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Most of us have a general understanding that ‘games playing’ in relationships is a bad thing - and that all good people are opposed to them.
我们大多数人都有一个普遍的认识，那就是在恋爱中“耍手段”是件坏事——所有的好人都反对“耍手段”。
‘I don’t play games,’ is a favourite mantra declaimed by hopeful people at the beginning love stories the world over.
“我不耍手段”是世界各地满怀希望的人们在爱情故事开始时最喜欢念叨的一句话。
However, it can be less obvious what games playing really involves - and therefore how definitively to avoid its dynamics.
然而，耍手段真正涉及到什么却不那么明显——因此如何明确地避免其发展。
We too often associate this “so-called sport” with its most obvious manifestations in the dating phase:
我们经常把这种“所谓的运动”与约会阶段最明显的表现联系在一起:
for example, when a person hides their desire beneath a veneer of indifference, or goes cold as soon as love is reciprocated.
例如，当一个人用冷漠的外表掩盖自己的欲望，或者当爱得到回报时，他就会变得冷漠。
But there are plenty of other forms of games playing that are far more insidious, invisible and, in the long run, dangerous.
但是，还有许多其他形式的手段更隐蔽、看不见，从长远来看，也更危险。
They occur whenever we decide to stop saying something difficult, vulnerable or hurt that is on our minds and camouflage an injury instead;
当我们停止说一些我们脑海中存在的难以启齿的、伤人的话，以掩饰我们受伤时，就会出现这种情况。
We play games when our partner does or says something that wounds us but we choose not to reveal it, we stay silent and smiley,
我们的合作伙伴做了或说了一些伤害我们的话，但我们选择不披露,我们保持沉默和微笑,
because to be honest would make us feel exposed, desperate, cloying and weak in front of someone who (we fear) might simply not care enough about us to listen.
因为在那些(我们害怕的)可能根本不在乎我们的人面前说实话可能让我们感到危险、绝望、厌烦和软弱。此时，这种情况会出现。
Therefore, we opt to initiate a so-called ‘game’ in which we do the following: - We bury our ruffled feelings about this or that problem
因此，我们选择耍所谓的“手段”，在这里我们会做以下事情
- but we do so very badly, in the deliberate hope that our partner will in time realise their offence and then feel sorry for it and apologise - without us having had to be naked about our upset.
——但我们做得非常糟糕，故意希望我们的伴侣会及时意识到他们的冒犯，然后感到抱歉并道歉——而不是赤裸裸地表达我们的不安。
The ‘game’ sets out to provoke guilt as an alternative to emotional frankness.
这个“手段”的目的是激发负罪感，以替代情感上的坦白。
So rather than tell a partner cleanly that we’re a bit upset that they didn’t - for instance - buy us the medicine we asked them to pick up on their way back from work, we play the “game” of blithely not caring about their forgetting.
因此，与其直截了当地告诉伴侣，我们对他们没有给我们买药感到有点不高兴(例如，我们让他们在下班回家的路上买药)，不如我们耍一个“手段”，漫不经心地不在乎他们的遗忘。
We stay silent, and then, the next morning, we go to the chemist ourselves, and leave the box and the receipt prominently on the kitchen table.
我们保持沉默，然后，第二天早上，我们自己去药剂师那里，把盒子和收据放在厨房桌子的显著位置上。
When (as we had hoped) they spot it and immediately say, ‘Oh god, I’m so sorry,’ we smile casually and reply, ‘Oh don’t worry, that’s fine, it wasn’t a bother for me.’
当(正如我们所希望的那样)他们发现了它，马上说，“哦，天哪，我很抱歉，”我们随口一笑，回答说，“哦，别担心，没关系，这对我来说不是一个麻烦。”
It may seem like a tiny incident but the seismologists of relationships will know that this is likely to be the harbinger of something far bigger:
这可能看起来是一个小事件，但研究关系的专家知道，这很可能是一个更大事件的前兆:
- a fateful pattern of not declaring what is wrong, of hoping to be read without explaining, of not daring to speak about what matters,
这是一种致命的模式，不宣布什么是错的，希望被看透想法而不解释，不敢谈论重要的事情，
all of which can over time lead to a grave erosion of trust and destructive indirect methods of communication that bring anger and resentment in their wake.
随着时间的推移，所有这些都可能导致信任的严重流失和产生具有破坏性的间接沟通方式，这种方式给他们带来了愤怒和怨恨。
Games playing is a subset of behaviour we know as Sulking.
耍手段是我们所知的生闷气行为的一个子集。
When we sulk, it’s because a partner has in some way offended us.
当我们生闷气时，那是因为我们的伴侣在某种程度上冒犯了我们。
They have told a story in public that we wanted to be kept private, they have shown us a lack of tact, they have forgotten an important occasion, they have failed to listen to us.
他们在公共场合讲了一个我们不希望公开的故事，他们显示出我们缺乏机智，他们忘记了一个重要的场合，他们没有倾听我们。
But the sulker acts as if from an unhelpfully romantic hope: that they should be interpreted without needing to speak.
但生闷气的人表现得好像是出于一种不切实际的希望:他们不需要说话就能被理解。
They dream that someone who truly loved them would guess what they were upset about, without requiring the offence to be spelt out to them in a medium as clumsy and as slow as language.
他们梦想一个真正爱他们的人会猜出他们在生气什么，而不需要用像语言一样笨拙和缓慢的方式向他们解释这种冒犯。
They want to be understood without words.
他们希望不用语言就能被理解。
Anyone who fails to do this is quickly taken by the sulker to be badly intentioned.
任何不这样做的人很快就会被生闷气的人认为是恶意的。
There is little space to believe in innocent failures of empathy.
我们几乎没有空间相信理解失败的无辜。
The partner hasn’t merely failed to grasp what is going on, their failure is willed; they are doing this on purpose.
伴侣并不仅仅是没能理解发生了什么，他们的没能理解是有意的; 他们是故意这样做的。
To a feeling of abandonment, the sulker adds a layer of persecution.
除了一种被抛弃的感觉外，生闷气的人还会有一层迫害的感觉。
For the sulker, it is a great deal more tempting to devote the next six hours to answering curtly, insisting that nothing is wrong and affecting a pained and melancholy look - than to strive to delineate the nature of their hurt.
对于那些生闷气的人来说，在接下来的六个小时里，他们更倾向于简短地回答，坚称一切正常，并装出一副痛苦而忧郁的表情——而不是努力去描述他们所受伤害的本质。
We are taking our first steps towards a less fraught kind of coupledom when we are finally able to tell someone who has upset us that they have upset us - preferably within the very half hour in which they have done so.
当我们终于能够告诉那些让我们难过的人，他们让我们难过了——最好是在他们这样做的半小时内，我们就朝着不那么焦虑的婚姻迈出了第一步。
A true commitment to not playing games involves a profound effort directly to say everything that has upset us at once.
一个真正的不耍手段的承诺包含了一个深刻的艰难尝试，直接说出所有让我们难过的事情。
It could sound like we are being ‘difficult’.
这听起来好像我们很“难相处”。
However, so long as we are polite, communicating hurt is anything but poor behaviour.
然而，只要我们是有礼貌的，沟通伤害绝不是不良行为。
It’s the greatest privilege to be in love with a true adult who can tell us what is wrong precisely when a problem occurs - and is brave enough to present themselves as weak so that love can stay strong.
与一个真正的成年人相爱是最大的荣幸，当问题发生时，他能准确地告诉我们什么是错的，并且能够勇敢地表现出自己的软弱，这样爱才能长久。
