凌迟”的一幕幕就在厨房、浴室、自家的停车位上演了——尖刀可能变成了购物收据，刀锋换成了刚洗过的衣物，利剑换可能变为没洗过的杯子，但是道理其实是一样的：通过一连串无法直接致人于死地的微小创伤来杀死对方。

A wise man (with at least one divorce under his belt) once told me that nobody breaks up over adultery, but over the way you talk at dinner. Twenty years and two long-term relationships later, I am starting to agree with him. That your partner doesn’t drink tea; that they sulked at your great-uncle’s birthday party; that you don’t like the way they cut onions; that they hang up the phone without saying goodbye; that you found yourself thinking about the electricity bill while you were having sex; that they read their phone when you’re eating; that you hate their jeans; that they bought square plates for your flat; that you can’t agree what to watch on television; that they say nothing after burping; that you say nothing after farting – these are why relationships end. They deepen like a coastal shelf until you can no longer stand; they build up like the layers of silt at the bottom of a lake until, suddenly, all the water has run out and you are left with nothing. Just two unhappy people, standing up to their waist in mud.

一个至少离过一次婚的聪明男人曾告诉我，没有哪一对是因为伴侣不忠而分开的，他们分手是因为一起吃晚饭时跟对方聊不来。我在之后的二十年里经历了两段长期的恋爱关系，现在开始赞同他的这一说法。分手的原因可能是：你的伴侣不喜欢喝茶，在你舅姥爷的生日上跟你生闷气；把洋葱切成片儿，而不是切成粒儿；她（他）挂电话时没说再见。或是你在跟她（他）啪啪啪时还在三心二意地想着没交的电费；你在跟她（他）吃饭时，对方一直在看手机；你讨厌对方的牛仔裤；她（他）给你们的公寓买的是方形板；你们俩要看的电视节目不一样；对方打完嗝或放了个屁后，若无其事地不表达歉意。这些裂痕越来越深，就像向下陷沿海大陆架，直到有一天，你撑不住了；就像湖底越积越多的泥沙，直到湖水突然都流走了，你什么也没剩下。只剩下两个不快乐的人站在末过腰际的淤泥里。

under one's belt

在以往的经历中

Of course people do, sometimes, break up over big things. According to the Office for National Statistics, data from 2012 (the latest year published) showed that one in seven divorces in the UK were granted as a result of adultery. That’s a fair few. Although it still, to my scab-picking mind, leaves six out of seven divorces unaccounted for. That’s a majority of divorces in a state of sexless destruction. What’s happening there? Less than 1% of divorces were granted because of desertion. And while 44% of female murder victims (compared with 6% of male victims) were killed by partners or ex-partners, violent death is still quite a small factor in why relationships end, despite what our dreams may suggest.

除了生活中的琐事外，有时候，一些重要的事也会导致人们分开。英国国家统计局公布的2012年调查数据显示，因伴侣不忠导致离婚的占1/7，所占比例相当低。但该调查并未说明其余6/7离婚的离婚原因。离婚中有很大一部分因无性婚姻破坏夫妻感情而导致。 到底发生了什么呢？只有不到1%的离婚是由于配偶的遗弃。尽管因谋杀致死的女性中 44%的受害者被其配偶或前配偶杀害，相较之下，男性谋杀受害者中这一比例只占6%，但是“暴力致死”只是导致感情破裂的一个微小因素，尽管我们经常会在梦里看到类似的场景。

Perhaps it would be more interesting to say that the small, daily incivilities – the apologies unspoken, the kisses that go unkissed, the meals that pass in silence, the money that is wasted – lay the groundwork for the big things to erupt. Infidelity happens, perhaps, when one partner or the other is looking to plug a hole – not just a physical one but an emotional one, a personal one, a psychological one laid bare by months and years of ugly lampshades, boring weekends and lukewarm pasta bakes.

或许正是因为日常生活中一些小的不注意——例如没有向对方道歉，没有亲吻对方，给对方递饭时没搭理她（他），买不该买的东西，这些琐事日积月累最终导致大爆发。当配偶出轨时，也许总会有一方想要采取主动来挽救这段关系，不仅从肉体上，而且从情感上、个体上及精神上进行补救，而这些裂痕是由于长年累月的琐事导致：例如，嫌弃灯罩太丑啦，周末没意思，或者芝士烤意面做的不热啦。

Separation is perhaps the inevitable endpoint of eating at different times, sleeping on the sofa because you got home late, choosing to go on holiday with someone else, watching different things on your phones instead of going to the cinema and making plans in which the other is not included. “Unreasonable behaviour” as the courts call it, is perhaps the grandchild of its forebears; laziness, disinterest, resentment, boredom and taking one another for granted.

吃饭时间不同步、晚回家而睡沙发、和别人去旅行、宁愿各自看手机也不一起去电影院看一场电影、未来的规划里没有对方的存在。桩桩件件累积下来，分开是无可避免的结局。（离婚）诉讼中所称的“不合理行为”或许是感情生活中长期存在的懒性、冷漠、怨怼、厌烦或对彼此习以为常的产物。

Then there is the matter of basic incompatibility. Growing up with two parents involved in literally a 19-year break-up, I could see even from a young age that the volcanic arguments, occasional violence and public displays of aggression were not just the result of seething, growing, building resentment over little things, but the simple fact that the relationship had been a bad idea from the start.

此外，还存在本质上的不相容。我的父母婚姻关系破裂，我从小在这样的环境中度过了19年。很小的时候我就开始认识到，伴侣之间火山爆发般的激烈争吵、偶尔的暴力行为以及公然表现出来的挑衅并不是在小的事情上触发和累积的怨恨的结果，而是因为这段关系从一开始就是错的。

seethe /si:ð/  verb  to feel very angry but to be unable or unwilling to express it clearly 憋气；生闷气

We may drift apart, argue and despair over snoring, drinking, socks left in the hallway, always being the one to go to the supermarket, turning down the heating, turning up the heating and turning off the heating altogether, but sometimes what we’re really doing is standing in front of another person and realising with a cold, blank, deep and lurching horror that we were wrong. We made a bad call. We both took the wrong choice. Under these circumstances ending a relationship isn’t just healthy, timely, sensible and brave – it could become genuinely life-saving.

我们可能会因为对方睡觉打呼、爱喝酒、在走廊里乱丢袜子、去超市购物的人总是自己、调高调低还是关掉空调等等种种诸如此类的事情而渐行渐远、产生争吵直至陷入绝望。但有时候我们在面对对方时，带着发自内心深处的冷静、茫然而又剧烈的恐惧，意识到这段关系是错误的。我们选错了人。我们对于对方都是一个错误的选择。这时候结束一段不健康的关系是及时、理智且勇敢的举动，甚至可以说是在挽救自己的生命。

Like the rest of the world, I stood back in goggle-eyed wonder and watched Anthony Scaramucci burn through more break-ups in 10 days than some of us manage in 10 years. Professional, personal and public – all gone in a blink, like a strike-anywhere match. But those sort of big-ticket endings are compulsive, precisely because they’re rare. For most of us, in most scenarios, relationships end through a slow, dispiriting process of attrition. Like rocks, grinding unhappily against each other on the shore, we wear each other down and weaken at the seams until we are left with nothing but a smooth, hard, pebble of an ending.

看到安东尼·斯卡拉穆奇（AnthonyScaramucci，前白宫发言人——译者注） 在10天之内经历了那么多变故，既丢了工作又失去了婚姻，我和所有人一样目瞪口呆。我们当中一些人或许10年都不会经历这样的变故。转眼之间失去了事业、家庭和公众形象，像易燃的万能火柴一样一下子全烧没了。一段关系以如此大的代价结束无可避免，但毕竟只在少数。大多数情况下，大多数人感情的结束都是一个令人心灰意冷的慢慢消耗的过程。就像岸边的岩石，接触面互相磨损，缝隙处留有余地，最终，被磨成一块光滑、坚硬的石头。感情也就这样走到了终点。

big-ticket ADJ  If you describe something as a big-ticket item, you mean that it costs a lot of money. 高价的；昂贵的

dispiriting ADJ-GRADED  Something that is dispiriting causes you to lose your enthusiasm and excitement. 令人沮丧的;令人气馁的;令人心灰意懒的

attrition / ə'trɪʃ.ən/  noun gradually making something weaker and destroying it, especially the strength or confidence of an enemy by repeatedly attacking it （尤指给敌人的力量或自信造成的）消耗，损耗，削弱

That’s not a failure, it’s just an ending. The secret – far easier said than done, of course – is to realise that it’s over, accept that it’s over and, finally, allow it to be over. Good luck with that.

这不是失败，只是结束。虽然说起来容易做起来难，但走出一段感情的秘诀在于意识到它已经结束了，接受这个事实，最后任由它结束。祝好。

翻译是我们观察世界的方式，也是我们的兴趣所在。