Appreciation

I’ve had a fantastic marriage for over 15 years now, but I’m not going to sugar coat the facts that marriage involves life changing sacrifices for men that no woman will ever fully understand or appreciate. I’m not anti-marriage. I’m anti- uninformed, pollyanna, shoulda’-saw-it-coming, ONEitis fueled, shame induced, bound for bankruptcy, scarred my children for life, marriage.

我拥有一段长达 15 年的美妙婚姻，但我不会粉饰事实，即婚姻对男性意味着改变生活的牺牲，这是女性永远无法完全理解或感激的。我并不反对婚姻本身。我反对的是那种缺乏了解、盲目乐观、本应预见、因单相思而加剧、羞愧驱使、注定破产、给孩子留下终身创伤的婚姻。

A woman loves you when she takes you for granted. That sounds odd I know, but it’s when she’s not fawning all over you and you’re in your 10th year of marriage and it’s just part of everyday conversation. “OK, love you, bye” is at the end of every phone call. You’re not thinking about it, because you don’t need to. If you’re asking the question “how do you know when she loves you?” You’re not in it. It’s only when that familiarity and regular comfort is removed that she can appreciate it. Once the commonness of love is established women will only rarely express it overtly – in fact the expression will be what’s expected of you – so you have to look for it covertly.

当一个女人对你习以为常时，她就是爱你的。我知道这听起来有些奇怪，但正是在她不再对你百般讨好，你们结婚十年，爱情已成为日常对话的一部分时。每次电话结束时，她都会说“好的，爱你，再见”。你不会去多想，因为你不需要。如果你还在问“如何知道她爱你？”那说明你还未真正感受到。只有当那份熟悉与日常的舒适感消失时，她才会意识到它的珍贵。一旦爱情的常态确立，女性很少会直接表达，实际上，表达爱意已成为对你的期待——所以你得从细微之处去寻找。

All the flowery crap you read in your Hallmark card on Valentines Day or your Anniversary was written by someone else. And while it’s nice to have these gestures of appreciation occasionally, it’s more important to see the forest for the trees. It’s not individual acts of affection or appreciation so much as it is the whole of what you both do on a regular day-to-day basis. It’s what you and she are all about after your three hundredth bowl of oatmeal together on a Saturday morning and your kids are fighting for control of the TV remote while you’re sitting across the breakfast table discussing which bills need to be paid first this month and how bad the lawn needs mowing that defines love and marriage. Yes, precisely the things you’ll never think about when you’re sarging her or considering moving her up in your plate spinning line up.

情人节或周年纪念日，你在贺卡上读到的那些花哨废话，都是别人写的。虽然偶尔收到这些表达感激之情的举动很美好，但更重要的是见树又见林。爱情和婚姻的真谛，并非单个的示爱或感激之举，而是你们日常每一天所做的一切。它体现在某个周六早晨，你们共进第三百碗燕麦粥时，孩子们争夺电视遥控器的吵闹声中；体现在早餐桌对面，你们讨论本月哪些账单需优先支付，以及草坪修剪得多么糟糕的时刻。没错，正是这些细节，当你在追求她，或考虑将她提升为你生活中众多事务的优先级时，你绝不会去思考的那些平凡瞬间，定义了爱情与婚姻的真谛。

This is what marriage is; not necessarily boring per se (although it certainly can be more often than not), but ordinary. It’s normal, common, or becomes so. Think about how many people who’ve lived, married and died on planet earth who did exactly the same things as you. That’s the real test of marriage that no one who hasn’t experienced it can really relate in any meaningful sense. The happy, Oprah-ized idea is that you have to “keep it fresh”, but even after a night of freshening it up and the Wal-Mart lingerie is in the clothes hamper, and you pick up the kids from spending the night at her sisters house the morning after, you go back to the day-to-day marriage you’ve always had. This is the shit no one tells you about when you’re being sold on the Marriage Goal – the “now what?” feeling that comes directly after you’ve found the ONE you’ve been looking for, or “did the right thing” with and married because she suddenly rediscovered religion AFTER you’d had marathon sex with her for 3 months straight and wouldn’t abort the pregnancy (and no, that didn’t happen to me).

这就是婚姻的本质；未必本身就无聊（尽管它确实常常如此），但平凡无奇。它普通、常见，或变得如此。想想地球上有多少人曾经生活、结婚并逝去，他们所做的与你如出一辙。这是婚姻真正的考验，未经此经历的人无法在任何有意义的层面上真正理解。那种快乐、被奥普拉化的观念认为，你必须“保持新鲜感”，但即便一夜激情过后，沃尔玛的性感内衣已躺在洗衣篮中，第二天早晨你从她姐姐家接回孩子，你又回到了一如既往的日常婚姻生活。这就是在你被推销婚姻目标时，无人告知你的那些事——在你找到一直在寻觅的那个人，或“做了正确的事”并与她结婚后，那种“现在怎么办？”的感觉随即而来，因为她在你与她连续三个月马拉松式性爱后突然重拾信仰，且不愿堕胎（不，那不是发生在我身上的事）。

Appreciation 赏识

I think what most men uniquely deceive themselves of is that they will ultimately be appreciated by women for their sacrifices. Learn this now, you wont. You can’t be because women fundamentally lack the ability to fully realize, much less appreciate the sacrifices a man makes to facilitate her reality. Even the most enlightened, appreciative woman you know still operates in a feminne-centric reality. Men making the personal sacrifices necessary to honor, respect and love her are commonplace. You’re supposed to do those things. You sacrificed your ambitions and potential to provide her with a better life? You were supposed to. You resisted temptation and didn’t cheat on your wife with the hot secretary who was DTF and ready to go? You were supposed to. Your responsibilities to maintaining a marriage, a home, your family, etc. are common – they’re expected. They are only appreciated in their absence.

我认为大多数男性独特地欺骗自己的是，他们最终会因为自己的牺牲而受到女性的赞赏。现在就明白这一点，你不会。你无法做到，因为女性从根本上缺乏充分认识，更不用说欣赏一个男人为了她的现实所做出的牺牲。即使是你所知道的最开明、最感激的女性，仍然在一个以女性为中心的现实中运作。男性为了尊重、爱护她而做出必要的个人牺牲是司空见惯的。你应该做这些事。你牺牲了自己的抱负和潜力，为她提供更好的生活？那是你应该做的。你抵制诱惑，没有和那位愿意且准备好的火辣秘书出轨？那也是你应该做的。维护婚姻、家庭、家园等责任是常见的——它们是被期待的。只有在它们缺席时才会被感激。

This is the totality of the feminine-centric reality. Men only exist to facilitate the feminine reality, and any man who disputes this (or even analyzes its aspects) is therefore not a ‘man’. It just IS. Even the most self-serving, maverick among men is still beholden to the feminine imperative in that he’s only defined as a rebel because he doesn’t comply with the common practices of ‘men’ in a female defined reality. And ironically it’s just this maverick who is appreciated by the feminine above those men who would comply with it (or even promote it) as a matter of course.

这就是女性中心现实的全部。男性仅作为促进女性现实的工具而存在，任何质疑这一点（甚至分析其方面）的男性因此便不再是“男人”。它就是这样。即便是最自私、最特立独行的男性，也仍受制于女性主导的规则，因为他之所以被定义为叛逆者，正是因为他不遵循女性定义现实中“男性”的常规做法。讽刺的是，正是这种特立独行者，在女性眼中超越了那些顺从（甚至推崇）这一现实的男性，从而得到她们的赞赏。

The concept of appreciation really dovetails into a lot of other aspects of intergender relations.

欣赏的概念确实与异性关系中的许多其他方面紧密契合。

For instance in The Mature Man thread; assume for a moment that a 40 y.o. Man with the options to pursue younger women “does the right thing” and seeks out a relationship with a woman his own age. Would he be appreciated for essentially giving an aged woman a new lease on life? Or would he be viewed as doing what is to be expected of him?

例如，在《成熟男人》主题帖中；假设一个 40 岁的男人在可以选择追求年轻女性时，“做了正确的事”，选择与同龄女性建立关系。他是否会因为实质上给予一位年长女性新的生活希望而受到赞赏？还是会被视为仅仅做了人们预期他会做的事情？

Would a man who marries a single mother and helps with the parental investment of another man’s child be appreciated more for having done so? Would it even factor into a woman’s estimation of his character, or would he simply doing what’s expected of a man? The question of appreciation is a real quandary for the White Knight.

一个娶了单身母亲并协助抚养另一个男人孩子的男人，是否会因此受到更多赞赏？这会不会影响女性对他品性的评价，还是他只是在履行一个男人的期望？对于“白骑士”而言，这个问题确实令人困惑。

Relationships aren’t work.

关系并非工作。

Familiarity does in fact breed contempt,..and mediocrity, and routine, and banality, and commonness,.. which is why so many marriages end up in the shit can. Men and women give up on themselves.

熟悉确实会滋生轻蔑，以及平庸、例行公事、陈腐和普通，这就是为什么许多婚姻最终走向破裂。男男女女放弃了自己。

The “Relationships are work” meme is a Social Convention. How often do you hear men say these words? This has filtered into popular consciousness even with men now. For the LTR men who subscribe to this I’d also speculate that many of them are in relationships where THEY are “doing the work” for the women who are giving them the ‘grade’ so to speak. And of the single men who subscribe to this mythology, each had to be conditioned to believe this is the case in LTRs by women. This is rooted in the mistaken belief that men’s actions and sacrifices can ever be appreciated by women.

“关系即工作”的梗是一种社会规范。你有多常听到男性说这些话？即便在男性中，这一观念也已深入人心。对于那些认同这一点的长期关系（LTR）中的男性，我猜测其中许多人正处在为女性“付出努力”的关系中，而这些女性则在给予他们所谓的“评分”。至于那些单身的、信奉这一神话的男性，他们每个人都被女性所塑造，相信在长期关系中必须如此付出。这一切都基于一个错误的信念：男性所做的行动和牺牲终将得到女性的赏识。

What would the best method be to get a man to live up to the idealizations a woman has as her perfect mate (however twisted and convoluted this may have been defined for her)? Women love the ‘fixer upper’. “He’d be such a great guy if only he would, _____” or she’ll say “I’m working on him.” It’s when the conditioning goes from “I’m working on him” to “We’re working on our relationship” that he has now internalized her frame control. This is where the mythology of Relationships-as-Work is derived from. How often is it the woman who needs the ‘work’ in the relationship? And if it is her, the terminology of the relationship and the associations change. ‘Work’ implies a man better conforming his identity to her ideal relationship, to better fit the feminine-centric reality. And what better way to initiate this than to psychologically condition him to want to embody her ideal – even before he’s ever met a woman or been involved in a relationship?

要让一个男人达到女人心目中完美伴侣的理想形象（无论这个形象在她心中是如何扭曲和复杂地定义的），最佳方法是什么？女性喜欢“改造潜力股”。她会说：“如果他能做到_____，他就会是个很棒的人。”或者“我正在改造他。”当这种改造从“我正在改造他”转变为“我们在努力改善我们的关系”时，他就已经内化了她的框架控制。这就是“关系即工作”这一神话的起源。在关系中，有多少次是女性需要“工作”呢？如果是她，关系的术语和关联就会发生变化。“工作”意味着男性需要更好地将自己的身份调整为符合她理想中的关系，以更好地适应以女性为中心的现实。而要启动这一过程，最好的方法莫过于在心理上训练他，让他渴望成为她理想中的样子——甚至在遇见任何女性或涉入任何关系之前。