I published this article in the New York Times Modern Love column in January of this year. "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This." And the article is about a psychological study designed to create romantic love in the laboratory, and my own experience trying the study myself one night last summer.
Objavila sam članak u kolumni o modernoj ljubavi NY Timesa u siječnju ove godine. "Da se zaljubite u bilo koga, učinite ovo." U članku se radi o psihološkom eksperimentu osmišljenom radi stvaranja romantične ljubavi u laboratoriju i o vlastitom iskustvu u kojem sam pokušala ispitati sebe jedne večeri tijekom prošlog ljeta.
So the procedure is fairly simple: two strangers take turns asking each other 36 increasingly personal questions and then they stare into each other's eyes without speaking for four minutes.
Postupak je dosta jednostavan: dva stranca naizmjence si postavljaju 36 pitanja koja postaju sve osobnija, a zatim gledaju jedno drugome u oči četiri minute - u tišini.
So here are a couple of sample questions.
Ovo su neka od pitanja.
Number 12: If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Pitanje br.12: Da se sutra možeš probuditi s jednom novom kvalitetom ili sposobnosti, što bi izabrao/la?
Number 28: When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
Pitanje br. 28: Kad si zadnji put plakao/la pred drugom osobom? Ili sam/a?
As you can see, they really do get more personal as they go along.
Kao što možete vidjeti, što dalje idemo, pitanja zaista postaju sve osobnija.
Number 30, I really like this one: Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things you might not say to someone you just met.
Pitanje br. 30, ovo mi je baš super: Recite svom partneru što volite na njemu; budite krajnje iskreni ovaj put, recite nešto što možda ne biste rekli nekome koga ste tek upoznali.
So when I first came across this study a few years earlier, one detail really stuck out to me, and that was the rumor that two of the participants had gotten married six months later, and they'd invited the entire lab to the ceremony. So I was of course very skeptical about this process of just manufacturing romantic love, but of course I was intrigued. And when I got the chance to try this study myself, with someone I knew but not particularly well, I wasn't expecting to fall in love. But then we did, and --
Kad sam prije nekoliko godina prvi put naišla na ovaj eskperiment, jedan mi je detalj privukao pozornost -- glasina da se dvoje sudionika u eksperimentu vjenčalo šest mjeseci kasnije i da su pozvali cijeli laboratorij na svadbu. Naravno, bila sam jako skeptična po pitanju procesa stvaranja romantične ljubavi, ali me, naravno, i zaintrigirao. Kad sam dobila priliku i sama isprobati taj eksperiment s nekim koga nisam pretjerano dobro poznavala, nisam očekivala da ću se zaljubiti, ali zaljubili smo se i --
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I thought it made a good story, so I sent it to the Modern Love column a few months later.
-- i to mi se učinilo kao dobra priča, pa sam je poslala u kolumnu moderne ljubavi nekoliko mjeseci kasnije.
Now, this was published in January, and now it is August, so I'm guessing that some of you are probably wondering, are we still together? And the reason I think you might be wondering this is because I have been asked this question again and again and again for the past seven months. And this question is really what I want to talk about today. But let's come back to it.
Članak je objavljen u siječnju, a sada je kolovoz, pa se neki od vas vjerojatno pitaju jesmo li još uvijek zajedno. A to se vjerojatno pitate zato što mi ovo pitanje neprestano ponavljaju tijekom zadnjih sedam mjeseci. To je pitanje ono o čemu danas želim govoriti. No, vratit ćemo se na njega.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So the week before the article came out, I was very nervous. I had been working on a book about love stories for the past few years, so I had gotten used to writing about my own experiences with romantic love on my blog. But a blog post might get a couple hundred views at the most, and those were usually just my Facebook friends, and I figured my article in the New York Times would probably get a few thousand views. And that felt like a lot of attention on a relatively new relationship. But as it turned out, I had no idea.
Tjedan dana prije objave članka bila sam jako nervozna. Radim na knjizi ljubavnih priča zadnjih nekoliko godina, pa sam se naviknula pisati o vlastitim iskustvima s romantičnom ljubavi na blogu. No, tekst na blogu može vidjeti najviše par stotina ljudi, i to su uglavnom moji prijatelji s Facebooka, a pretpostavila sam da će moj članak u New York Timesu vidjeti nekoliko tisuća ljudi. To mi se činilo kao prevelika pozornost za jednu relativno svježu vezu, no ispostavilo se da nisam imala pojma koliko.
So the article was published online on a Friday evening, and by Saturday, this had happened to the traffic on my blog. And by Sunday, both the Today Show and Good Morning America had called. Within a month, the article would receive over 8 million views, and I was, to say the least, underprepared for this sort of attention. It's one thing to work up the confidence to write honestly about your experiences with love, but it is another thing to discover that your love life has made international news --
Članak je objavljen na internetu u petak navečer, a do subote ovo se dogodilo posjećenosti mog bloga. Do nedjelje su me zvali i Today Show i Good Morning, America. Tijekom mjesec dana članak je pregledan preko 8 milijuna puta, a ja sam bila, najblaže rečeno, nedovoljno pripremljena za toliku pozornost. Jedna je stvar skupiti hrabrosti da iskreno pišeš o svojim ljubavnim iskustvima, ali sasvim je druga stvar otkriti da je tvoj ljubavni život postao svjetska vijest --
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
and to realize that people across the world are genuinely invested in the status of your new relationship.
i shvatiti da ljude diljem svijeta uistinu zanima u kakvom je stanju vaša nova veza.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And when people called or emailed, which they did every day for weeks, they always asked the same question first: are you guys still together? In fact, as I was preparing this talk, I did a quick search of my email inbox for the phrase "Are you still together?" and several messages popped up immediately. They were from students and journalists and friendly strangers like this one. I did radio interviews and they asked. I even gave a talk, and one woman shouted up to the stage, "Hey Mandy, where's your boyfriend?" And I promptly turned bright red.
Kad sam primala pozive i mejlove, što se događalo svakodnevno, tjednima, svi su imali isto prvo pitanje: jeste li još uvijek zajedno? Zapravo, dok sam pripremala ovaj govor, brzinski sam pretražila ulaznu poštu u potrazi za frazom: "Jeste li još uvijek zajedno?" i odmah mi je iskočilo nekoliko poruka. Poruke su bile od studenata i novinara i ljubaznih stranaca poput ovoga. I na intervjuu za radio postavili su mi to pitanje. Čak sam držala i jedan govor, a žena iz publike mi je doviknula: "Hej, Mandy, gdje ti je dečko?" Pocrvenjela sam iste sekunde.
I understand that this is part of the deal. If you write about your relationship in an international newspaper, you should expect people to feel comfortable asking about it. But I just wasn't prepared for the scope of the response. The 36 questions seem to have taken on a life of their own. In fact, the New York Times published a follow-up article for Valentine's Day, which featured readers' experiences of trying the study themselves, with varying degrees of success.
Znam da sam se na to obvezala. Ako pišeš o svojoj vezi u svjetskim novinama, moraš očekivati da će te ljudi pitati o njoj bez zadrške. No, nisam bila spremna na opseg odgovora. Tih 36 pitanja počelo je voditi vlastiti život. Štoviše, New York Times objavio je sljedeći članak uoči Valentinova koji se bavio iskustvima čitatelja koji su se i sami okušali u eksperimentu i koji su polučili različite stupnjeve uspjeha.
So my first impulse in the face of all of this attention was to become very protective of my own relationship. I said no to every request for the two of us to do a media appearance together. I turned down TV interviews, and I said no to every request for photos of the two us. I think I was afraid that we would become inadvertent icons for the process of falling in love, a position I did not at all feel qualified for.
Moja prva reakcija na svu tu pozornost bila je postati izrazito zaštitnički nastrojena prema vlastitoj vezi. Odbila sam svaki poziv za naše zajedničko pojavljivanje u medijima. Odbijala sam TV-intervjue, molbe za našim zajedničkim slikama. Mislim da sam se bojala da ćemo postati slučajne ikone procesa zaljubljivanja, a to je položaj kojem se nisam smatrala doraslom.
And I get it: people didn't just want to know if the study worked, they wanted to know if it really worked: that is, if it was capable of producing love that would last, not just a fling, but real love, sustainable love.
Razumijem to: ljudi nisu samo htjeli znati funkcionira li eksperiment, htjeli su znati funkcionira li on zaista, tj. može li stvoriti ljubav koja će trajati, ne nešto prolazno, već pravu, održivu ljubav.
But this was a question I didn't feel capable of answering. My own relationship was only a few months old, and I felt like people were asking the wrong question in the first place. What would knowing whether or not we were still together really tell them? If the answer was no, would it make the experience of doing these 36 questions any less worthwhile? Dr. Arthur Aron first wrote about these questions in this study here in 1997, and here, the researcher's goal was not to produce romantic love. Instead, they wanted to foster interpersonal closeness among college students, by using what Aron called "sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure." Sounds romantic, doesn't it? But the study did work. The participants did feel closer after doing it, and several subsequent studies have also used Aron's fast friends protocol as a way to quickly create trust and intimacy between strangers. They've used it between members of the police and members of community, and they've used it between people of opposing political ideologies. The original version of the story, the one that I tried last summer, that pairs the personal questions with four minutes of eye contact, was referenced in this article, but unfortunately it was never published.
Nisam se osjećala sposobnom odgovarati na to pitanje. Moja je veza trajala tek nekoliko mjeseci, a imala sam osjećaj da ljudi zapravo postavljaju krivo pitanje. Što bi im rekla činjenica jesmo li još uvijek zajedno ili ne? Ako je odgovor ne, znači li to da je iskustvo prolaženja kroz tih 36 pitanja išta manje vrijedno truda? Dr. Arthur Aron prvi je pisao o tim pitanjima u ovoj studiji 1997. godine, a ovdje cilj istraživača nije bio stvoriti romantičnu ljubav, već su htjeli poticati na međusobnu bliskost među studentima koristeći nešto što je Aron zvao "održivo, rastuće, recipročno, personalizirano samootkrivanje." Zvuči romantično, zar ne? Ali eksperiment je djelovao. Sudionici su nakon njega osjećali veću bliskost i kasnije je nekoliko eksperimenata koristilo njegov protokol brzinskog sprijateljavanja radi brzinskog stvaranja povjerenja i intimnosti između stranaca. Koristili su ga među članovima policije i članovima zajednice, čak i između ljudi oprečnih političkih ideologija. Originalna verzija priče, ona koju sam probala prošlog ljeta, koja kombinira osobna pitanja s četverominutnim kontaktom očima spomenuta je u ovom članku, no nažalost, nikad nije objavljena.
So a few months ago, I was giving a talk at a small liberal arts college, and a student came up to me afterwards and he said, kind of shyly, "So, I tried your study, and it didn't work." He seemed a little mystified by this. "You mean, you didn't fall in love with the person you did it with?" I asked.
Prije nekoliko mjeseci držala sam govor na malenom fakultetu humanističkih znanosti i kasnije mi je prišao student i pomalo sramežljivo rekao: "Isprobao sam vaš eksperiment, ali nije djelovao." Djelovao je kao da ga je to malo zbunilo. "Misliš, nisi se zaljubio u osobu s kojom si ga isprobao?" upitah.
"Well..." He paused. "I think she just wants to be friends."
"Pa..." zastao je. "Mislim da želi da budemo samo prijatelji."
"But did you become better friends?" I asked. "Did you feel like you got to really know each other after doing the study?" He nodded.
"Ali jeste li postali bolji prijatelji?" upitah. "Misliš li da ste se zbilja upoznali nakon što ste isprobali eksperiment?" Kimao je glavom.
"So, then it worked," I said.
"Onda je djelovalo", rekoh.
I don't think this is the answer he was looking for. In fact, I don't think this is the answer that any of us are looking for when it comes to love.
Mislim da se nije nadao takvom odgovoru. Zapravo, mislim da to nije odgovor kojemu se itko od nas nada kada govorimo o ljubavi.
I first came across this study when I was 29 and I was going through a really difficult breakup. I had been in the relationship since I was 20, which was basically my entire adult life, and he was my first real love, and I had no idea how or if I could make a life without him. So I turned to science. I researched everything I could find about the science of romantic love, and I think I was hoping that it might somehow inoculate me from heartache. I don't know if I realized this at the time -- I thought I was just doing research for this book I was writing -- but it seems really obvious in retrospect. I hoped that if I armed myself with the knowledge of romantic love, I might never have to feel as terrible and lonely as I did then. And all this knowledge has been useful in some ways. I am more patient with love. I am more relaxed. I am more confident about asking for what I want. But I can also see myself more clearly, and I can see that what I want is sometimes more than can reasonably be asked for. What I want from love is a guarantee, not just that I am loved today and that I will be loved tomorrow, but that I will continue to be loved by the person I love indefinitely. Maybe it's this possibility of a guarantee that people were really asking about when they wanted to know if we were still together.
Na taj sam eksperiment prvi put naišla kada mi je bilo 29 godina dok sam pokušavala preboljeti težak prekid. Bila sam u toj vezi od 20. godine, a to je bio gotovo cijeli moj odrasli dio života, i bio je moja prva prava ljubav i nisam imala pojma kako ću ili hoću li uopće moći nastaviti živjeti bez njega, pa sam se okrenula znanosti. Istražila sam sve što sam uspjela pronaći o znanosti romantične ljubavi i mislim da sam se nadala da će me to izliječiti od slomljenog srca. Ne znam jesam li to tada shvaćala -- mislila sam da sam samo istraživala za knjigu na kojoj sam radila -- ali s vremenske distance čini se zaista očito. Nadala sam se da, ako se naoružam znanjem o romantičnoj ljubavi, nikad se više neću morati osjećati tako užasno i usamljeno kao tada. Sve je to znanje u neku ruku i bilo korisno. Sada sam strpljivija s ljubavi. Sada sam opuštenija. Sada imam više hrabrosti tražiti ono što želim, ali i vidim se jasnije i vidim da je ono što ja želim ponekad više nego što je razumno tražiti. Ja od ljubavi želim jamstvo, ne želim samo biti voljena danas i voljena sutra, već da će me ta osoba voljeti do beskonačnosti. Možda je ova mogućnost jamstva zapravo zanimala ljude kad su pitali jesmo li još uvijek zajedno.
So the story that the media told about the 36 questions was that there might be a shortcut to falling in love. There might be a way to somehow mitigate some of the risk involved, and this is a very appealing story, because falling in love feels amazing, but it's also terrifying. The moment you admit to loving someone, you admit to having a lot to lose, and it's true that these questions do provide a mechanism for getting to know someone quickly, which is also a mechanism for being known, and I think this is the thing that most of us really want from love: to be known, to be seen, to be understood. But I think when it comes to love, we are too willing to accept the short version of the story. The version of the story that asks, "Are you still together?" and is content with a yes or no answer.
Priča koju su mediji ispričali o 36 pitanja temeljila se na tome da postoji prečac do zaljubljivanja, da postoji način da ublažimo neke od rizika, a to je jako primamljiva priča jer je zaljubljivanje čarobno, ali i zastrašujuće. Kada priznate da nekoga volite, priznajete da imate puno toga za izgubiti, a istina je da ova pitanja pružaju određeni mehanizam za upoznavanje nekoga na brzinu, što je također mehanizam za poznavanje, a mislim da je to ono što većina nas traži od ljubavi: da nas netko poznaje, da nas vidi, da nas razumije. Kad se radi o ljubavi, prečesto smo voljni prihvatiti kratke verzije priče. Verziju priče koja pita: "Jeste li još uvijek zajedno?" i koja je zadovoljna potvrdnim ili niječnim odgovorom.
So rather than that question, I would propose we ask some more difficult questions, questions like: How do you decide who deserves your love and who does not? How do you stay in love when things get difficult, and how do you know when to just cut and run? How do you live with the doubt that inevitably creeps into every relationship, or even harder, how do you live with your partner's doubt? I don't necessarily know the answers to these questions, but I think they're an important start at having a more thoughtful conversation about what it means to love someone.
Umjesto tog pitanja, predlažem da postavimo neka teža pitanja, poput: Kako odlučujete tko zaslužuje vašu ljubav, a tko ne? Kako ostajete zaljubljeni kad se stvari zakompliciraju, a kako znate kad je vrijeme da se pokupite i odete? Kako živite sa sumnjom koja se neizbježno uvlači u svaku vezu, ili još teže, kako živite s partnerovom sumnjom? Ne znam nužno odgovore na ta pitanja, ali mislim da su važan uvod u dublji razgovor o tome što znači voljeti nekoga.
So, if you want it, the short version of the story of my relationship is this: a year ago, an acquaintance and I did a study designed to create romantic love, and we fell in love, and we are still together, and I am so glad.
Pa, ako je već želite, kratka verzija priče o mojoj vezi glasi ovako: prije godinu dana poznanik i ja proveli smo ekspriment osmišljen za stvaranje romantične ljubavi i zaljubili smo se i još smo uvijek zajedno i presretna sam.
But falling in love is not the same thing as staying in love. Falling in love is the easy part. So at the end of my article, I wrote, "Love didn't happen to us. We're in love because we each made the choice to be." And I cringe a little when I read that now, not because it isn't true, but because at the time, I really hadn't considered everything that was contained in that choice. I didn't consider how many times we would each have to make that choice, and how many times I will continue to have to make that choice without knowing whether or not he will always choose me. I want it to be enough to have asked and answered 36 questions, and to have chosen to love someone so generous and kind and fun and to have broadcast that choice in the biggest newspaper in America. But what I have done instead is turn my relationship into the kind of myth I don't quite believe in. And what I want, what perhaps I will spend my life wanting, is for that myth to be true.
Ali zaljubljivanje nije isto što i ljubav. Lako je zaljubiti se. Svoj sam članak završila riječima: "Nama se ljubav nije dogodila. Zaljubljeni smo jer smo se oboje na to odlučili." Sada kada to čitam, malo se naježim - ne zato što to nije istina, nego zato što tada nisam shvaćala sve što je uključeno u taj izbor. Nisam shvaćala koliko ćemo puta oboje morati donositi tu odluku i koliko ću puta morati ponovno donositi tu odluku ne znajući hoće li me on svaki put izabrati. Voljela bih da je bilo dovoljno postaviti i odgovoriti na 36 pitanja i odlučiti voljeti nekoga tako velikodušnog, dragog i zabavnog i objaviti taj izbor u najvećim američkim novinama. Umjesto toga pretvorila sam svoju vezu u svojevrstan mit u koji baš i ne vjerujem. Ono što ja želim, ono što ću možda željeti cijeli svoj život, jest da se taj mit ostvari.
I want the happy ending implied by the title to my article, which is, incidentally, the only part of the article that I didn't actually write.
Želim da se sretan završetak podrazumijeva u nazivu mog članka koji je, usput budi rečeno, jedini dio članka koji nisam ja napisala.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But what I have instead is the chance to make the choice to love someone, and the hope that he will choose to love me back, and it is terrifying, but that's the deal with love.
Umjesto toga imam priliku donijeti odluku voljeti nekoga i nadati se da će i on odlučiti voljeti mene, a to je zastrašujuće, ali takva je ljubav.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.