I’m 63, and I have been single my whole life.

我今年63岁了，在这60多年的生命中，我一直是单身！

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I knew I was supposed to get married, and I knew I was supposed to want to be married. Even now I keep getting reminded.

在我20多岁和30多岁的时候，我知道自己应该要结婚，我也知道自己应该有结婚的愿望才对。直到现在，我还在被人时不时地这样提醒。

So in the United States, a month ago, these wedding planners made national news they spent months fussing over the flowers and the music and the invitations and every imaginable detail. On the day of the wedding they were so excited. 

前段时间，美国的一群婚礼策划人引起了全国的关注，他们花费数月准备了鲜花、音乐、请帖，在婚礼的那一天，所有人都很激动。

Who were these wedding planners?

这些婚礼策划人是谁呢？

They were a class of five-year olds and the bride and groom were ducks. By putting on a wedding the five year olds became our storytellers and they were telling the same stories we all grew up hearing: get married and you will live happily ever after and you will never be lonely again.

他们是一群幼儿园的5岁的孩子们，而新郎和新娘是两只鸭子。这些小朋友通过策划这场婚礼，在讲述着我们成年人听过一遍又一遍的故事：从此（结婚后），你将过上幸福美满的生活，再也不会感到孤单了。

As children, we hear those stories in fairy tales. As grown-ups we keep hearing them in all the novels and movies and TV shows that build up to a wedding. 

小的时候，我们在通话里看到这样的故事，长大了之后，我们依然在小说里、电影里、电视节目里看到相同的故事。

The Supreme Court of the United States is telling those same stories in the landmark ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out and find no one there”.

即使是最高法院，也在讲述着相同的故事。在同性婚姻合法化这一标志性的案件判决中，肯尼迪大法官写道：婚姻消除了人们普遍对于孤单的恐惧。

But here’s the thing. That was never my story. I never wanted to get married. Everything about my life added up to a different story, that living single was my happily ever after. 

但问题是，这从来不是我的故事，我从来没有想要结婚。我生命中发生的所有的事件，是一个完全不同的故事，那就是——保持单身让我过上幸福美满的生活。

But for the longest time I never did add it up, I never heard of such a thing as living single and loving it.And it turns out the same thing is still true of many people even today.

但很长一段时间以来，我都没有真的接受“保持单身，并且热爱单身”，因为我从未听过这样的故事。直到今天，对很多来说这也是闻所未闻的。

They don’t realize that embracing single life is a thing and so they tell themselves, “Sure, I’m looking for the one. That’s what I want”, but then when you look at their actual behavior, you see that doing what it would take to find that person seems to rank somewhere between deleting ancient emails from their inbox and cleaning out their sock drawer.

他们没有意识到拥抱单身生活也是一个选择，（即使这是他们真的想要的），他们会想：“嗯没错，我还在寻找那个对的人。”但当你仔细观察他们的行动，你会发现，他们寻找那个“对的人”的重要性排序，大概在清理邮箱和整理鞋柜之间。

Now other people do realize that this marriage issue is a question for them. They’re talking to therapists. They’re writing to advice columnist.

也有一些人意识到了婚姻对他们来说是个问题，他们会找心理医生，或者写信给情感专栏寻求建议。

Joan DelFattore told the story of a conversation she had with her therapist. Her therapist said, “Joan, if you do decide to get married, what kind of man would you look for?”

Joan Delfattore讲过一个发生在她和她的心理医生之间的对话，她的心理医生问：“Joan，假设你想要结婚，你会选择什么样的人呢？”

And Joan said, “Someone with a challenging job, has lots of outside interests, does volunteer work, play sports, like that.”

Joan回答：“这个人一定要有一份具有挑战性的工作，喜欢户外，做志愿工作，喜欢运动，大概是这样。”

And Joan said, “Someone with a challenging job, has lots of outside interests, does volunteer work, play sports, like that.”

她的心理医生说：“哦所以你想和一个发展全面的很聪明的人在一起。”

And Joan said, “No, I’d want someone who’s never home.” 

Joan说：“不，我只是想和一个从不回家的人在一起。”

Another example is a letter that Kaye wrote to an advice columnist. Kaye said, “She was in a long-term relationship with a ‘wonderful’ amazing man. When he kisses me, I still get goosebumps. When he walks into the door, I’m mesmerized. So why is it that sometimes I just feel like I should be alone?”

还有一个例子是Kaye写给以为情感专栏作者，Kaye说，她和一个很好的男人有一段长久的亲密关系，“当他吻我的时候，我仍会感到起鸡皮疙瘩；当他走进门，我放佛被催眠了一般。但为什么，即使如此，有的时候我仍会觉得，我应该一个人？”

She offers the beginnings of an answer to her own question by saying: I’ve always been kind of a free spirit, an independent kind of person. And she signs her letter: “Is love enough?”

她在这封信的开头其实有提供一个答案，她说：“我一直以来都是属于精神自由、独立的人。“在信的结尾，她写道，”拥有爱情，对于一个人来说，就足够了吗？”

Positive affirming stories about single life would have resonated with Joan and Kaye just like they would resonate it with me all those years ago.

叙述积极的单身故事总能和Joan、Kaye找到共鸣，就像我能和她们找到共鸣一样。

But those stories have never been part of our lives the way fairy tales have.I’ve made it my life’s work to find the true stories of single life, stories no one is ever telling us.

但这样的故事从来不像童话故事一样，成为我们生活的一部分。我花了许多时间来寻找真实的单身的故事，这些故事从没有人讲给我们听。

At first, though, I wasn’t so sure I was going to like what I found.I had two main worries.

但一开始，我不确定我是否会喜欢我的发现，我有两个担心。

The first one was that as much as I loved my single life, I didn’t love everything about it. It hurt when my friends got married and went out to dinner with other couples. And I got demoted to lunch.At work, I thought it was unfair when I got asked to take the teaching times that nobody else wanted, because I was single.

一个是尽管我非常热爱我的单身生活，但我也并不热爱它所带来的所有一切。每当我的朋友们结了婚，他们选择和已婚夫妇一起吃晚餐，而只和我吃午餐时，我都会感到伤心；在工作中，每当大家把最不方便的授课时间交给我（只因为我是单身）时，我都会觉得不公平。

Later, I realized that’s just the small stuff and that the special status of married people is far more sweeping. In the United States, for example, there are more than a thousand laws that benefit and protect only people who are legally married.

后来我意识到，这些还只是小事。已婚夫妇所享有的特殊地位要更彻底。比如说，在美国有上千条法律来保护或偏向那些合法结婚的人。

My second worry was that science was against me. Before I ever read any of the scientific journals for myself to see what they really did say, before I did any of my own studies, I believed what I was hearing in the media. I thought science had already shown what the fairytales promised: get married and you will live happily ever after. Not like those single people.

我的第二个担心是，科学似乎在反驳我。在我开展自己的研究之前，我相信媒体传达给我的数据。我以为科学已经证明了童话所告诉我们的事情：结婚后，从此你就会过上幸福美满的生活。不像那些单身的人。

My second worry was that science was against me. Before I ever read any of the scientific journals for myself to see what they really did say, before I did any of my own studies, I believed what I was hearing in the media. I thought science had already shown what the fairytales promised: get married and you will live happily ever after. Not like those single people.

大学生们也是这么想的。一项调查询问他们，预测自己单身多年后幸福指数大概是多少，他们的预测如图。他们觉得自己一定痛苦死了。

Now look what they said when asked how happy they would be if they got married. They think they would be about as happy as they could possibly be.

然后调查者又让他们预测自己结婚很多年后的幸福指数，他们觉得自己会幸福的不能再幸福了。

Now let me show you how happy people really are when they are single and then when they get married.

好的，那现在让我们来看看真实的情况是怎样的。

Here are the average happiness ratings of thousands of single people, starting years before any of them ever get married. They’re very happy.Now here they are getting married and they do get a little happier. Not that enormous increase that the college students predicted but a small increase.

那些单身很多年的人远比他们想象得要幸福许多。在他们快要结婚的时候，幸福指数的确有所增加，但没有他们想象得增加那么多，只是小幅增加。

Then look what happens.

然后会发生什么呢？

Year after year their happiness slips till they end up as happy as they were when they were single.

年复一年，婚姻给他们带来的幸福感逐渐下降，直到和他们单身时的幸福程度差不多。

So getting married didn’t make people happy; they just got a little thrill around the time of the wedding.

所以结婚并不会给你带来幸福，只是会让你在临近婚礼的那段时间激动一小下罢了。

But wait, there’s something I didn’t tell you 

等一下，我还有一件事没告诉你们。

 I’m holding back here. That increase in happiness that people get when they first get married, only the people who get married and stay married experience that.

在结婚前的那个幸福指数小幅增加，仅仅在他们结了婚并且没有离婚的情况下可以发生。

What about the people who get married and then get divorced?

那些结了婚又离婚的人呢？

 When they get married, they get less happy and then there they are going down, down, down until they end up less happy than they were when they were single.

在他们临近结婚的时候，幸福指数反而下降了，往后的日子里，还会一直下降，比单身者的幸福指数还要低。

So if you want to say that getting married increases people’s happiness even for just a little while, you have to look only at the people who are currently married.

尽管事实上，婚姻带给人们的幸福感只有那么一小阵，但人们似乎只看到了这一点，只看到了已婚者的幸福。

There’s something really important about that. Whenever you hear the claim that married people are doing better than single people and you will hear that over and over again, beware they are telling you look over there at those married people and don’t look over there, nothing to see there.

每当你听到“已婚人士比单身人士过得好“时——相信我你会听到很多这样的话，一定要小心，他们其实在说，”看呐，看那些结了婚的人。“以及”哦不要往另一边看，那一边什么也没有。“

But you should look over there, because that’s where you’ll see all the people who got married hated it and refused to stay married. That’s a lot of people.

但你应该往另一边看看。在另一边你会看到，有将近一半的人结婚后并不幸福，憎恨婚姻生活，并选择了离开婚姻。有相当多的人是如此。

Now today lots of people have serious romantic relationships without ever getting married. So maybe what matters isn’t whether you’re married or not, but how much of that good stuff are you getting the romantic relationship has to offer? How much caring are you getting? How much commitment?

而如今，有许多人拥有一段认真的亲密关系，但从未结婚。所以也许问题的关键不在结婚与否，而在于你从一段关系中得到了多少正面的东西，一段关系可以给我们提供什么，你会得到多少关心，得到多少承诺。

Researchers studying loneliness and depression and stress took that approach. They proposed a hierarchy. So they said married people, they get the most caring and commitment. So they should do better than everyone else.

科学家们研究孤独、抑郁和压力，他们提出了一个等级制度。他们认为，已婚人士得到了最多的关心和承诺，所以他们应该过得比其他人都好。

In second place people who are cohabiting, they get a lot of caring but you know, maybe not at the same amount of commitment that married people get.

位于第二位的是同居的伴侣们，他们也得到了很关心，但也许没有得到像已婚人士那么多的承诺。

In second place people who are cohabiting, they get a lot of caring but you know, maybe not at the same amount of commitment that married people get.

位于第三位的是正在约会/恋爱的人。而最低端，则是那些没有亲密关系的单身者。科学家们笃定地认为，这些单身者一定拥有最糟糕的心理健康。

But when they looked at the results for the women, what they found was nothing.

但当他们得到女性研究对象的结果时，发现……根本不是这样！

The women higher on the hierarchy were not any less lonely. They were not any less depressed, and they weren’t any less stressed than the other women.

那些等级更高的女性并没有更少孤独，更少抑郁，更少压力。

And the findings for the men weren’t that much better.

男性的结果也没有好到哪去。

How is this even possible? Single people aren’t getting any caring and commitment from a spouse. Their lives aren’t celebrated the way married people’s lives are. They aren’t getting any of those legal benefits and protections.

但这怎么可能呢？单身人士没有从伴侣那里获得关心和承诺啊，他们生活并不如已婚人士那般喜气洋洋，他们也没有像已婚人士一样拥有法律的各种保障。

And single people in social science studies aren’t just people like me who love living single. They also include the single people who hate being single. 

何况，在研究调查中，单身人士不仅包括像我这样热爱单身生活的人，也包括那些痛恨单身的单身者啊。

 So everything is stacked against the single people.Yet there they are, with their high levels of happiness and their low levels of loneliness and depression and stress.

我们看到，几乎所有的事情都在和单身者对着干，但是，他们仍然拥有更多的幸福，更少的孤单、抑郁和压力。

 How can we understand that?

我们该如何理解这样的结果？

I think the stories we are getting told over and over again by everyone from five-year-olds to Supreme Court justices are distracting us from other more revealing stories, the stories no one has ever told us about people who are single.

那些被重复过无数遍的叙事——从5岁的小朋友到最高法院的大法官，让我们忽略了更真实的故事——那些属于单身者的故事。

I’ll tell you three of them.

我要在这里分享三个这样的例子。

The first story we are told repeatedly is this: married people have someone. They have the one, single people have no one.

第一个例子，我们总是反复被告知，已婚人士有人陪，他们找到了那个对的人，而单身者身边谁都没有。

But when psychologists actually started studying the real lives of single people, they found something entirely different.

但当心理学家开始认真研究单身人士的真实生活，他们发现了完全不同的事实。

It’s the single people who have more friends; it’s the single people who are doing more than married people to stay in touch with their siblings. It’s the single people who are more often tending to their parents, exchanging help with their neighbors, contributing to the life of their towns and cities.

拥有更多朋友的是单身人士而非已婚人士，和ta的兄弟姐妹有更多联系的是单身人士而非已婚人士，和父母有更多来往的是单身人士而非已婚人士，与邻居友爱互助、为所在的社区或城市贡献自己的力量的，都是单身人士，而不是已婚人士。

In contrast, when couples move in together, or when they get married, they tend to be more insular. And they tend to do that even if they don’t have kids. So they can’t blame it on the kids.

相反地，当一对伴侣同居或结婚后，他们就会变得与世隔绝起来，即使他们没有孩子也会如此，所以不要把这一切都推在孩子身上。

So the story we’re told is that married people have the one: the untold more revealing story is that single people have the ones.

所以那句我们反复听到的话——已婚人士找到了那个对的人，却没有告诉我们单身人士身边拥有更多人。

The second story we are told is: get married and you will never be lonely again. The researchers who proposed the hierarchy were sure that married people were going to be the least lonely; they weren’t.

第二个我们经常听到的故事是，“结了婚就再也不会孤单了”。我们刚才已经提到科学家证明了，那些位于等级第一位的已婚人士也会感到孤独。

 But you know who really was protected from loneliness?

你知道谁真的不受孤单的困扰吗？

The people who had friends and family members they could open up to and rely on if they had a problem. That’s what mattered, not whether they had a spouse or romantic partner.

那些拥有很多朋友、家庭成员，在遇到问题时，有人可以倾诉求助的人。这才是问题的关键，和ta是否结婚、有没有伴侣没有关系。

In the stories we are told people who live alone are isolated and lonely. But in fact, as long as the people living alone have about the same income as people living with others, they aren’t actually on the average less lonely.

我们听到的故事中，那些独居的人总是孤单又孤僻，但实际上，只要这些独居的人和那些与别人同住的人有相差不多的收入水平，他们更不会感受到孤独。

In the stories we are told people who are home alone are crying in their beer, distraught that they’re not with that special someone. But in fact, some people who live alone are like Joan, the woman who told her therapist that her ideal husband would be someone who’s never home.

我们听到的故事中，那些独自归家的人总是哭着回家，为他们没有和某个特殊单人在一起而难过，但实际上，更多独居的人就像是Joan，那个希望如果她有了丈夫，也是一个从不回家的丈夫的女人。

Many single people savor solitude; they don’t dread it.

许多单身人士热爱孤单，而不是恐惧孤单。

Remember that Supreme Court justice who said marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out and find no one there.

还记得肯尼迪大法官说的那句话吗？婚姻消除了人们普遍对于孤单的恐惧，那种你半夜醒来呼唤，却发现四下无人的恐惧。

Well, my fear is that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and find that someone else is there, hogging the blankets, snoring and farting, all of that adds up to a story very different from get married and you will never be lonely again.

但对我而言，半夜醒来发现身边有一个人才是真正的恐惧——ta可能正抢着我的被子，打着呼，放着屁！这些故事都和“结了婚就再也不会孤单”相去甚远。

The third story we are told is all you need is love; love is all you need.

第三个我们听到的故事是，“你需要的只是爱，爱是你需要的所有一切。”

When Kaye asked the advice columnist, is love enough, she already had romantic love. She was mesmerized by her partner.  

当Kaye向情感专栏提问，”拥有爱情，对于一个人来说，就足够了吗？“她已经拥有了爱情，她为她的伴侣着迷。

Other single people value other kinds of love, like the love of close friends or family or spiritual figures, just as people so often have done over the course of history. 

但除了爱情之外，单身者重视其它的爱，挚友、家庭、精神之爱。

But a happy life, a good life is not just about love, not even the most expansive kinds.We humans also crave autonomy and mastery and purpose and meaning. 

但一个幸福的生活不应该仅仅包括爱，甚至是那些除了爱情之外的爱也不够，我们作为人类，我们追求自主性，追求对生活的掌控，追求目标，追求意义。

Single people have that autonomy.They are in charge of their own lives.

单身者拥有这样的自主性，他们主导着自己的生活；

Single people develop mastery, you know that thing married people do where they split up all the tasks, so you deal with the car and the money, I’ll handle the meals and the relatives.

单身者拥有对生活的掌控，已婚伴侣总会分工，比如一个人处理车子和财产，一个人负责管饭和亲戚的来往，但单身者会一个人做这些所有的事情；

Well, single people figure out how to do all of it. Single people also have purpose and meaning. They can pursue what matters most to them and often they do. For example, people who stay single value meaningful work more than married people do.

单身者追求目标和意义，他们会去追求对他们来说最重要的东西。比如，单身者比起已婚者更看重有意义的事业。

Lifelong single people also experience more personal growth. They are more likely than married people to say that their lives have been a continuous process of learning, change, and growth.

终生的单身者还可以获得更多的个人成长，他们更有可能比已婚者拥有不断成长、变化和学习的一生。

So that third story we are told is all you need is love. The untold more revealing story is that we also yearn for autonomy, mastery, purpose and meaning. And single people have those things in space.

所以第三个故事“你只是需要爱”，却没有告诉我们真实的情况是，我们还需要自主性、对生活的掌控，目标和意义，而单身者拥有所有这一切。

The untold stories of single life have never been more relevant than they are now. More people than ever before in many nations around the world are single. Living single is the norm even for people who get married. Americans, for example, spend more years of their adult life not married than married. So that means single life really is the better part of hard life.

关于单身和单身者的故事从未像现在这样被讲述。来自全世界许多不同国家的人过着单身的生活，单身生活对于那些结了婚的人来说也是常态。以美国为例，在一个成年人的生活中，保持单身的日子要比结婚后的日子更多。这也从侧面证明了，单身生活的确更好一些。

For way too long, we single people have been told that the only way we can be truly happy is to get married. Now we know that’s just not so. And everyone can benefit from that.

长久以来，我们这些单身者都被教导，要想获得“真正的幸福”就应该结婚，现在我们知道了这并不是真的，并且所有人将从此获益。

So married people, now that you know the secrets of a successful single life, feel free to steal them and add new shades of bliss to your lives.

所以已婚的你们，现在你知道了成功的单身生活的秘密，把他们用起来，为你们的生活增添新的幸福色彩。

single people, you know what to do: go out and live your single lives fully, joyfully, and unapologetically.

亲爱的单身者们，你们知道该怎么做，去过你的单身生活吧，把它过得充实、快乐、理直气壮！

Thank you.

谢谢。

376篇双语阅读美文整理（含音频），学英语的好资料！

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