Searching for love to escape ourselves

Hayley QuinnSo let me tell you a love story. Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land I Googled to be 5,172 miles away, I met a guy, and he was perfect.

讓我給你講一個愛情故事。很久很久以前，在我搜索到的5172英里外的一片土地上，我遇到了一個男人，他很完美。

So I’ll tell you the meeting story. I’d just taped this really cool TV show about experimenting with your sexuality, and I met him at the after-party through one of our famous friends who was a DJ. He was tall, dark, handsome, kind of a rock star, and a little bit emotionally unavailable.?

所以我會告訴你約會的故事。我剛剛錄制了一個關于嘗試性行為的非?？岬碾娨暪?jié)目，我在派對后通過我們的一位著名朋友認識了他，他是一名DJ。他又高又黑，又帥，有點像搖滾明星，而且有點情緒化。

Very soon, we were spending all of our time together. We threw these really cool parties for all of our cool friends, we went backstage at every festival, and, when my hands were cold, he would take them under his arms to warm them up.

很快，我們所有的時間都在一起了。我們?yōu)槲覀兯械目崤笥雅e辦了這些非?？岬呐蓪?，我們在每個節(jié)日都會去后臺，當我的手很冷的時候，他會把它們放在懷里暖和。

He was my best friend, and I thought we would be together forever. And so strong was that belief that when the warning signs came, I just ignored them. Until the day that I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I’d become quite unwell, I wasn’t so pretty anymore, and I definitely couldn’t go out to any of the parties. In fact, I was, for the first time in my life, actually vulnerable because I was miscarrying our baby.

他是我最好的朋友，我以為我們會永遠在一起。這種信念是如此強烈，以至于當警告信號出現(xiàn)時，我就忽略了它們。直到有一天我再也不能忽視他們了。我變得很不舒服，我不再那么漂亮了，我肯定不能出去參加任何聚會。事實上，我有生以來第一次實際上很脆弱，因為我流產了我們的孩子。

And at that point, when I was at my weakest, he left. It’s not a joke. Ah ha, um – Coming downstairs – and you, you know what, but I would have followed him out of the door to the ends of Earth. But I couldn’t get out of my bed. When I did get up, I found that our house had been stripped bare.

就在那時，當我最虛弱的時候，他離開了。這不是玩笑。啊哈，嗯，下樓了，你知道嗎，但我會跟著他走出家門，來到天涯海角。但我下不了床。當我起床時，我發(fā)現(xiàn)我們的房子被扒光了。

The paintings were gone from the walls, and the rooms that we used to dance in together were empty. I walked around those rooms like an animal, howling. Picking myself up off the literal floor that day, I had to recognize that after all of this excitement and this joy and this fantasy, at the end of all that love, I had nothing. And you know what, that wasn’t even the first time something like that had happened to me. I was a magnet for chaos.

墻上的畫都不見了，我們以前一起跳舞的房間也空了。我像動物一樣在那些房間里走來走去，嚎叫著。那天我從字面上爬起來，我不得不意識到，在經歷了所有的興奮、喜悅和幻想之后，在所有的愛結束時，我什么都沒有了。你知道嗎，這甚至不是我第一次遇到這樣的事情。我是一個混亂的磁鐵。

I liked chaos, because when I was in chaos, I didn’t have to confront anything about who I was. Truthfully, I hadn’t known who I was for years. Because on the floor that day, I did have someone, I had myself. But for a long time, that had come to feel like, it, well, meant nothing, and it was invaluable. So I know it seems a bit self-indulgent to come out here today and talk to you guys about, like, effectively a break-up story, but it was one of a chain of many incidences that made me think, “Maybe there’s other people like me, maybe there’s other people that aren’t approaching love in the right way.”

我喜歡混亂，因為當我陷入混亂時，我不必面對任何關于我是誰的事情。老實說，我已經好幾年不知道自己是誰了。因為那天在地板上，我確實有人，我有自己。但很長一段時間以來，這讓人覺得，它，嗯，毫無意義，而且是無價的。所以我知道今天來到這里和你們談論分手的故事似乎有點自我放縱，但這是一系列事件中的一個，讓我想，“也許還有像我這樣的人，也許還有其他人沒有以正確的方式接近愛情?！?/p>

Because I think we’ve all had experiences, right? They look like love, they feel like love, but when you open them up, there’s nothing loving about them. But we continued to chase love, because I think love is sold to us as almost like the ultimate solution to ourselves: the things that make our past okay, that gives us the direction for the future, and imbues our everyday reality with meaning.

因為我想我們都有過經歷，對吧？它們看起來像愛，感覺像愛，但當你打開它們時，它們沒有任何愛。但我們繼續(xù)追求愛情，因為我認為愛情賣給我們就像是對我們自己的終極解決方案：讓我們的過去變得美好的東西，給我們未來的方向，讓我們的日常生活充滿意義。

I think love can be beautiful, I think it can be exciting; but I think sometimes it can also be an act of escapism. And I’ve had a long time to think about this, as the introduction said, I am the artist formerly known as the UK’s leading dating expert. And before that I was a ghost writer in the pickup industry, and I vlog about the reality of love on my YouTube.

我認為愛情可以是美好的，我認為它可以是激動人心的；但我認為有時這也可能是一種逃避現(xiàn)實的行為。我花了很長時間來思考這個問題，正如介紹中所說，我是藝術家，以前被稱為英國最頂尖的約會專家。在此之前，我是皮卡行業(yè)的幽靈作家，我在YouTube上視頻講述了愛情的現(xiàn)實。

And now I have a completely different approach, a very minimalist strategy when it comes to dating. And that’s really because I’m concerned that in our quest for love sometimes it can be the ultimate distraction to fixing ourselves and doing the real work that will actually make us happy. Because, don’t get me wrong, I think that the desire for attachment, for intimacy, for security, for love, those goals are natural, they’re human, and they’re good.

現(xiàn)在我有了一種完全不同的方法，一種非常簡約的約會策略。這真的是因為我擔心，在我們追求愛情的過程中，有時它可能會最終分散我們的注意力，讓我們調整自己，做真正能讓我們快樂的工作。因為，別誤會我，我認為對依戀、親密、安全、愛的渴望，這些目標是自然的，它們是人類的，是美好的。

But I think sometimes the way we go about them is a bit weird, whether that’s crazy, ridiculous, on-off, destructive relationships, or needing to go out on a date every single night of the week with a different person. You know, like the hip form of dating, where you have someone on the back burner, someone on the front burner, someone under the grill, and then someone else over there in the freezer just in case, God forbid, you spend a night by yourself.

但我認為有時候我們對待他們的方式有點奇怪，無論是瘋狂的、荒謬的、斷斷續(xù)續(xù)的、破壞性的關系，還是需要在一周中的每一個晚上都和不同的人約會。你知道，就像臀部約會一樣，你有人在后面，有人在前面，有人坐在烤架下，然后有人在冰箱里，以防萬一，天哪，你一個人過一晚。

In this, it feels really like loneliness is the driver, or escapism is the driver, not love. So, I’m kind of starting to preach the opposite belief now, that, of course, the answer lies not in another person, but within yourself. Because I think, sometimes, the melodrama of love takes us further away, rather than closer, to who we actually are. So I find that my dating advice is gradually shrinking down to be essentially: go meditate, get some therapy, read a book. Ha, ha…It’s not what you would call a sexy strategy for the millennial generation.

在這種情況下，我感覺孤獨是驅動因素，或者逃避現(xiàn)實是驅動因素而不是愛情。所以，我現(xiàn)在開始鼓吹相反的信念，當然，答案不在別人身上，而在你自己身上。因為我認為，有時候，愛情的情節(jié)劇會讓我們離自己更遠，而不是更近。所以我發(fā)現(xiàn)我的約會建議正在逐漸縮小，基本上是：去冥想，接受一些治療，讀一本書。哈哈…這不是你所說的千禧一代的性感策略。

A generation that is used to 4G download speeds, skyping a friend abroad, and Netflix and chill with someone you just met from Tinder. Um – So I think when we’re used to expecting everything we want right here, right now, when we can’t just vend an automatic level of human connection, we not only feel like we’re getting it wrong, but like we’re not getting what we’re entitled to.

一代人習慣了4G下載速度，向國外的朋友和Netflix打高價，并與Tinder剛認識的人保持冷靜。嗯——所以我想，當我們習慣了在這里期待我們想要的一切，而現(xiàn)在，當我們不能只提供自動水平的人際關系時，我們不僅覺得我們錯了，而且覺得我們沒有得到應有的東西。

And then you just take one look at Instagram: everybody else has it sorted out. And we sort of live in the culture that surrounds us, telling us that we should have fallen in love or be falling in love, or at least have had great sex, right? Like yesterday!? You know, let’s face it, who actually enters into the arena of love looking to, maybe, become a better person, to be kinder, to have more integrity, to get more grounded? No one does that.

然后你只需看一眼Instagram：其他人都把它整理好了。我們有點生活在我們周圍的文化中，告訴我們我們應該墜入愛河或者正在墜入愛，或者至少應該有一次很棒的性愛，對吧？就像昨天一樣??？你知道，讓我們面對現(xiàn)實吧，誰真正進入了愛情的舞臺，希望，也許，成為一個更好的人，更善良，更正直，更接地氣？沒有人這么做。

It’s because our eyes are off ourselves, we’re looking for that next adventure, that greener grass, that new person, so we don’t have to deal with any of that stuff. And I understand how easily it happens, right? You just kind of meet someone sexy, I don’t know where, maybe it was at a party, on the train, or the Tube, as we would say in London.

這是因為我們的目光離開了我們自己，我們正在尋找下一次冒險，那片更綠的草地，那個新的人，所以我們不需要處理任何這些事情。我知道這很容易發(fā)生，對吧？你只是遇到了一個性感的人，我不知道在哪里，也許是在派對上，在火車上，或者在地鐵上，就像我們在倫敦所說的那樣。

Or maybe you just met them, you both joined Tinder that day, how magical! And before too long, you realize that you have some stuff in common, like wow, you both like almond butter, Star Wars, you can name all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles. And then, like, suddenly, you’re retelling how you met, like, this serendipitous coincidence of cosmic proportions – it’s like move over Romeo and Juliet. Not that that ended every well, let’s all remember that.

或者也許你剛認識他們，那天你們都加入了Tinder，真神奇！不久之后，你就會意識到你們有一些共同點，比如哇，你們都喜歡杏仁醬，星球大戰(zhàn)，你可以說出所有四個青少年變種忍者英雄海龜?shù)拿?。然后，就像，突然間，你在復述你是如何遇見的，就像，這個宇宙比例的偶然巧合——這就像是越過了羅密歐和朱麗葉。并不是所有的一切都結束了，讓我們都記住這一點。

So, when you’re thinking about you’re not exactly being Romeo and Juliet, and we’re actually living in the real world, I think the thing is, the main sell, when you kind of fall for someone, is it ‘s like: Yippee, I’m not alone anymore. Hooray! Nailed it! Uh ha Coz you get to – guess what you do? You get to go home every night, and you get to put your head on the pillow, and you don’t have to think about, you know, your needs, your wants, your past, and, actually, kind of all the stuff that’s really, probably, stopping you from becoming happy, because you’re not fixing it. Instead, you get to be entrapped by somebody else, you’re intrigued by them, your mind has someone new to spiral into and focus on.

所以，當你想你不完全是羅密歐和朱麗葉，而我們實際上生活在現(xiàn)實世界中時，我想最重要的是，當你愛上一個人的時候，是這樣的：伊佩，我不再孤單了。好極了釘住了！呃，哈，因為你可以——猜猜你是干什么的？你每天晚上都可以回家，你可以把頭枕在枕頭上，你不必去想，你知道，你的需求，你的愿望，你的過去，實際上，所有的事情都可能阻止你變得快樂，因為你沒有解決它。相反，你會被其他人陷害，你會對他們產生興趣，你的頭腦中會有新的人需要盤旋并專注。

But I think sometimes when you’re focusing on that perfect romance, you’re not actually doing the real work to fix the stuff that’s stopping you from becoming happy. And because of that, I think that most of us, when it comes to love and dating, kind of need an epic timeout and reset. For myself, I did six months cold turkey. No dating, no internet dating, and I went to all of two parties. Literally, you could have written up my love life on the back of a postage stamp, it was that exciting. And all this from the girl who used to – honestly, I used to pride myself on having a ridiculous love life.

但我認為，有時當你專注于完美的浪漫時，你實際上并沒有做真正的工作來修復那些阻礙你變得幸福的東西。正因為如此，我認為我們大多數(shù)人在談及戀愛和約會時，都需要史詩般的暫停和重置。就我自己而言，我做了六個月的冷火雞。沒有約會，沒有網(wǎng)絡約會，我參加了所有兩個聚會。從字面上看，你本可以把我的愛情生活寫在郵票的背面，真是太令人興奮了。而這一切都來自曾經的女孩——老實說，我曾經為自己擁有荒謬的愛情生活而自豪。

The stories – if I was here two years ago guys, I’d have told you some amazing stories. But you know what? After all of that, and after everything that happened, I thought I would quite like to know who I am again. Because, and I think I’m not alone here, if you’re experiencing a Groundhog Day when it comes to your dating life, I think that the thing is you think that it’s because you’re meeting loads of players, or nice guys finish last, or you just haven’t met the one yet, or that dating is a numbers game, but I think actually these truisms that surround dating aren’t in fact true at all.

故事——如果我兩年前在這里，伙計們，我會告訴你們一些驚人的故事。但你知道嗎？在這一切發(fā)生之后，我想我很想再次知道我是誰。因為，我認為我并不孤單，如果你正在經歷一個土撥鼠日，當涉及到你的約會生活時，我認為問題是你認為這是因為你遇到了很多玩家，或者好人最后完成了比賽，或者你只是還沒有遇到那個人，或者約會是一場數(shù)字游戲，但我認為實際上這些圍繞約會的真理根本不是真的。

In fact, I think they lead us away from what the real issue is. Because the problem, and I know this doesn’t make for comfy listening, the problem, it’s with you, it’s with me, it’s with our ridiculous ideas around romance, it’s with our needs that we haven’t realized yet, it’s with our past that we don’t want to talk about, it’s with our desires, it’s with our inability to get through one day without picking up our smartphones, and it’s with what we value.

事實上，我認為他們讓我們遠離了真正的問題。因為問題，我知道這不利于舒適的傾聽，問題在于你，問題在于我，問題在于我們對浪漫的荒謬想法，問題在于尚未意識到的需求，問題在于不想談論的過去，問題在于欲望，這是因為我們無法度過一天而不拿起智能手機，這是我們所珍視的。

So I decided after all of that – I was like, you know what, I’m done with Groundhog Day in love, I actually want to discover a bit more about myself. Because the truth is, I wasn’t even born Hayley Quinn. Right!? Right!? I chose that name, I thought it sounded cool. I was actually born Hayley Whittle. And when I was born – I grew up in a poor family, my parents were disabled, I was really teased at school a lot for being the weird girl, I used to work as a dishwasher, and because of that, there was so much pain and shame in my past; I just didn’t want to touch it.

所以我決定在所有這些之后——我想，你知道嗎，我已經結束了土撥鼠日的戀愛，我真的想發(fā)現(xiàn)更多關于我自己的東西。因為事實是，我甚至還沒有出生海莉·奎因。正確的正確的我選擇了這個名字，我覺得聽起來很酷。事實上，我出生于海莉·惠特爾。當我出生的時候——我在一個貧窮的家庭長大，我的父母都是殘疾人，我在學校里經常被嘲笑是個古怪的女孩，我曾經做過洗碗機，正因為如此，我的過去有太多的痛苦和恥辱；我只是不想碰它。

And the way I ran away from it is I ran away from it with love and with fantasy. But I decided after all that running, I wasn’t really getting anywhere, I was just re-creating the same mistakes time and time again. So I thought I’d better stop. I was like I want to actually feel something. And I can tell you, when I stopped, I did feel.

我逃離它的方式是我?guī)е鴲酆突孟胩与x它。但我決定，在跑了這么久之后，我并沒有真正取得任何進展，我只是一次又一次地重復犯同樣的錯誤。所以我想我最好停下來。我覺得我想真正感受到一些東西。我可以告訴你，當我停下來的時候，我確實感覺到了。

I think I cried every single day for the first month on the phone to my Mum, which was awkward because I hadn’t really spoken to her for about a decade at that stage. And then I’d come home, and I’d come home to this empty, dirty house, with no guy and no baby and no possessions left in it. And then some days I’d wake up and the pain would be so bad that it felt like my heart was burning. And to resist the temptation at that stage to not reach out and take that little plaster of dating or love or some attention to fix how I was feeling was really hard.

我想我第一個月每天都在給媽媽打電話，這很尷尬，因為在那個階段我已經有十年沒和她說話了。然后我會回到家，回到這間空蕩蕩的臟房子里，里面沒有人，也沒有嬰兒，也沒有任何財產。然后有幾天我會醒來，疼痛會很嚴重，感覺我的心在燃燒。在那個階段，要抵制誘惑，不伸出手來，用約會、愛情或一些關注來彌補我的感覺，真的很難。

But gradually, you know what? A great thing happened, is that I came back into the room, I became aware again, my mind started to work, I reconnected with my family, the friends that were left were the good ones, and I stopped being so obsessed with going out every night of the week or whether someone had read my messages on WhatsApp.

但漸漸地，你知道嗎？發(fā)生了一件偉大的事情，我回到房間，我再次意識到，我的大腦開始工作，我與家人重新聯(lián)系，留下的朋友都是好朋友，我不再那么癡迷于一周中的每晚外出，或者有沒有人在WhatsApp上讀到我的消息。

And so that’s why, if you’re listening to what I’m saying, if you even see a shadow of yourself, a little shadow of your story in my ridiculous life, I would advise just taking a time to take that pause, and I’m going to tell you why, I’m actually going to sell it to you.

這就是為什么，如果你在聽我的話，如果你甚至在我荒謬的生活中看到了你自己的影子，你故事的一點點影子，我建議你花點時間暫停一下，我會告訴你為什么，我真的會把它賣給你。

So here I go, first things first: when you come home and your evening plans are make chicken soup and read a book, this no longer sounds bad, this sounds awesome. Although I’d like to point out my chicken soup literally still has the consistency of porridge, it’s so bad. Work in progress! Work in progress!

所以我來了，第一件事是：當你回家，晚上的計劃是做雞湯和看書時，這聽起來不再糟糕，這聽起來很棒。雖然我想指出，我的雞湯確實仍然有粥的稠度，但它太糟糕了。工作正在進行中！工作正在進行中！

Second thing, when you stop waiting for your prince or your princess to come crashing through the door and save you and solve your life, you start kind of living in the here and now more. And when you live in the here and now, you become more grounded, you become more confident, you become stronger.

第二件事，當你不再等待你的王子或公主破門而入，拯救你并解決你的生活時，你開始有點生活在這里，現(xiàn)在更多。當你生活在當下，你會變得更加接地氣，更加自信，更加堅強。

You also become more self-aware. And when you’re aware, you become more aware of the people around you. And you know what I saw, and what I see? I see people running away all the time, every single day of their lives. And then you see those situations, and you have the foresight to step back for a change rather than get involved. I also learned that life is pretty dramatic as it is, and it throws you plenty of challenges, so you don’t really need to create any more and go out there on a mission to have more drama, you can just leave it.

你也會變得更加自我意識。當你意識到的時候，你會更加意識到周圍的人。你知道我看到了什么嗎？我看到人們每天都在逃跑。然后，你看到了這些情況，你有遠見，可以退一步進行改變，而不是參與其中。我還了解到，生活本來就是很戲劇化的，它給你帶來了很多挑戰(zhàn)，所以你不需要再去創(chuàng)造，去完成一個任務，去創(chuàng)造更多的戲劇，你可以離開它。

I also finally realized, you know, well, those people say to you, they say, you need to be alone, or be by yourself, before you can meet someone else. I used to think those people were boring; now I think they’re right, they’re definitely, probably right.

我也終于意識到，你知道，那些人對你說，他們說，你需要獨處，或者獨自一人，然后才能遇見其他人。我過去認為那些人很無聊；現(xiàn)在我認為他們是對的，他們肯定，可能是對的。

Because I think, sometimes, actually, when we actually confront our aloneness, and we start to deal with our needs and the past and all that horrible pain that, you know, as people, we just collect and carry with us throughout our lives, when we deal with that, and we’re not running from it in endless people or endless dates, when we don’t have anything to prove anymore, when you don’t need a destructive, ridiculous on-off relationship in order to feel alive, in order to feel like you exist, when you can just be, I kind of actually think that’s real love. Thanks very much.

因為我想，有時候，實際上，當我們真正面對孤獨時，我們開始處理我們的需求、過去和所有可怕的痛苦，你知道，作為人，我們只是在生活中收集和攜帶這些痛苦，當我們處理這些痛苦時，我們不會在無盡的人或無盡的約會中逃避，當我們再也沒有什么可以證明的時候，當你不需要一段破壞性的、荒謬的斷斷續(xù)續(xù)的關系來感受生活，為了感覺你存在，當你可以只是存在的時候，我覺得這才是真正的愛。非常感謝。