MARRIED TO DISTRACTION(ISBN=) 英文原版

　　Are you more distant from your spouse than you’d like to be?
Do you or your spouse waste time mindlessly viewing email or
surfing the Web? Welcome to the club! Modern marriage is busy,
distracted, and overloaded to extremes, with ever-increasing lists
of things to do, superficial electronic connections, and
interrupted moments. The good news is that there are
straightforward and effective ways to restore communication and
connection, resurrect happiness and romance, and strengthen—even
save—a marriage.
　　· Observe the natural sequence of sustaining love: attention,
time, connection, and play.
　　· Develop and nurture empathy—the essential building block to
healthy communication.
　　· Carve out small moments of uninterrupted attention for each
other.
　　· Identify the pressures that our crazybusy lifestyles put on
love and marriage, and fight back with tenderness and
appreciation.
　　Complete with *s, tips, communication techniques, and a
detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well as inspiring real-life
stories, Married to Distraction will set couples on a course of
understanding, healing, and love.

　　Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard
Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the
Hallowell Centers for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury,
Massachusetts, and New York City. He is the co-author of
Delivered from Distraction and Driven to Distraction
as well as the author of CrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult
Happiness, and Worry, among other titles.
　　Sue George Hallowell, LICSW, has been a practicing couples’
therapist for more than twenty-five years. The Hallowells are
the parents of three teenage children. They live in Arlington,
Massachusetts.
　　From the Hardcover edition.

　　“I urge all people who yearn for more in their marriages to
read this book—in particular, those hungry to move beyond conflict
and condemnation to connection and understanding.”—Judith Warner,
author of Perfect Madness　　
　　“Wise and compassionate . . . This is a unique, engaging, and
profoundly helpful book. It can save a marriage or simply help
people in happy marriages get closer and feel more fulfilled.”—Suzy
Welch, author of 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea
　　“This timely book could save your marriage.” —Maggie Jackson,
author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark
Age
　　“Clear-sighted wisdom . . . Those in search of practical,
concrete advice for creating and saving marriages will find what
they need.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

　　Chapter One
　　The Anatomy of Modern Love
　　Praised be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for
objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love–but
praise! praise! praise! –WALT WHITMAN
　　You’ve picked up this book for a reason. Your concern is
love.
　　You’ve likely hit a snag, maybe a small one, maybe large. Human
intimacy is so complex, so coiled and convoluted, that it’s hard
not to hit a snag. Most of us hit snags all the time in our
dealings with others, especially those we are closest to. So,
ifyou’ve hit a snag, just hang on. Keep up the effort. Anyone who
tells you it’s easy to stay together over the long haul has never
done it. If you’re still taking it seriously and working at it,
your efforts will pay off as long as you have a plan that
makessense. It’s not enough just to take it seriously and work at
it. Some people work at it their whole lives long and get nowhere.
To help your efforts to keep your love alive and your marriage
intact, we offer a plan based on what we know works best.
　　When a couple is in a good place, each partner feels secure and
fulfilled. To feel secure and fulfilled in a relationship, both
people need to feel:
　　* that the other person thinks highly of them. * that the other
person cares deeply for them. *that the other person thinks they
are proficient at something. Beyond that, for love to become what
we all want it to become, a smile should cross your face when you
think of your mate. You ought to think of him or her as someone you
have fun with, someone you look forward to seeing, someone who for
an undefinablereason makes life feel special. You want to feel that
he or she casts a glow into your life that makes you feel good, no
matter what else might be going on.
　　When all goes right, a natural sequence of five steps leads to
such happiness in love. Each step should usher in the next, but, as
we will later describe, modern life tends to snag each one. The
steps are:
　　1. Attention 2. Time 3. Empathy 4. Connection 5. Play
　　Love begins in attention. Love begins when you notice another
person. Love starts with a catching of your eye. Be it on some
enchanted evening across a crowded room, or via an ad on Match.com,
some signal–somehow–draws your attention to one person andnot to
another. No one has ever figured out exactly why and how this
happens when and where it does–but it does, and has done so since
the dawn of time.
　　In today’s world, distractions interrupt attention all the time.
The basic prerequisite of love–attention–can seem impossible to
give or get.
　　Once you have each other’s attention–no small feat–the next
step toward love is to sustain that attention over time. Without
sustained attention, love cannot grow. On the other hand, too much
attention can snuff it out. While some people purport to knowthe
right proportions in advance, each love is different, which is why
there is no one recipe and why “prescriptions for finding love”
offered by “experts” so often fail.
　　Giving and receiving attention becomes a kind of dance as love
grows. Now you see me, now you don’t. Playing hard to get. Don’t be
too easy. If you want me, you’ll have to pursue me. At this stage,
attention is often focused on the other in absentia.
Resistingpicking up the phone to make the call. Deliberately
avoiding the other person while thinking about him or her day and
night. Preoccupied by the other person, but keeping a certain
distance. This is the dance of developing love.
　　Once again, our age of distraction can disrupt the dance. If you
don’t have time to ponder and wonder, if you don’t have time to
approach and avoid and put your heart into it, then love will
falter here, not because you are a mismatch but because you havenot
created sufficient focus for love to grow.
　　Attention given and received in proper measure over time, a
recipe that varies from couple to couple, leads to a deeper
interest in and a greater knowledge of the other person, which
constitutes understanding and empathy.
　　Mutual empathy creates a connection. It is impossible to
overestimate the power of connection at its strongest. It drives
life. But it cannot develop if people are unable to sustain
attention over time. Such a mundane obstacle–distraction–ruins
millionsof potentially intimate relationships in our modern
age.
　　But if you are able to create genuine connection, you’ve got it
made. This is the great reward of love. In connection, you feel
safe enough to become vulnerable. You feel safe enough to let go
and to play. Play is the main action of true love. By playwe mean
any activity in which your imagination comes alive.
　　Play often begets its cousin, celebration. New research shows
that more important than being there for your partner when times
are tough is being there for your partner when times are good. The
study found that being excited and happy for your partnerwhen he or
she brings home good news was a stronger predictor of the strength
of the relationship than being stalwart when bad news hits.
　　Being able to play and to celebrate–being able to have fun
together–are far more important than most people believe. They are
a cornerstone of all great relationships.
　　As we have mentioned and will continue to show, the conditions of
modern life threaten all five of the steps we’ve named, which in
turn threatens the vibrancy and power of your love–not because you
are mismatched, not because you are impaired people,but simply
because today’s world sets unique traps that can derail even the
best relationships.
　　Of course, we don’t know exactly how the help you’ll find here
will help you because we don’t know the particulars of your
situation. You may be in great distress, or just a little worried.
Whatever the case, you probably want to get more from your
marriage(or other close relationship) than you are currently
getting. This book will help you in that regard. If you follow the
suggestions we offer in these pages, it will be impossible for you
not to develop a closer and more enjoyable relationship. And don’t
worry,the suggestions are not at all difficult to implement. You
won’t have to learn a foreign language or join a new religion. All
you really have to do is set aside some time. Not easy, but
possible, right? You may believe your marriage is basically good,
but it could use a tweak. Or you might feel like the person who
once said to Ned, “I know my marriage is just fine . . . until I
stop and think about it.”
　　There is likely love in your marriage, and we will build on that
love. But even if you think there is no love, we will help you
search out what’s positive. At the heart of our method is the
identification and development of what’s already good. You
wouldn’tbe with your partner if you didn’t once have love, or
something like love, but that love might now not be so easy to
find.
　　As one of Ned’s patients once said, “My husband and I work so
hard to get everything done, we’re like a small business, and
businesses don’t run on love. Earn the money, take care of the
kids, keep up the house, do the holidays and birthdays and
celebrations,bake the cookies, do the school and homework thing,
keep up with the relatives, you know the drill. With all there is
to get done, I sometimes ask myself, ‘But where’s the love?’ You
know, like, get real, who has time for that?”
　　At times we’re simply too busy to pay attention to the people we
love the most. We take them for granted. There’s just so much to
do. You may be exasperated at how difficult it has become to get
your spouse’s full attention or to find some enjoyable chunksof
time for yourselves together, time when you’re both fully
present.
　　Life has also become so insecure, so fraught with worry and
uncertainty, that it can be difficult to connect romantically. You
may feel as if you are handling one crisis after another, or at
best, one worry after another.
　　We do live in worried times. So, you’re probably not only looking
for deeper love but also for greater stability . . . in a world
where neither love nor stability is easy to find.
　　You also may be hoping for some fun. But today, fun often gives
way to fear. As you read this, you may be wondering if any of the
hopes we’ve mentioned are realistically possible given the frenzy
and anxiety of modern life and all the stuff you have todo just to
stay afloat. Marital bliss may seem like a preposterous pipe dream,
not an attainable goal. Perhaps marital bliss is hyperbole, but
genuine joy in a marriage is a goal that we believe any person can
reach. We believe the pipe dream is not preposterous. We will show
you what you can do to overcome many of the obstacles marriages and
other intimaterelationships face these days.
　　We want to connect with you, no matter where you are emotionally.
As we wrote the book, we always imagined your side of the
conversation, your concerns, your needs, and we tried to anticipate
what you might want to know. We’ve looked at marriage in a
moderncontext, your context.
　　One of the most jarring facts about modern life is how angry,
contentious, and unfriendly it can be. Thanks to technology, we
live in an age of instant gotcha!–an age of nonstop gossip and
muckraking streaming endlessly across screens worldwide, an ageof
disappearing privacy and mounting mistrust, an age of witty
ridicule in which the clever put-down gets attention, while the pat
on the back seems hokey and obsolete.
　　Yet, most of us would like a pat on the back as well as some
harmony in our lives. Aren’t you tired of exposes, fallen heroes,
corrupt leaders, and broken promises? Wouldn’t you like…