It starts innocently enough. You meet someone through a mutual friend, or on a dating app, and after a few dates, there’s a funny feeling in your stomach, an indicator that this person is different. Special. There’s something about them, you think. Time seems to fly by and after a few months, you’re convinced your soul mate has arrived because the emotion you feel is strong enough to power a city. I’m in love, you think, as you re-read old text messages and scroll through their Instagram feed.

这段感情的开端足够单纯。你们通过某位共同好友或者在某约会软件相识，在约会数次后，你心中有种奇妙感觉，这表明对方与其他人不同，很特别。你觉得他们有种特别之处。时间如若飞逝，在数月之后，你坚信你已经找到了你的灵魂伴侣，因为你所感受到的澎湃感情足以为整个城市提供能源。当你重读之前信息，或浏览对方Instagram页面时，“我陷入爱河了”，你想。

You ride a wave of bliss and cannot for one second imagine the feeling coming to an end, and with that kind of optimism, you pack up your stuff and move in together. When you know, you know, you tell your friends and family.

你内心充满幸福甜蜜，甚至无法想象这一感觉会停止。带着这种乐观，你收拾好自己的行李，开始和对方同居。“当你知道时，你自然就会知道。”你这样告诉你的朋友和家人。

And then you wake up one morning and realize that your soul mate, your one and only, your forever and ever love, is actually doing things that to you seem illogical and if you're honest with yourself, kind of stupid.

然后，一天早晨你醒来，你发现你的灵魂伴侣，你的唯一，你永远的爱，却在做着某些在你看来完全不合逻辑，而且坦白说，有些愚蠢的事情。

They wait until the last minute to get things done. They don’t seem at all concerned that they're always late to social gatherings or to work. They don't wash their fruit before they eat it, and they don't seem to know how to drive. They spend money with no budget in mind, and they never seem to be worried about the future. They have no sense of organization, and you are always cleaning up after them.

他们总是拖延到最后一刻，他们似乎完全不在乎总是在聚会或工作中迟到，他们吃水果之前并不会洗一下，他们似乎也不懂如何开车。他们花钱毫无预算概念，而且似乎从来不会考虑未来。他们毫无条理性，你总是跟在他屁股后面帮他整理烂摊子。

You’ve always been the planner, the organizer, the mothership of proactive measures, and as you see their terrible habits playing out, you worry that your relationship won’t go the distance. Having always been told that you are a generous, kind-hearted, and compassionate person, you embark on a mission to help your partner become a better version of themselves: to coach them into perfection.

你一直扮演着规划者，整理者的角色，你制定所有主动措施。当你看到他们的不良习惯浮现，你开始担忧这段感情并不会长久。一直被告知你是一个慷慨，善良和富有同情心之人，你开始踏上了履行一个使命的征程：帮助你的伴侣成为更好的人，指导对方变得完美。

With patience, you encourage them to make different choices. “Maybe you should try getting up earlier,” you say. “Maybe we can sit down and look at your finances and help you budget.”

你很耐心地鼓励对方做不同的选择。“或许你该尝试早起一些，”你说。“或许我们可以坐下来，看一下你的财务问题，帮你制定预算。”

Soon enough, most of your sentences begin with “Don’t forget to…” or “Remember that you need to…” and although you started off with a great deal of patience, you see that none of your efforts are working. Your partner’s still doing the same annoying things, and now you’re annoyed, angry, and frustrated because they don’t appreciate how much you’re trying to help them. After all, isn’t that what love is all about? Coaching our partners and helping them to be better versions of themselves?

很快，你的大多数句子都起始于“不要忘记……”“记得你需要……”尽管一开始你带着大量的耐心，但你发现你的一切努力都徒劳无功。对方依旧死性不改，于是你变得恼怒，生气，沮丧，因为你觉得对方对你的帮助并不领情。毕竟，难道这不就是爱情本该有的样子吗？指导并帮助对方成为他们更好的自己？

Well, no.

呃，并非如此！

Why are you raising your partner?
你为什么在抚养你的另一半？

All of us arrive in relationships with a particular set of beliefs, perspectives, and values that are born from our own experiences and upbringing. No two people are ever the same, and how you show up in a relationship is likely a product of what you experienced long before your partner looked into your eyes and made the world spin a little faster.

我们所有人在进入一段感情时都带着一套特定的理念/观点和价值观，它们来自于我们的人生经历和被养育过程。没有任何两个人是完全一样的。你在一段感情中所呈现的样子，是你往昔经历的产物，而且这些经历远在你的另一半凝视你双眸，让你心中小鹿乱撞很久之前就已经发生。

If you always slip into a pattern of “raising” your partner, consider that maybe you saw the same dynamic playing out in the relationship between your parents. Having been modeled for you for all of your childhood, it may have registered as the normal, healthy dynamic between two people who love each other.

如果你总是会陷入抚养另一半的感情模式，那么考虑其原因可能是这是你在你父母之间看到的感情模式。童年时期你一直耳濡目染，它可能会让你觉得这是两个相爱之人之间的正常/健康模式。

Perhaps you got well-intentioned advice over and over again from friends and family members. I remember talking to a friend of mine about some of my frustrations early on in my marriage. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You just need to train him.” Train him? I thought. I married a human being, not a Labrador retriever.

也可能是来自亲朋好友的一遍又一遍善意的建议。我记得和我一个朋友讲述我在刚结婚时遇到的一些受挫情况时。“别担心，”她说，“你只是需要训练他。”训练他？我想。我嫁给的是一个人，不是一只拉布拉多。

Another reason might be that your partner’s way of existing in the world actually causes you a great deal of distress, because it is wildly different from how you have chosen to live your own life. So when you endeavor to “help” your partner, to mold them, train them, and change them to fit your own beliefs and worldview, perhaps you're trying to mitigate your own discomfort with things being contrary to what you believe.

还有一个原因可能是对方的生活方式的确给你造成了很大痛苦，因为他的生活方式与你所选择的生活方式差异巨大。因此，当你试图去“帮助”你的另一半，去塑造对方，训练对方，按照你的理念和世界观改变对方时，可能你只是在缓解面对与自己理念相悖之事物时所产生的不适感。

Maybe it’s just easier and safer to focus on someone else rather than on yourself. There’s a part of you that recognizes there’s some stuff you haven’t processed, some hard truths about yourself you don’t want to face; turning your attention on your partner seems like a sound strategy to avoid feeling uncomfortable. After all, if you were conditioned to believe that being anything less than perfect is unacceptable, it’s not logical that you would then grow up to be an adult who can embrace your vulnerabilities. It makes more sense to avoid them altogether.

可能只是因为聚焦于别人，而非自己，这样更简单，更安全。你内心有一部分意识到你自己还存在某种未解决的问题，还有一些你不想面对的，关于自己的残酷真相，于是，将注意力转向另一半，似乎就是一个良好的策略，它可以让你避免感到不适。毕竟，如果你被灌输一定要完美才可以，那么你长大成人后就不大可能会接受自己的脆弱之处。这时候，完全回避这些脆弱之处，似乎就是较为合理的做法。

If you experienced a great deal of uncertainty, instability, or traumatic losses throughout your childhood, this may have impacted how you manage your day-to-day now. Your way of establishing safety and stability in the world may have manifested as an emphasis on controlling every area of your life; you plan every step and do everything in your power to avoid feeling the same fear, sadness, and hurt that you may have felt as a child. Your partner forging their own path may trigger an alarm that things are not safe, which means you need to control every aspect of your life, and also theirs.

如果你在童年时期经历了大量的不确定性，不稳定性，或失去过某些重要的人或物且这些失去给你留下了创伤，这可能也会影响你的日常行为方式。你在这个世界上构建安全感和稳定感的方式，可能表现为侧重于控制生活中每个方面。你会规划每一步，尽己所能避免再次感受到童年时期所感受到的那些恐惧，悲伤和伤痛。你的另一半按照自己方式生活，可能会触发你内心的警报，让你感到不安全，让你觉得你需要控制你生活和对方生活中的一切。

How it impacts your sex life
这对你的性生活有何影响

If you have noticed that your sex life has dropped off, if you no longer reach for each other the moment you’re in the same room, it may be that the interactions between you have become too parental, which is not the sexiest dynamic in the world.

如果你注意到你们性生活已经热情消退，你们同处一室时不再互相触碰对方，那么你们之间的感情模式可能就变得过于亲子化，而这种感情模式并非世界上最性感的感情模式。

When you channel all of your energy toward making sure your partner is improving, changing, progressing, and growing, you run the risk of forgetting two important factors: They never asked you for help, and they managed to survive before they met you. Rather than change and grow, they remain firmly entrenched in their ways, and you end up feeling exhausted, frustrated, resentful, and worst of all, unappreciated. This is not a recipe for an active sex life.

当你将所有精力倾注在提升对方，改变对方，让对方前进，成长时，你可能就面临着忘却两项重要因素的风险：

对方从未要求你提供帮助，而且在遇到你之前他们也活的好好的。

对方并未改变和成长，而是依旧固执坚持原来的种种习惯，你则最终感到精疲力尽，受挫沮丧，充满怨恨，而且最糟糕的是，觉得不被珍惜。这可不是构建幸福性生活的配方。

If you are the person being parented, you might be feeling like a 5-year-old who's constantly getting in trouble or trying to get things right so that your partner doesn’t get upset with you. This too may kill any desire for intimacy you may have had when you first met, because you’re starting to feel like you moved in with a younger version of your parent. Again, not sexy.

如果你是被“抚养”的那一方，你可能会觉得自己像是一个5岁小孩，一直担心招惹麻烦，或战战兢兢如履薄冰生怕惹对方不开心。这也可能会扼杀任何你们刚相识时所感受到的亲密欲望，因为你开始觉得和你同居在一起的是你年轻版的父母。同样，这也毫无性感可言。

So what do you do?
该如何做？

Make a decision as to whether or not you really want to stay in your relationship. You may have to explore what drew you to them in the first place and ask yourself some tough questions: Do I really love them? What, exactly, do I love? If you are hyper-focused on the things that bother you, it’s easy to forget the important stuff: Maybe you share the same values, maybe you both want the same things, maybe you share the same faith. Remembering these things can help you determine whether or not you want to stay or throw in the towel.

决定自己是否真的想继续这段感情。首先，你可能需要探究最初是什么让你觉得对方有吸引力，并问自己一些很艰难的问题：我真的爱对方吗？我究竟爱的是什么呢？如果你过度关注那些困扰你的事情，可能就很易于忘记一些重要的事情：可能你们拥有相同的价值观，可能你们都追求同样的事物，可能你们有着共同的信仰。记住，这些事情可以帮助你决定你是否真的想要继续这段感情。

Focus on yourself. Rather than focusing on your partner’s habits, make a conscious effort to turn inward and explore your own relationship expectations and perspectives. Working with a therapist can help you identify and understand stubborn patterns that perhaps you want to change, and help you challenge old beliefs about yourself and/or relationships that have never really served you.

关注自身，而非关注对方的习惯，主动内省，探究自己对感情的期望和视角。寻求心理医生的帮助，这可以帮助你识别并理解自己需要改变的一些固有行为模式，帮助你质疑你对自己，以及往昔负面/毒性感情关系一贯持有的观点看法。

Relinquish control. I would be lying if I said this was easy, because having control may have always been your way of feeling safe and secure, or maybe this was how you learned to express love. Whatever the reason, when you endeavor to explore other paths that are outside of your comfort zone, it might feel terrifying, or it may seem like entirely too much work.

放弃控制欲。如果我说这很简单，那么我肯定是在撒谎，因为掌控感可能一直以来都是你获得安全感的方式，可能也是你所学到的表达爱的方式。无论原因是什么，当你尝试探索自己舒适区之外的路径时，你可能感到恐惧，或者感到很难招架。

But if you’ve realized that you do love the person, and you want the relationship to work, remind yourself constantly that the only thing over which you have real agency is you. No amount of well-intentioned effort on your part will ever change someone who hasn’t first recognized the changes they’d like to make for themselves.

但如果你意识到你真的很爱对方，而且你也想要这段感情修成正果，那么不断提醒自己：你唯一真正能控制的，是自己。如果一个人并未首先意识到自己想要做出某种改变，那么，无论你做出多么善意的努力，都不会令其改变的。

Be a team, not adversaries. If your partner’s up for it, seek a couple’s therapist. Sometimes you can fall into the trap of thinking that your partner is the problem, or perhaps they think you’re the problem. A therapist may help you see that neither you nor they are the problem, but that there is a problem, and it can be resolved by working together, not independently.

成为一个团队，而非敌人。如果对方愿意，可以寻求婚姻咨询师的帮助。有时你们可能会陷入这样一个陷阱，即，都觉得对方才是问题所在。婚姻咨询师可能会帮助你们看到问题并不在于你们，但的确是存在某种问题，而且你们可以共同努力来解决这一问题，而非只靠一方单独解决。

Talking to someone doesn’t have to mean that your relationship is coming to an end. I’ve worked with couples that simply want to work on understanding each other better, and to improve how they resolve conflicts and challenges.

寻求咨询师帮助，并不意味着你们的感情走到了终点。我曾有一些客户，他们单纯只是想要更好地理解对方，提升他们解决冲突和挑战的方式。

Conclusion
结论

No matter how you show up in relationships, know that it is not something to be judged, but to be explored, understood, and appreciated because there's value and purpose to be found in all of our experiences. The more you understand yourself, the better you can do what might seem impossible: accept your partner for who they are, and not for who you want them to be.

无论你以何种方式出现在一段感情中，都需要知道，这并不应该被指手画脚地评判，而是需要被探索，被理解，被珍惜，因为在我们所有经历中都存在某种价值和目的。你对自己理解得越充分，你就能够更好地完成那些看起来似乎不可能的事：接受另一半本身的样子，而非你想让他/她成为的样子。

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