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To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man’s eyes for exactly four minutes. 20多年前，心理学家阿瑟·亚伦(Arthur Aron)成功地在他的实验室里令两个陌生人相爱了。去年夏天，我把他的方法应用到自己的生活里去——午夜时分，我站在一座桥上，凝视对面男人的眼睛，四分钟之久。 Let me explain. Earlier in the evening, that man had said: “I suspect, given a few commonalities, you could fall in love with anyone. If so, how do you choose someone?” 让我解释一下。当晚早些时候，那个男人说：“我觉得，假如有一些共性，你就可以爱上任何人。如果真是这样，那人们又是如何选择到底会爱上谁呢？” He was a university acquaintance I occasionally ran into at the climbing gym and had thought, “What if?” I had gotten a glimpse into his days on Instagram. But this was the first time we had hung out one-on-one. 他是我在大学里的熟人，偶尔会在攀岩馆里遇到他，也想过“在一起会怎样呢？”我在他的Instagram照片上看过他的生活，但是那次是我们第一次单独出去玩。 “Actually, psychologists have tried making people fall in love,” I said, remembering Dr. Aron’s study. “It’s fascinating. I’ve always wanted to try it.” “事实上，心理学家试过让人们相爱，”我想起了亚伦的研究。“很有意思，我一直都想试试看。” I first read about the study when I was in the midst of a breakup. Each time I thought of leaving, my heart overruled my brain. I felt stuck. So, like a good academic, I turned to science, hoping there was a way to love smarter. 我第一次读到这个研究是在某次分手期间。每当想起要分手，我的感情就会战胜理智。我觉得很糟糕。所以，我像个好的学者那样求助于科学，希望能有更好的恋爱方式。 I explained the study to my university acquaintance. A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony. 我向这位大学里的熟人介绍了这个研究。一对异性恋男女从不同的门进入实验室。两人面对面坐着，回答一系列愈来愈个人化的问题。然后他们静静对视四分钟。然后最煽情的事情发生了：六个月后，两个人结婚了。他们还邀请整个实验室的人来参加婚礼。 “Let’s try it,” he said. “咱们也试试吧，”他说。 Let me acknowledge the ways our experiment already fails to line up with the study. First, we were in a bar, not a lab. Second, we weren’t strangers. Not only that, but I see now that one neither suggests nor agrees to try an experiment designed to create romantic love if one isn’t open to this happening. 我得承认，我们的实验并不符合那项研究的要求。首先，我们是在酒吧，而不是实验室。其次，我们不是陌生人。不仅如此，现在我明白，假如一个人不期待和对方发生浪漫恋情，那么就不会向对方提议或答应对方进行一项旨在增进浪漫恋情的实验。 I Googled Dr. Aron’s questions; there are 36. We spent the next two hours passing my iPhone across the table, alternately posing each question. 我用谷歌搜索了亚伦博士的问题，共有36个。我们对坐在桌边，轮流看我的iPhone手机回答问题，花了两个小时。 They began innocuously: “Would you like to be famous? In what way?” And “When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?” 一开始是无伤大雅的问题：“你想出名吗？以什么样的方式出名？”以及“你上次自己唱起歌来是什么时候，给别人唱呢？” But they quickly became probing. 但问题很快就变得深入心灵。 In response to the prompt, “Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common,” he looked at me and said, “I think we’re both interested in each other.” 回答“说出三个你和对方的共同点”这个问题的时候，他看着我说，“我觉得我们都对对方感兴趣。” I grinned and gulped my beer as he listed two more commonalities I then promptly forgot. We exchanged stories about the last time we each cried, and confessed the one thing we’d like to ask a fortuneteller. We explained our relationships with our mothers. 我笑着喝了一大口啤酒，接下来他说了另外两个共同点，但我很快就忘了。我们给对方讲了我们上一次为什么哭，也向对方坦白了自己人生中的困惑，还说了自己和母亲之间的关系。 The questions reminded me of the infamous boiling frog experiment in which the frog doesn’t feel the water getting hotter until it’s too late. With us, because the level of vulnerability increased gradually, I didn’t notice we had entered intimate territory until we were already there, a process that can typically take weeks or months. 这些问题让我想起那个臭名昭著的温水煮青蛙实验，实验中，青蛙无法感觉到水温逐渐升高，直到被煮熟为止，这时已经来不及了。而我们呢，在回答问题的过程中，我们的脆弱程度逐渐提高，不知不觉中，我们已经渐渐进入了彼此的私密领域，这个过程通常需要几周乃至数月。 I liked learning about myself through my answers, but I liked learning things about him even more. The bar, which was empty when we arrived, had filled up by the time we paused for a bathroom break. 我喜欢在回答问题的同时了解我自己的感觉，但我更喜欢了解他。我们进来的时候，酒吧还是空空荡荡的，但后来我们中间停下来上厕所时，我才发现人已经挤满了。 I sat alone at our table, aware of my surroundings for the first time in an hour, and wondered if anyone had been listening to our conversation. If they had, I hadn’t noticed. And I didn’t notice as the crowd thinned and the night got late. 我独自坐在桌边，这是一个小时以来我第一次意识到周边事物的存在，想着会不会有什么人正在听我们的对话。如果有，那我也根本没注意到。后来酒吧里的人渐渐离去，我也同样没注意到。 We all have a narrative of ourselves that we offer up to strangers and acquaintances, but Dr. Aron’s questions make it impossible to rely on that narrative. Ours was the kind of accelerated intimacy I remembered from summer camp, staying up all night with a new friend, exchanging the details of our short lives. At 13, away from home for the first time, it felt natural to get to know someone quickly. But rarely does adult life present us with such circumstances. 我们都有一套关于自己的说辞，用来提供给陌生人或点头之交，但亚伦博士的问题让你不可能依赖那套说辞。我们的交谈就像小时候在夏令营，和新朋友整晚不睡，交流自己短短人生中的各种细节，快速增进友谊。13岁，第一次远离家乡的时候，快速了解别人是很自然的事情。但成年后就很少有这样的环境了。 The moments I found most uncomfortable were not when I had to make confessions about myself, but had to venture opinions about my partner. For example: “Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner, a total of five items” (Question 22), and “Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time saying things you might not say to someone you’ve just met” (Question 28). 最让我不舒服的并不是需要坦白自己的那些问题，而是必须冒险评价对方的问题。比如“交替说出对方身上优点，每人说五个”（第22个问题），以及“告诉对方你喜欢他身上的什么东西，要诚实，说出你不会对萍水之交说出的东西”（第28个问题）。 Much of Dr. Aron’s research focuses on creating interpersonal closeness. In particular, several studies investigate the ways we incorporate others into our sense of self. It’s easy to see how the questions encourage what they call “self-expansion.” Saying things like, “I like your voice, your taste in beer, the way all your friends seem to admire you,” makes certain positive qualities belonging to one person explicitly valuable to the other. 亚伦博士的研究主要关注创造人与人之间的亲密感。有几项研究特别审视我们如何将他人整合到我们对自我的意识中去。很容易看出，这些问题鼓励他们所谓的“自我膨胀”。说些诸如“我喜欢你的声音，你对啤酒的品位，你的朋友们好像都很仰慕你”之类的话，确实能够帮你看清一个人对他人明显有价值的积极特质。 It’s astounding, really, to hear what someone admires in you. I don’t know why we don’t go around thoughtfully complimenting one another all the time. 听别人说他仰慕你什么地方，这确实很令人震惊。我不知道我们平时为什么竟然没有随时去好好恭维别人。 We finished at midnight, taking far longer than the 90 minutes for the original study. Looking around the bar, I felt as if I had just woken up. “That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Definitely less uncomfortable than the staring into each other’s eyes part would be.” 我们直到午夜时分才结束，比原始版本的研究多花了90分钟时间。环视酒吧四周，我仿佛大梦初醒一般。“这不坏，”我说，“比两人双目对视那部分好得多。” He hesitated and asked. “Do you think we should do that, too?” 他迟疑了一下，说。“你觉得我们应该做那件事吗？” “Here?” I looked around the bar. It seemed too weird, too public. “在这儿？”我环视四周，感觉有点怪，太公开了。 “We could stand on the bridge,” he said, turning toward the window. “我们可以到那座桥上去，”他转向窗子说。 The night was warm and I was wide-awake. We walked to the highest point, then turned to face each other. I fumbled with my phone as I set the timer. 那是一个温暖的夜，我头脑很清醒。我们走上桥中间，然后面对面地站着。我笨拙地摸出手机来定时。 “O.K.,” I said, inhaling sharply. “好的，”我深深吸了口气。 “O.K.,” he said, smiling. “好的，”他微笑。 I’ve skied steep slopes and hung from a rock face by a short length of rope, but staring into someone’s eyes for four silent minutes was one of the more thrilling and terrifying experiences of my life. I spent the first couple of minutes just trying to breathe properly. There was a lot of nervous smiling until, eventually, we settled in. 我曾经沿着陡坡滑雪，曾经腰间系着短绳攀岩，但在整整四分钟里静静凝视一个人的眼睛是我一生中最精彩也是最刺激的体验。头几分钟里，我试着调整呼吸。后来我们又神经质地笑起来，最后终于安静下来。 I know the eyes are the windows to the soul or whatever, but the real crux of the moment was not just that I was really seeing someone, but that I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected. 我知道眼睛是灵魂的窗口之类说法，但那一刻的核心并不在于“我是真的在看某人”，而在于“我看到某人是真的在看我”。一旦我开始接受这种认知中可怕的成分，让不适感慢慢消失，我就进入了未曾预料到的境界。 I felt brave, and in a state of wonder. Part of that wonder was at my own vulnerability and part was the weird kind of wonder you get from saying a word over and over until it loses its meaning and becomes what it actually is: an assemblage of sounds. 我感觉很勇敢，进入了一种奇迹般的境地。部分是由于我自身的脆弱，部分是由于一种怪异的惊奇之感，你不再喋喋不休，言语已经丧失它的意义，恢复了它的本来面目：一大堆声音的组合。 So it was with the eye, which is not a window to anything but rather a clump of very useful cells. The sentiment associated with the eye fell away and I was struck by its astounding biological reality: the spherical nature of the eyeball, the visible musculature of the iris and the smooth wet glass of the cornea. It was strange and exquisite. 所以这就是眼睛，它不是任何东西的窗口，只是一团非常有用处的细胞。之后这种关于“眼睛”的想法也消失了，我开始注意到它惊人的生理特征：眼球的球状结构，虹膜上清晰可见的肌肉组织与平滑、湿润、透明的角膜。又奇异又精致。 When the timer buzzed, I was surprised — and a little relieved. But I also felt a sense of loss. Already I was beginning to see our evening through the surreal and unreliable lens of retrospect. 定时器嗡嗡响起，我吃惊之余，不免微微松了口气。但我仍然感觉若有所失。这时，我已经开始从超现实和不可靠的角度来看待这个晚上。 Most of us think about love as something that happens to us. We fall. We get crushed. 大多数人觉得“爱情”是突然发生在我们身上的事情，我们堕入爱河，我们为彼此倾倒。 But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action. It assumes that what matters to my partner matters to me because we have at least three things in common, because we have close relationships with our mothers, and because he let me look at him. 但我喜欢这项研究的一点是，它把“爱情”当做一种行为。它假定对于对方有效的东西，对我来说同样有效，因为我们至少有三个特征是一样的，因为我们都和母亲保持着亲密的关系，因为他允许我凝视他。 I wondered what would come of our interaction. If nothing else, I thought it would make a good story. But I see now that the story isn’t about us; it’s about what it means to bother to know someone, which is really a story about what it means to be known. 我猜想我们之间的关系会怎样发展。至少我觉得这算是个好故事。但我现在明白，这个故事不是关于我们两人的，而是关于费心去了解别人有多么重要，“被人了解的意义”，这确实是个好故事。 It’s true you can’t choose who loves you, although I’ve spent years hoping otherwise, and you can’t create romantic feelings based on convenience alone. Science tells us biology matters; our pheromones and hormones do a lot of work behind the scenes. 确实，你不能选择让谁来爱上你，尽管多年来我一直希望可以这样选择；你也不能仅仅为了自己方便就创造出浪漫气氛。科学告诉我们，生物学起到了作用，我们的信息素与激素在恋爱过程中扮演很重要的角色。 But despite all this, I’ve begun to think love is a more pliable thing than we make it out to be. Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive. 但是尽管如此，我开始认为，恋爱其实比我们所想的更加灵活。阿瑟·艾伦的研究让我懂得，创造信任与亲密的感觉是有可能的，甚至还很简单，而爱情正需要信任与亲密的滋养。 |
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