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For most of human history, relationships were relatively simple for a banal yet immovable reason:
在人类历史的大部分时间里，人际关系都相对简单，因为一个平庸而不可改变的原因:
it was extremely hard to meet anyone acceptable - and everyone knew it.
要遇到一个可接受的人是极其困难的——每个人都知道这一点。
There were only a few people in the village, travel was expensive and social occasions few and far between.
村落里只有几个人，出行费用昂贵，社交场合又少得可怜。
This had many drawbacks: it encouraged people to accept offers from suitors they were unconvinced by,
这有很多缺点:它鼓励人们接受那些他们不确信的追求者的求婚，
it meant that characters who would have delighted each other died lonely and unfulfilled because there were a few mountains or a river between them.
这意味着那些原本互相喜欢的角色会孤独地死去，因为他们之间有几座山或一条河。
Our technologists have used their genius to correct these historic obstacles and provide us with unending choice.
我们的技术人员用他们的智慧纠正了这些历史性的障碍，并为我们提供了无尽的选择。
Meeting someone new is now a constant possibility.
现在，结识新朋友是很有可能的。
But this breakthrough at the level of introduction has obscured an ongoing challenge at the level of ultimate purpose:
但是，这种在介绍层面上的突破，却掩盖了一个在终极目标层面上持续不断的挑战:
we may have become easier to meet, but we are not any easier to love.
我们可能变得更容易遇见，但相爱却没有变得更容易。
We remain - each one of us - highly challenging propositions for anyone to take on.
我们——我们每一个人——仍然是对任何人都具有高度挑战性的命题。
All of us are riddled with psychological quirks that serve to render an ongoing relationship extremely problematic:
我们每个人都有心理上的怪癖，这些怪癖使得一段持续的关系问题重重:
we are impatient, prone to making unjust accusations, rife with self-pity, and unused to expressing our needs in a way they can be understood by others - just to start the list…
我们没有耐心，容易做出不公正的指责，孤芳自赏，不习惯用别人能理解的方式来表达我们的需求。
That we can meet so many people has beautifully obscured our ugly sides, breeding in us the charming yet misleading idea
我们能遇见这么多的人，这就完美地掩盖了我们丑陋的一面，在我们心中滋生了迷人而又误导性的想法
- which engulfs us any time we hit difficulties - that we are in trouble because we have not until now met ‘the right person.’
——每当我们遇到困难时，这种想法就会把我们吞没——我们陷入困境是因为我们还没有遇到“对的人”。
The reason why there is friction and longing has, we tell ourselves, nothing to do with certain stubborn infelicities in our own natures or paradoxes in the human condition as a whole,
我们告诉自己，存在摩擦和渴望的原因与我们本性中某些顽固的不幸或整个人类状况的矛盾无关，
it is only a matter of needing to hunt further for a more reasonable candidate who will, at last, see things our way.
问题只是需要进一步寻找一个更合理的候选人，他最终会以我们的方式看待事情。
The promise of choice has drained us of the patience and modesty necessary to grapple with the tensions that are prone to come our way whomever we might be with.
无论我们和谁在一起，这种选择的承诺已经让我们失去了必要的耐心和谦虚，以应对可能出现的紧张局面。
We forget that almost everyone is a charming prospect so long as we know nothing about them.
我们忘记了，只要我们对他们一无所知，几乎每个人都是迷人的。
Part of what it takes to be ready for love is to imagine the difficulties that we cannot, as yet, know too much about in detail;
为爱做好准备的一部分，就是去想象那些我们迄今还无法了解太多细节的困难;
the bad moods that will lurk behind the energetic smiles, the difficult pasts that lie beneath the lustrous eyes, the tangled psyches that reside beneath a stated love of camping and the outdoors.
坏情绪会潜伏在充满活力的微笑背后，在明亮的眼睛下隐藏着艰难的过去，错综复杂的心灵隐藏在对露营和户外活动热爱的背后。
Even though there are hundreds of other people we might meet, there are not - in truth- so many people we could really love.
即使我们可能会遇到成百上千的人，但事实上，我们并没有那么多可以真正爱的人。
Dating apps may have made it infinitely easier to connect but they haven’t helped us in any way to be more patient, imaginative, forgiving or empathetic,
约会应用程序可能让联系变得无比简单，但它们并没有以任何方式帮助我们变得更有耐心、更有想象力、更宽容或更有同情心，
that is, any more adept at the arts that make any one relationship viable.
也就是说，没有帮助我们更熟练地掌握让任何一段关系可行的艺术。
Most of the issues we experience with a given candidate will therefore show up, in comparable guises, with almost anyone we might stumble upon.
因此，我们在某个候选人身上遇到的大多数问题都会以类似的形式出现在我们遇到的几乎所有人身上。
The real work we should be doing isn’t - once we have had a reasonable look around - to keep trying to meet new people;
我们真正应该做的工作不是——一旦我们环顾四周——继续试着结交新朋友;
it’s to get to the root of what makes it hard to live with any one person we could alight upon.
这是为了弄清是什么让我们很难和任何一个人生活在一起。
We will be ready for love when we surrender some of our excited sense of possibility and recognise that though we might have many choices, we don’t - in reality - have so many options.
当我们放弃对可能性的兴奋感，认识到尽管我们可能有很多选择，但实际上我们并没有那么多选择时，我们就会准备好去爱了。
It may sound dark, but this will, in its own way, be a liberating realisation
这听起来可能很阴暗，但这将以它自己的方式，成为一种解放性的认识，
that can help us redirect our energies away from the exhausting circuit of new encounters towards a search for the kind of mutual emotional maturity on which true love can one day be built.
可以帮助我们把精力从令人疲惫的新遭遇转向寻找一种彼此成熟的情感，而有一天真爱可以建立在这种情感上。
