The school of life｜为何善良的人有时会引起反感

Why Nice People Repel Us

There are many things that might disrupt the mood of a promising early date: a sudden discovery of a maddening political opinion, a grating laugh, poor dental hygiene, an unfortunate choice of top.
有许多事情可能会破坏一个非常有希望的约会的情绪：突然发现一个令人抓狂的政治观点，一个刺耳的笑声，糟糕的牙齿卫生情况，或者是一个不幸的选择。
But there is a far more perplexing and, superficially at least, paradoxical kind of distaste that might abruptly arise.
但是还有一种更加令人困惑的，至少从表面上看是自相矛盾的令人反感的情况可能会突然出现。
One might want to take leave of a companion - and even rush outdoors to vomit - not because they are crude, dim or nasty but because they have revealed themselves to be undeniably and conspicuously nice.
一个人可能想告别自己的另一半——甚至严重到想要冲到户外呕吐——不是因为他们粗鲁、昏暗或下流，而是因为他们展示了自己不可否认、非常明显的善良。
Why might kindness be so hard to bear?
为什么善良会如此难以承受？
Why should warmth prove - on occasion -comprehensively repulsive?
为什么温暖有时反倒是令人厌恶的？
Why might nausea descend in the face of emotional maturity?
为什么厌恶感会在情绪成熟时下降?
Perhaps because, through no fault of our own, our whole character may have been built up around the need to cope well with not being given what we want; with not finding intimate satisfaction, with not being the recipient of anyone's reliable kindness, with being foiled in our search for tenderness and sympathy.
也许是因为，不是因为我们自己的过错，我们的整个性格可能是围绕着需要很好地应对没有得到我们想要的东西；找不到亲密的满足感，得不到任何人可靠的善意，在我们寻求温柔和同情的过程中被狠狠挫败。
As people with an allergic response to warmheartedness, somewhere in our past, we are liable to have experienced severe letdown, against which we had to insulate ourselves with a plethora of clever defensive strategies.
作为对热情过敏的人，在我们过去的某个时候，我们很可能经历过严重的失望，对此，我们不得不用大量聪明的防御策略来隔离自己。
We learnt to always reject before we were rejected; we learnt not to get taken in by anyone's honeyed words, we firmly exchanged hope for cynicism and vulnerability for impregnability.
我们学会了在被拒绝之前先拒绝别人；我们学会了不被任何人的甜言蜜语所欺骗，我们坚定地用希望换来愤世嫉俗，用脆弱换来坚不可摧。
No wonder then that a kind soul might come across as extremely threatening.
难怪一个善良的灵魂会被认为是极其危险的。
The nausea we feel in their presence isn't so much disgust as fear; the fear that we may have to shed our defences in the name of trusting that life may not going forward have to be as cold, isolated, and frightening as it evidently once
was.
我们在他们面前感到的恶心与其说是厌恶，不如说是恐惧；因为相信生活可能并不会像预期地那样朝冰冷、孤独、令人害怕的方向发展，所以需要甩掉我们的防御的恐惧。
We hear so often of the difficulties of emotional misery; they may be as nothing next to the challenges of emotional contentment, the challenge of having to unclench our suspicions and give up on our reserves of fear and disdain.
我们经常听到情感痛苦的困难；它们可能比不上情感满足的挑战，这是我们不得不解除怀疑和放弃恐惧和蔑视的挑战。
The real risk of dating isn't that our partners will be awful (there's no end of fun to be had turning minor disasters into dark wit), but that once in a while, they may be unblemished and sweet.
约会的真正风险不是我们的伴侣会很糟糕（把小灾难变成黑暗智慧的乐趣是永无止境的），而是偶尔他们可能会完美无瑕。
Anyone can bear love that fails; it takes a very fortunate and secure childhood to countenance that it might in fact work out.
任何人都可以忍受失败的爱情；只有一个非常幸运和安全的童年才能保证保证爱情的顺顺利利。
It can be so tempting to accuse a kind candidate of something - to call them'boring' or 'soppy' or to make an acid remark about their way of stepping through a door or asking for more ice.
指责一个善良的对象这种做法是如此诱人——称他们为“无聊”或“多愁善感”，或者对他们进门或想要更多冰的方式发表尖刻的评论。
We should have sufficient insight into our own difficult trajectories to put a finger more accurately on the true sources of our discomfort: that these unfortunates are in danger of not making us suffer in the way we have grown up expecting that we will have to suffer in order to feel that we are in love.
我们应该对自己艰难的轨迹有足够的洞察力，以便更准确地指出我们不适的真正来源：这些不幸的人有可能不会像我们长大后那样让我们受苦，因为我们期望我们必须受苦才能感觉到我们在恋爱。
We reject not out of meanness, but because we have had so little experience of kindness.
我们拒绝不是因为吝啬，而是因为我们对善良的体验太少了。
The next time the ick of kindness descends, we might dare to turn it away in the name of starting out on what might turn out to be the greatest adventure of our lives: a belief in the possibility of contentment and closeness.
下一次善良的渴望降临时，我们可能会敢于以开始我们一生中最伟大的冒险的名义拒绝它：相信满足和亲密的可能性。