評論
打印
Happy Valentine's Day, listeners! For Scientific American's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.
聽眾們，情人節快樂！我是Rachel Feltman，為您帶來《科學美國人》的《科學快訊》。
For many people today is all about scrambling to get last-minute dinner reservations and spending lots of money—I mean, uh, showing your significant other how much you care about them.
對于許多人來說，今天最重要的就是匆忙預訂晚餐，花很多錢——向你的另一半展示你有多在乎他們。
But what about your other significant others? What about Galentine's Day and Palentine's Day?
但是你的其他另一半呢？閨蜜節呢？
Today's guest wants to help us understand that non-romantic love and partnership can change our lives for the better.
今天的嘉賓想幫助我們理解，非浪漫的愛情和伙伴關系可以讓我們的生活變得更好。
Rhaina Cohen is a producer and editor for NPR's Embedded podcast and she's also the author of the book The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center.
Rhaina Cohen是NPR的Embedded播客的制作人和編輯，她也是The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center一書的作者。
She's here today to share what she's learned about the history and psychology of human friendship. Rhaina, thanks so much for joining us today.
她今天來這里是為了分享她對人類友誼的歷史和心理學的了解。Rhaina，非常感謝你今天加入我們。
Glad to get to talk about this. So what inspired you to write this book? I fell into a friendship that, for me, really defied even what the definition of friendship was.
很高興能談論這個話題。那么是什么啟發了你寫這本書呢？我陷入了一段友誼，對我來說，這段友誼甚至違背了友誼的定義。
My friend, who I refer to as "M," she and I became much more like partners pretty quickly. I felt a kind of excitement about our friendship that surpassed anything that I had felt before.
我的朋友，我稱她為“M”，她和我很快就成為了合作伙伴。我對我們的友誼感到一種興奮，這種興奮超越了我以前所感受到的一切。
We were incorporated into each other's routines in a way that I think is more reminiscent of a romantic relationship,
我們融入了彼此的日常生活，我認為這更像是一段浪漫的關系，
where you're, you know, seeing each other most days of the week, bringing each other to your office holiday parties, know what it is that your friend cooks all the time and what foods they won't eat and adjusting your recipes, you know, accordingly.
我們一周中的大部分時間都在見面，帶對方參加辦公室的假日聚會，知道朋友經常做什么菜，他們不會吃什么菜，然后相應地調整食譜。
So the friendship opened up questions for both of us about, "What do we call each other? Why isn't there a name for this kind of friendship that can feel really devoted,
這段友誼給我們倆提出了一個問題：“我們怎么稱呼對方？為什么這種能讓人感到真正忠誠的友誼沒有一個名字？
and what does it say about our expectations of romantic relationships, as well, that we can't conceive of partnership as anything other than involving romance?"
這又說明了我們對浪漫關系的哪些期待呢？我們是否無法將伴侶關系想象成浪漫以外的形式呢？
And as that friendship developed, how did other people react to, you know, this partnership becoming so important for you?
隨著友誼的發展，其他人對這種關系對你來說變得如此重要有何反應？
I think we were quite lucky in that people were really positive. It could be because my friend is, like—just everybody loves her. She's, like, very radiant.
我認為我們很幸運，因為人們都非常積極?？赡苁且驗槲业呐笥讯紣鬯?。她非常光彩照人。
And I think it's not that big of a surprise for someone to wanna be kind of attached at the hip to her, though I guess that doesn't explain maybe on her end of things.
我認為有人想和她親密無間并不奇怪，盡管我想這可能無法解釋她的情況。
We did experience some longing that people had for a friendship as close as ours.
我們確實感受到人們對像我們這樣親密的友誼的渴望。
You know, I went on to talk to other people who had these kinds of friendships, and they did not always get the same kind of positive responses.
我繼續與其他擁有這種友誼的人交談，他們并不總是得到同樣積極的回應。
They would be gossiped about, particularly if there were straight men involved, that at least one person, you know, must be in love with the other,
他們會被人議論，尤其是如果有直男牽涉其中，至少有一個人一定愛上了另一個人，
that they're closeted or they're denying to themselves that their relationship is really romantic.
他們可能是深柜，或者他們否認他們的關系是真正的戀愛關系。
I mean, there's a whole gamut of kind of much more critical responses that I've heard people get,
我聽到人們會得到一系列更為批判性的反應，
including being blocked from, you know, seeing someone in the hospital because they are not truly related, and I think that kind of judgment was something that we were spared from.
包括被禁止去醫院探望某人，因為他們沒有真正的血緣關系，我認為我們避免了這種評判。
Yeah, how do you think we got to where we are now in terms of what, you know, seems normal, at least in Western culture, for friendships versus romantic relationships?
你認為我們是如何走到現在這一步的，至少在西方文化中，友誼關系與戀愛關系似乎是正常的？
Well, there're, yeah, a few big changes that we don't even recognize because we're probably just taking for granted that friendship is this secondary part of life and that marriage or a romantic relationship takes up the bulk of one's social life.
有一些重大變化我們甚至沒有意識到，因為我們可能理所當然地認為友誼是生活的次要部分，而婚戀關系占據了人們社交生活的大部分。
And if you're looking a couple hundred years ago, marriage was an economic relationship, first and foremost, one that was not between equals,
幾百年前，婚姻首先是一種經濟關系，它不是平等的，
and now we expect a romantic partner to be a best friend and to be your No. 1, and that doesn't really make sense in a context where one person owns the other,
而現在我們期望一個浪漫的伴侶成為最好的朋友和優先項，這在一個人擁有另一個人的背景下是說不通的，
where you don't have equality, and that's kind of a foundation of any kind of friend-type relationship.
因為你們沒有平等的關系，而平等是任何朋友關系的基礎。
So you have this sort of ballooning of the significance of marriage and what people expect of it and how much space it takes up in their lives.
婚姻的重要性，人們對婚姻的期望，以及婚姻在他們生活中占據了多大空間，都呈現出一種膨脹的趨勢。。
And then friendships that used to be extremely intimate—I mean, there're, like, so many very kind of vivid examples of this—
然后，曾經非常親密的友誼——有很多非常生動的例子——
became suspect around the turn of the 20th century, once you have the introduction of the concept of homosexuality and heterosexuality.
在20世紀之交變得令人懷疑，因為你引入了同性戀和異性戀的概念。
It didn't used to be that you were marked as a certain kind of person if you had sex with somebody of the same gender.
過去，如果你和同性發生性關系，你不會被標記為某種人。
So behavior that had been innocent, like bed-sharing or—just, like, you can look at photos from the late 1800s, early 1900s of men being so close up to each other.
所以那些行為本來是無辜的，比如同床共枕，或者——你可以看看19世紀末20世紀初男人彼此親密的照片。
As a lot of people might see it now, it's like, "Oh, those men were in love with each other. They were gay."
現在很多人看到這些照片時，可能會想，“哦，那些男人彼此相愛。他們是同性戀?！?/p>
So there was just sort of less room for intimate friendship and much more room and expectations of marriage.
因此，親密友誼的空間就變小了，而婚姻的空間和期望就變大了。
