The Marriage Paradox1

By Clancy Martin

“Marriage is like a cage,” Montaigne2. Montaigne: 蒙田（1533－1592），文艺复兴时期法国作家，以《随笔集》（Essais）三卷留名后世。wrote. “One sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.” The metaphor is hardly value-neutral; there is something noble if frightening about living outside the cage, secure but slavish within.3. metaphor: 隐喻，比喻；value-neutral: 价值中立，即在研究中保持中立观念，不拿自己的标准来衡量别的人或事；slavish:奴性的，卑屈的。(My father, himself twice married, used to quote Groucho Marx4. Groucho Marx: 格鲁乔·马克思（1890－1977），美国的喜剧演员与电影明星；institution: 社会机构，组织。: “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?”) For better or worse, Montaigne was right to point out that so many people who are married confess, after half a bottle of wine, that they would rather not be; catch a single person in a weak moment and he will often admit his longing for a lover who is more than temporary.5. 无论如何，蒙田有一点说对了，许多结了婚的人，在酒过三巡之后，都供认不讳他们宁愿不结婚；而问一个处在脆弱时刻的单身汉，他通常会承认他渴望有爱人常伴身旁，而不是逢场作戏。

Best friendship in childhood is something like marriage. Kierkegaard had the idea that, in every life,there was both a first and a second “immediacy.”6. Kierkegaard: 克尔恺郭尔（1813—1855），丹麦哲学家、神学家及作家，被视为存在主义的先驱；immediacy:【哲学】直接性，直觉性。The first is the kind you enjoy when you are encountering7. encounter: 遇到，遭遇。the world for the first time: the smell of snow in your first few winters (even as a teenager, I could smell the snow in a way I no longer can), the first times you swim, what food tasted like. Then life proceeds:Familiarity and habit creep in8. creep in: 渐渐影响，渐渐出现。, and the world loses its newness,its ease, its golden quality. For many of us, perhaps, we never recapture9. recapture: 重获，夺回。that immediacy of youth. But there can be a second immediacy, experienced perhaps through love, perhaps only through faith.

当我们在谈论婚姻时，通常会说些什么？是至死不渝的激情，还是朝夕相处后的倦怠？听听“大家”用心理学和哲学来讨论婚姻和爱吧。在爱中，我们是艺术家而不是科学家。一些表象，一点空间，是爱情长青的良方。

This second immediacy sometimes sounds like a mystical state in Kierkegaard’s writing, but sometimes like the very ordinary,though uncommon, experience of rediscovering the newness of something you’ve experienced before—as when you reread a favorite book or swim in the ocean after you haven’t done so for a few years.10. 第二种直觉性在克尔恺郭尔的著作中听起来是种很神秘的论调，但有时又十分平常，虽然不常见，但从你曾经历过的事物中发现新鲜感——就像重读一本钟爱的书或者在好几年都没下水后又跳进海里游泳。Most simply, I think, it’s re-experiencing what it’s like to feel fully alive. In this state, we do not forget what the world was like before, when we were satiated11. satiate: 使充分满足，使厌腻。with it; rather, we rediscover its wonder, and appreciate it more because of all that we’ve been through. The world is, as Max Weber (writing under Kierkegaard’s in fluence) put it, “re-enchanted.”12. Max Weber: 马克斯·韦伯（1864－1920），德国政治经济学家和社会学家，他被公认是现代社会学和公共行政学最重要的创始人之一；enchanted: 着迷的，被施魔法的。

Having a best friend as a kid, or falling in love: These are good examples of first immediacy. The world is an enchanted place.Then the disappointments of love disenchant us. But marriage might offer the possibility of re-enchantment. The idea is that in first immediacy, you don’t know how lucky you are. In the second immediacy, you bring both the knowledge that you have chosen this situation and your understanding of the past to your new way of looking at the world, your new appreciation of love.13. 至于第二种直觉性，你既自动选择了这一情景，又了解过去，两者融合形成了你看待世界的新方法，你对爱的新领悟。

The contemporary American philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel has identi fied what he calls a paradox in the marriage vow: To promise to love for a lifetime, while recognizing that both life and love are unpredictable,14. vow: 誓言，誓约； unpredictable: 不可预测的，无法预言的；下文的unpredictability为名词，不可预测性，不可预见性。seems like a risky move. But as Schwitzgebel correctly argues, to promise to love a partner for a lifetime is both to acknowledge the future’s unpredictability (“for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,in sickness and in health”) and to insist that one part of life won’t change: one’s commitment to one’s partner. Which is not to say that the feelings of both partners won’t change along the way.

Marriage as a slightly crazy promise—even, perhaps, a special kind of self-deception15. self-deception: 自欺，自欺欺人的行为。: to believe a proposition and at the same time not to believe it. Psychologically, self-deception is even more paradoxical than the marriage vow; it ought to be impossible, and yet we do it with fluency from a young age.16. 从心理学角度上说，自欺欺人比婚姻誓言更为自相矛盾；本来应该是不可能的，但我们却从小就运用自如。

One side of the self-deception allows us to get ourselves into the kinds of love-destroying situations that I created when I ended my first two marriages. Like lying to others, lying to yourself can lead to a whole lot of trouble. Self-deception may also keep people in certain marriages long after they should have left them. The difference between bad selfdeception and good, I think, is that in the latter kind you know that you’re doing it and you know why you’re doing it. The benevolent17. benevolent: 仁慈的，亲切的。power of self-deception is, in fact, what makes long, happy marriages—and all successful relationships—possible.

Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 138”18. Sonnet 138: 莎士比亚最著名的14行诗之一，运用“双关语”的修辞技巧，讲述了爱情关系中的真实与奉承。shows how this works:

When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutor’d youth,Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.But wherefore says she not she is unjust?And wherefore say not I that I am old?O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love loves not to have years told:Therefore I lie with her and she with me,And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

The first two lines are a terri fic double paradox: He believes her,though he knows she’s lying—but for him to believe her, he can’t know she’s lying. Given our facility with the pretzel19. pretzel:〈美俚〉德国人，祖籍德国的人。logic that enables us to believe the lies we tell ourselves, how do we believe a lie someone else is telling us, while knowing it’s a lie? The poet admits that he lets his lover believe that he believes her lies so that she will think he is young, which is also the lie she is telling him, and he uses his performance in the same way he believes her lie—to convince himself of the lie she is telling him (“thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young”). This is subtle, convoluted, hilarious, and yet entirely true to the phenomenology of love.20. subtle: 微妙的，细微的；convoluted: 错综复杂的，过分复杂的；hilarious: 引人发笑的，滑稽的；phenomenology: 现象学，现象论。

My favorite line: “O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust.” Real trust in love comes in trusting even when we know there may be reason for distrust, when we recognize that complete trust is an illusion and should not even be a goal. To truly trust is to seem to trust, to trust with the acceptance of doubt, to be willing to extend the feigning of trust while hoping, even expecting, that the feint will be returned.21. feign: 假装，佯作；feint: 佯攻，虚击。

As Nietzsche observed, the wisdom of the ancient Greeks was in the fact that, at least before Socrates, they preferred seeming to being.22. Nietzsche: 弗里德里希·威廉·尼采，德国哲学家，他的著作对于宗教、道德、现代文化、哲学以及科学等领域提出了广泛的批判和讨论；Socrates: 苏格拉底，古希腊著名哲学家。苏格拉底的哲学崇尚理性，而尼采的哲学则批判理性。They understood that “the naked truth” was not what good lovers seek:“It is necessary to keep bravely to the surface, the fold and the skin;to worship appearance, to believe in forms, tones, and words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!23. 他们那时就明白，“赤裸的真理”不是好恋人们所寻求的：“勇敢地停留在表面、腠理和肌肤是很有必要的，崇拜外表，相信体型、声调和话语吧，在整个外表的奥林匹斯山上！”。Olympus: 奥林匹斯山，希腊最高峰，神话中诸神的住所。Those Greeks were super ficial—from profundity!24. superficial: 肤浅的，浅薄的；profundity: 深刻，深度。”

Do we really want to know the truth about our lovers? We don’t even know that about ourselves—it’s simply too elusive, too protean,25. elusive: 难懂的，难以实现的；protean: 千变万化的，变化多端的。too complex—and we don’t want to know it, we don’t need to know it. Would I love my wife more, would our marriage be stronger, if we knew every detail of each other’s past lovers and love affairs? Even writing this essay about marriage is scary. I am wildly in love; my marriage, though it has its ups and downs, is splendid: Do I really want to put it under a microscope?26. ups and downs: 起伏，盛衰；splendid: 极好的，令人愉快的。Will my commitment be stronger because of a 3 a.m. dissection27. dissection: 详细查究。?

In love we are artists, not scientists. Hans Vaihinger called that kind of instrumentally false belief a “necessary fiction”; Coleridge called it“the willing suspension of disbelief.”28. Hans Vaihinger: 费英格（1852—1933），是19世纪的德国哲学家，主要哲学著作为《仿佛哲学》，提出“虚构”理论作为其“仿佛”（as if）哲学的基础，被认为在实用主义方向发展了康德主义；instrumentally: 起作用地，有帮助地；Coleridge: 塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治（1772—1834），英国诗人、文评家，英国浪漫主义文学的奠基人之一。Kids call it playing (although it crucially excludes the illusion-killing cynicism of the “player”). In Shakespeare’s sonnet, healthy illusions are being championed, not ironized away.29. champion: 支持，拥护，ironize: 冷嘲热讽，挖苦。