婚后生活:婚姻中为何需要独裁者

It was 7:30 a.m., and I was groggily pulling on a bathrobe when the doorbell rang.
当时是清晨七点半。一听到门铃响，我便迷迷糊糊裹上了一件浴袍。

'Who could that be?' I murmured to my husband.
“那会是谁呢？”我向丈夫呢喃道。

'It's the painters,' he answered, darting downstairs to open the door. I soon heard him chatting with them in Spanish on the front porch. That's when I really woke up.
“是油漆工”，他一边冲下楼去开门一边说。不久我就听见他和油漆工们在前面门廊用西班牙语交谈。那时，我才真正从梦乡中醒来。

'The painters? For our house?' I called down the stairs incredulously. Alejandro and I had been talking about painting the exterior of the house for over a month. We had looked at color charts, painted sample patches and narrowed down the choices. But we were still completing the plan.
“油漆工？来刷我们的房子？”我冲楼下大喊，觉得难以置信。一个多月以来，亚历杭德罗(Alejandro)和我一直都在谈论房屋外观的刷漆问题。我们一起看了比色图表和刷好的样品，并缩小了选择范围。但我们仍在完善这个计划的过程中。

By the time he came back inside, I was furious.
等他回到房间时，我已是怒不可遏了。

'Why are painters already here? We don't know the accent colors! We haven't sketched it out! We didn't run it by my sister!' I complained.
“为什么油漆工现在就来了？我们连主色调是什么都不知道！我们还没有把草图画出来！我们还没让我的姐姐过目呢！”我抱怨道。

'We'll get started and figure it all out as we go,' Alejandro said. 'It's time to make it happen.'
“我们就要动工了，在这个过程中，我们会把所些问题都一一解决的。”亚历杭德罗说，“该是开工的时候了。”

I was mad all day long: Painting our house is part of our investment in it and ought to be a mutual decision, I fumed. But that evening when I got home and took a look at the painters' progress, it was suddenly easy to figure out where the trim color should go and what color the door should be. I tried to defend my morning hysteria, saying we had not technically been ready to pull the trigger on the project, but my argument fell apart in light of how well it was working out.
我一整天都气鼓鼓的。刷房子是我们对房产投资的一部分，这应该是两个人共同的决定，我十分恼火。但那天晚上，当我回家看到油漆工的进展时，突然觉得不费吹灰之力便能说出门该上什么色、哪些地方该刷配色。但我还是试着为自己早上歇斯底里的行为辩解。我说，严格说来，我们并未准备好动工。但由于刷漆工程进展得异常顺利，我的此番争论因而完全站不住脚。

'Maybe you could even say…I was right?' he asked, teasingly, hopefully.
“也许你甚至可以说……我是对的？”亚历杭德罗揶揄道。他对我的态度发生转变仍抱有希望。

I answered with a mock cry of horror, as though he had asked me to curse my children. I love the man, but really. What a suggestion.
我对他的话报以一阵恐怖的假哭干嚎，就好像他要我诅咒自己的孩子一样。但我爱这个男人，是真爱。让我承认他是对的，这是多好的一个建议。