已婚婦女希望所有的單身姑娘都知道這些有關愛情的事

I was in my senior year of college at the age of 21 when my friends started getting married. It kicked off a decade of what felt like every single woman I know, tying the knot, while I stayed single and bumbling around blind in the dark when it came to love and stuff like, you know, tricking a man into being my boyfriend for a span of months.

21歲的時候，我讀大四，身邊的朋友都陸陸續續結婚了。讓我開始覺得這十年來，我認識的每一個單身姑娘都結婚了，而我仍是單身一人，在黑暗中盲目的摸索着愛情，比如騙一個男人做我幾個月的男朋友。

The women I know who are married are the exact opposite of the "smug marrieds" that Helen Fielding describes in Bridget Jones's Diary. None of the married women I know encourage me to get myself a man in order to achieve happiness. In fact, most of them are really sensitive to the fact that we are in different places in our lives.

我認識的已婚女性與海倫·菲爾丁在《BJ單身日記》中描述的自鳴得意的已婚者完全相反。我認識的已婚女性都不鼓勵我找個男人獲得幸福。事實上，她們中的大多數人都對自己身處不同的處境而十分敏感。

These married friends of mine are far more likely to hit me up for details about the latest threesome I enjoyed than they are to volunteer sage advice from the lips of a married woman. What I'm saying here is that my married female friends are exactly the types of women who SHOULD be giving single women advice about love, s*x, and dating.

相比給我一些忠告，我的已婚朋友更願意讓我說一說我的"三人行"細節。我想說的就是：我的女性已婚朋友最適合給單身姑娘有關愛、性和約會的建議。

With that in mind (and also marriage on mind) I put a call out and asked the married women I know to share some advice for single women, like me, who might be looking in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways for love that lasts a lifetime.

想到這一點（還有婚姻），我就打電話給我認識的一些已婚女性，讓她們給像我一樣的單身姑娘一點建議，因爲我這樣的單身姑娘可能在尋找一生長久的愛情方面找錯了方向。

"Don't ever settle."

"永遠都不要將就。"

"Don't have an affair with a married person."

"不要與已婚人士發展婚外情。"

"Marriage is a choice, literally every day, because you will change and they will change. Marriage is a promise to *continue to choose* that person. Don't get married if you're the kind of person to think about breaking up after every disagreement or fight - marriage isn't for you."

"婚姻是個選擇，每一天都是，因爲你將會改變，他們也會改變。婚姻是'繼續選擇'那個人的承諾。如果每次爭吵或不和，你都想要分手，那千萬不要結婚--因爲你不適合。"

"Know thyself. And like thyself too."

"認識自己、喜歡自己。"

"My husband found that when he decided to get comfortable in his own skin, that's around the time I noticed him. When you stop trying to be different for other people and just be *you,* that's attractive."

"我的丈夫發現，當他決定安然面對自己處境的那一刻，我注意到了他。當你不再爲了別人而改變自己，只是做自己的時候，你是最迷人的。"