以下取自於我正在閱讀的一本書.  書名是 "Committed" 作者是 Elizabeth Gilbert.   她的上本 "Eat, Pray, Love" 是本暢銷的回憶錄, 已被選中拍成電影.   書中紀錄著她離婚的心歷過程, 更毅然決然拋下了一切, 放逐自己.  那一年她去到給她不同心靈洗禮的三個國家, 義大利(Eat), 印度(Pray) 和 (Love) 在巴里島她遇見了他的新心靈伴侶.  二人都經歷過失敗婚姻, 誓言不再婚.   Committed 是續篇, 看書名就知道他倆終究還是走入婚姻, 但是原因不是想像中的單純.  這本書主要內容是作者在決定走上婚姻之路前的心理掙扎和確認.  閱讀完第二章, 跟大家分享這幾段我覺得蠻有意思的領悟.

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我們是否對愛要求太多了?  或是, 至少, 我們對婚姻要求的太多了?

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person.  Keeping that going is hard work.  A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband - more than anything else - is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order.  As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency", or "honesty” or his ability to provide for a family.  But that's not enough anymore.  Now we want to be inspired by our partners!  Daily!  .  .  .  .  .  .                               

But this is exactly what I myself have expected in the past from love (inspiration, soaring bliss) and this is what I was now preparing to expect all over again with Felipe (丈夫的名字)  - that we should somehow be answerable for every aspect of each other's joy and happiness.  That our very job description as spouses was to be each other's everything.

Are we asking too much of love?  Or, at least, perhaps we are asking too much of marriage?

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我本來準備將這些段落翻成中文, 總覺得不夠達意.  格友的英文程度都很棒, 我就以原文呈現了.