切换至摄影模板
博文
千禧一代的爱情为什么变“慢”了？
||
千禧一代的爱情为什么变“慢”了？
Should We All Take the
Slow Road to Love?
Is the secret to lasting love to
take it slow? As in really, really slow?
爱情持久的秘诀在于慢慢来？就是，非常、非常慢那种？
The millennial generation is putting
that theory to the test, opting for what the biological
anthropologist Helen Fisher calls “slow love.” Studies show that
millennials are dating less, having less sex and marrying much
later than any generation before them, and a younger generation
appears to be following in their footsteps.
千禧一代正在检验这一理论，开始选择体质人类学家海伦·费舍尔(Helen
Fisher)所称的“慢爱”。研究显示，千禧一代比他们之前的任何一代约会和性爱的次数都更少，结婚也更晚，更年轻一代则似乎在步他们的后尘。
These changes have prompted
hand-wringing among some experts who speculate that hookup culture,
anxiety, screen time, social media and helicopter parents have left
us with a generation incapable of intimacy and commitment. (The
Atlantic recently declared we are in the midst of a
“sex recession.”)
这些变化让一些专家感到担忧，他们猜测，勾搭文化、焦虑、屏幕盯视时间、社交媒体和直升机父母让我们要面对没有亲密和承诺的一代人。（《大西洋月刊》[The
Atlantic]近来宣称，我们正处在“性衰退”期。）
But Dr. Fisher takes a more generous
view, and suggests that we could all learn a thing or two from
millennials about the benefits of slow love. It’s not that
millennials are wrecking marriage, she says. It may be that they
value it more.
但费舍尔持着一种更开明的态度，她表示我们都能从千禧一代身上学到一些慢爱的好处。她说，千禧一代并非在破坏婚姻。他们可能更加珍视婚姻。
“It seems everyone is swept up in a
very myopic understanding of sex, love and romance,” said Dr.
Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute. “I would
like people to understand that while millennials are not marrying
yet, and they are not having as much sex as my generation, the
reasons for this are good.”
“似乎大家都迷上了对性、爱情和浪漫的一种非常短视的认知，”在金赛研究所(Kinsey
Institute)担任高级研究员的费舍尔说。“我想让人们理解，虽然千禧一代还没有结婚，他们的性生活也少于我这一代，他们这样做的原因是好的。”
The millennial cohort is roughly
defined as those who were born in the 1980s to the early 2000s —
although
there is some debate about the boundaries. Millennials, due in
part to their digital savvy, already are credited with significant
changes in how we live, work and interact.
千禧人群的界定大致为1980年代到2000年初出生的人——尽管在年限的划分上存在一些争论。由于精通数码等原因，千禧一代已被认为给我们的生活、工作和互动方式带来了显著变化。
But what is particularly striking is
how quickly the cohort has rewritten the rules for courtship, sex
and marriage. In 2018,
the median age of first marriage was approaching 30 (29.8 for
men and 27.8 for women). That’s more than a five-year delay in
marriage compared to 1980, when the median age was 24.7 for men and
22 for women.
但尤其令人惊讶的，是这个群体如此迅速地改写了求爱、性爱与婚姻的规则。2018年，初次婚姻平均年龄接近30岁（男性29.8岁、女性27.8岁）。这和1980年相比，婚姻时间推迟了不止五年，当时初婚平均年龄是男性24.7岁、女性22岁。
A 2017 study in the Archives
of Sexual Behavior found that many younger millennials in their
early 20s aren’t having sex, and are more than twice as likely to
be sexually inactive than the previous generation.
Another study found that American couples ages 25 to 34 spend
an average of six and a half years together before marrying,
compared with an average of five years for all other age
groups.
Critics say digital saturation has
made millennials
more socially isolated, restless and entitled, which could
explain why they are having less sex than earlier generations. And
when millennials do have sex, it’s often viewed as less meaningful
because they engage in “hookups” or sexual relationships described
as “friends with benefits.”
批评人士称，沉浸在数码中使千禧一代在社交上更加孤立、焦躁不安且以自我为中心，这或许可以解释为什么他们性生活比之前几代人少。而就算千禧一代有性生活时，也常常被视为缺乏意义，因为他们是在“勾搭”或者是所谓“互惠”的性关系。
Dr. Fisher, author of “Anatomy
of Love:
A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We
Stray,” has devoted her career to studying love and
relationships. Most recently she has collected data on more than
30,000 people related to current courtship and marriage trends. Dr.
Fisher believes that instead of criticizing and judging
millennials, perhaps we should be paying more attention. It’s
possible, she said, that today’s singles are carving a more
successful path to lasting love than previous generations.
作为《爱欲——婚姻、外遇与离婚的自然史》(Anatomy
of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We
Stray)一书的作者，费舍尔的事业就是致力于研究爱情与关系。近来，她收集了3万多人的当前求爱和婚姻趋势相关数据。费舍尔认为，与其对千禧一代进行批评和品头论足，我们倒不如多留心观察。她表示，有可能当今的单身族在开辟比前几代人更为成功的持久爱情之路。
“We can all learn from people who
don’t want to waste a lot of time doing things that are going
nowhere,” said Dr. Fisher, the co-author of a chapter on “slow
love” in the 2018 anthology
“The New Psychology of Love,” published by Cambridge University
Press.
“从那些不想在没有结果的事情上浪费太多时间的人身上，我们都能学到东西，”费舍尔说，她在2018年剑桥大学出版社(Cambridge
University Press)出版的文集《新爱情心理学》(The
New Psychology of Love)中撰写了关于“慢爱”一章。
She notes that people who date three
years or more before marrying are 39 percent less likely to divorce
than people who rush into marriage. “This is a real extended period
of the pre-commitment stage,” said Dr. Fisher. “With slow love,
maybe by the time people walk down the aisle they know who they’ve
got, and they think they can keep who they’ve got.”
她指出，婚前约会三年或三年以上的人，离婚的可能性比匆忙结婚的人低39%。“这是一段相当长的前承诺阶段，”费舍尔说。“如果慢慢地去爱，那么或许当人们步入婚姻殿堂的时候，就会知道他们遇到的是谁，就会觉得可以留住他们所遇到的。”
Ask millennials and they will tell
you that there is nothing casual about their approach to sex,
dating and romance.
问问千禧一代，他们会告诉你，他们对待性、约会和浪漫的态度绝不是随便的。
“Hooking up with someone doesn’t
mean that millennials now don’t value marriage,” says Anne Kat
Alexander, who at 23 is in the second wave of the millennial
generation. “If anything, they value marriage more because they are
putting a lot more forward thinking into that decision.”
23岁的安妮·凯特·亚历山大(Anne Kat
Alexander)属于千禧一代的第二浪潮，“更多约会并不意味着千禧一代现在不重视婚姻，”她说。“如果有什么区别的话，那就是他们更看重婚姻，因为他们在做决定时考虑得更长远。”
Dr. Fisher says her research
suggests today’s singles seek to learn as much as possible about a
potential partner before they spend time, energy and money on
courtship. As a result, the path to romance has changed
significantly. Whereas a “first date” used to represent the
getting-to-know-you phase of a courtship, now going on an official
date with someone comes later in the relationship.
费舍尔说，她的研究表明，如今的单身人士在花时间、精力和金钱追求伴侣之前，会尽可能多地了解潜在的伴侣。结果，通往恋情的道路发生了巨大的变化。虽然“第一次约会”曾经代表着恋爱中“开始了解对方”的阶段，但现在，在一段关系中，和某人正式约会来得要晚一些。
And for some singles, sex has become
the getting-to-know you phase of courtship. In a study conducted
for Match.com, Dr. Fisher found that among a representative sample,
34 percent of singles had sex with somebody before the first date.
She calls it “the sex interview.”
对于一些单身人士来说，性才是恋爱中的“开始了解对方”的阶段。在Match.com进行的一项研究中，费舍尔发现，在一个具有代表性的样本中，34%的单身人士在第一次约会前就与他人发生了性关系。她称之为“性面试”。
“In my day you went out on a first
date with someone you didn’t know very well, and you went to dinner
or mini golf,” she said. “The first date has changed — it’s time
consuming and expensive. Now they have a sex interview with a
person to see if they want to invest in a first date.”
“在我那个年代，你和一个不太熟的人第一次约会，然后一起吃晚饭或打迷你高尔夫，”她说。“第一次约会发生了变化——它既费时又费钱。现在，他们会对一个人做个性面试，看看是否值得投入首次约会。
Ms. Alexander, who lives in
Princeton and identifies as bisexual, said she and her partner want
to finish their education, start their careers and be on solid
financial footing before marriage.“To be successful in a marriage
you have to be compatible in a lot of different ways,” she says.
“Sex is one for those vectors of compatibility where I feel like
millennials want to make sure they’re also compatible.”
住在普林斯顿的亚历山大自我认同为双性恋。她说，她和伴侣希望在结婚前完成学业，开始职业生涯，并拥有坚实的经济基础。“要想拥有成功的婚姻，你们必须在很多不同的方面兼容，”她说。“性是兼容的元素之一，我觉得千禧一代想要确保它们也是兼容的。”
For millennials, financial issues
also loom large in their decisions about relationships. They talk
about the burden of student debt, and their desire to find
meaningful work in an increasingly impersonal job market. Many say
their lives were deeply affected by the 2008 financial crisis as
they watched their parents lose businesses, struggle with debt and
even go through divorces.
对于千禧一代来说，财务问题在人际关系决策中也显得很重要。他们谈论学生债务的负担，以及他们在日益缺乏人情味的就业市场中寻找有意义工作的愿望。许多人说，他们的生活深受2008年金融危机的影响，他们眼睁睁地看着父母失去生意、债务缠身，甚至离婚。
“When I first met my fiancé, I
asked, ‘What’s your credit score?’ ” said Lucy Murray, 24. “In the
long run, if we’re talking about marriage, buying a place together,
having joint bank accounts and putting cars in each others’ names,
those are big financial decisions that will be linked permanently
for both of us. That’s why I ask right away.”
“当我第一次见到我现在的未婚夫时，我问他，‘你的信用评分是多少？’”24岁的露西·穆雷(Lucy
Murray)说。“从长远来看，如果我们谈婚论嫁，一起买房、拥有共同银行账户、将汽车登记在彼此的名下，这些重大的财务决定将对我们两人产生永久的影响。所以我当时就问。”
Financial issues continue to
influence the couple’s relationship. They recently moved to
Syracuse from New York City because housing prices are lower. They
also canceled wedding plans, and may eventually elope. “Weddings
are expensive,” said Ms. Murray.
经济问题继续影响着这对未婚夫妇的关系。他们最近从纽约市搬到了锡拉丘兹，因为那里的房子便宜。他们还取消了婚礼计划，最终可能秘密结婚。“婚礼很贵，”穆雷说。
The trends set by the millennials
appear to be continuing into the next generation, often called
Generation Z. “It’s the first generation to spend their entire
adolescence in the age of the smartphone,” said Jean Twenge, a
psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of
the book “iGen,” which describes young people today as less
rebellious, but also less happy and unprepared for adulthood. “They
spend less time with each other face-to-face, which may be
connected with why they are less likely to have sex with each
other.”
这股由千禧一代开始的趋势持续到通常称为Z世代的下一代，“他们是将整个青春期都花在智能手机上的第一代，”圣地亚哥州立大学心理学教授、著有《iGen》一书的让·特文格(Jean
Twenge)说，该书称当今年轻人虽然没那么叛逆，但也不大乐意走入成年，而且尚未做好准备。“他们面对面在一起的时间更少，这可能与为什么他们彼此间发生性关系可能性相对小有关联。”
But Dr. Fisher believes today’s
singles are setting a good example for future generations by having
a more thoughtful view of marriage and commitment. “Love is
fickle,” said Dr. Fisher. “The more stability you can bring to
this, the more likely you are going to find something that really
works and works long term.”
但费舍尔认为，如今的单身人士对婚姻和承诺有了更审慎的看法，为后代树立了一个好榜样。“爱是善变的，”费舍尔说。“你越能让爱稳定下来，就越有可能找到真正行得通的、长期有效的方式。”
免责声明：本文中使用的图片均由博主自行发布，与本网无关，如有侵权，请联系博主进行删除。
