A reader in Florida, apparently bruised by some personal experience, writes in to complain, " If I steal a nickel’s worth of mer

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问题 A reader in Florida, apparently bruised by some personal experience, writes in to complain, " If I steal a nickel’s worth of merchandize, I am a thief and punished; but if I steal the love of another man’s wife, I am free. " This is a prevalent misconception in many people’s minds—that love, like merchandize , can be " stolen. " Numerous states, in fact, have enacted laws allowing damages for " alienation of affections. "
But love is not a commodity; the real thing cannot be bought, sold, traded or stolen. It is an act of the will, turning of the emotions, a change in the climate of the personality.
When a husband or wife is "stolen" by another person, that husband or wife was already ripe for the stealing, was already predisposed toward a new partner. The "love bandit" was only taking what was waiting to be taken, what wanted to be taken.
We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of children "belonging" to their parents. But nobody "belongs" to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself, and to God. Children are entrusted to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, the state has the right to remove them from their parents’ trusteeship.
Many of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken away from us by somebody more attractive and more appealing. At the time, we may have resented this intruder—but as we grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with. It was not the intruder that "caused" the break, but the lack of a real relationship.
On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a " third party. " This is, however, a psychological illusion. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext for dissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity.
Nothing is more futile and more self-defeating than the bitterness of spurned love, the vengeful feeling that someone else has "come between" oneself and a beloved. This is always a distortion of reality, for people are not the captive of victims of others—they are free agents, working out their own destinies for good or for ill.
But the rejected lover or mate cannot afford to believe that his beloved has freely turned away from him—and so he ascribes sinister or magical properties to the interloper. He calls him hypnotist or a thief or a home-breaker. In the majority of cases, however, when a home is broken, the breaking has begun long before any "third party" has appeared on the scene.

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答案 一位来自佛罗里达州的读者来信向我抱怨,他似乎有过什么受伤的经历。他写道:“如果我偷走了五分钱的商品,我就是个贼,要受到惩罚,但是如果我偷走了他人妻子的爱情,我却不必因此受到惩罚。”这便是许多人心目中对爱情的误解,即爱情,像商品一样,可以被“偷走”。实际上,许多州都颁布了法令,允许索取“情感转让”赔偿金。 但是爱情并非商品;真情实意是不可能被购买、出售、交易或者偷走的。爱情是将意愿付诸实践,是自我情绪的释放,是对个性的改变。 当一个丈夫或妻子被别人“偷走”时,他们被偷走的条件其实已经成熟,早已做好了接受新伴侣的准备。这位“爱匪”不过是取走了“等待被取走、盼望被取走”之物。 我们往往待人如物。我们甚至说孩子“属于”父母。但是谁也不“属于”谁。人都属于自己和上帝。父母是孩子的委托人,如果他们不善待子女,州政府就有权剥夺他们的托管权。 我们年轻时,大多都有过这样的经历:一个比我们漂亮、有魅力的人夺走了我们的恋人。当时,我们兴许怨恨这位不速之客抢走我们的爱人。但是随着岁月流逝,我们开始认识到,所谓的心上人,从来就不属于我们。并不是第三者的入侵“导致了”我们的决裂,而是我们之间本来就缺乏真正的感情。 从表面上看,许多婚姻似乎是因为有了“第三者”才破裂的。然而这只是一种心理上的幻觉。实际上,那些破裂的婚姻在第三者出现之前就已经失去了原本的意义,而第三者却往往成为导致婚姻破裂的替罪羔羊。 因失恋而痛苦,因别人“插足”于自己与心上人之间而图报复,是最于事无补的。这是对现实的曲解,因为谁都不是别人的俘虏或牺牲品,每个人的命运都掌握在自己手中,不论最终爱情的结局是圆满还是破裂,都是自己造成的。 但是,遭离弃的一方始终无法相信他的心上人会无缘无故地离他而去——因而归咎于插足者心术不正或迷人有招。被抛弃的一方往往把第三者称为催眠师、窃贼或破坏家庭的人。然而,大多数事例表明,最终破裂的家庭早在“第三者”出现之前就已经开始出现问题了。

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