Finding your soul mate is basically finding that one person (arguably one of several) who has the right traits – traits that are relevant to you as an individual. In other words: You have to find a person whom you can put up with and who, more importantly, can put up with you.

寻找你的灵魂伴侣基本上是寻找一个人(几个之中有争议的一个)，他拥有适合的特点-这个特点与你个人有关。换句话来说：你需要找到一个人，你能够忍受她，更重要的是，他也能忍受你。

Plus all that lovey-dovey stuff, of course. If love isn’t much more than the way that you perceive a person, then you need to find someone who you can perceive as being amazing for as long as you live. Just as importantly, you need to find a person who can put up with all of your sh*t.

当然还有一些情意绵绵的事情。如果爱不是足够多到你对一个人有感觉的程度，那么你需要找某人，你有感觉当你觉得神奇与你的生命一样长。同样重要的是，你需要找到一个人，他能够忍受你所有的缺点。

Because, let’s be honest, we all have a lot of sh*t that our soul mates will need to put up with. Here are 10 traits that your soul mates should have and that, ipso facto, you should have in his or her eyes:

我们需要诚实一点，因为，我们所有人都有缺点，我们的灵魂伴侣需要忍受它们。这里有10个你的灵魂伴侣需要具有的特点，依据事实，你可以在他的或者她的眼睛里找到。

1.Your soul mate should be very attractive (to you).

1. 你的灵魂伴侣对你来说很有吸引力。

Call me shallow, but if you don’t want to sleep with your partner then why the hell do you keep that person around? Sure, there are plenty of other reasons to love someone, but sex is definitely one of the more important ones. Does this mean that your partner needs to live up to the supermodel standard?

也许是我的肤浅，但是如果你不想和你的伴侣睡觉，那么你究竟为什么要继续留在这人的身边?当然，这里有关于爱一个人有很多的理由，但是性绝对是更重要的理由中的一个。这是否也意味着你的伴侣需要不低于名模的标准?

I hope not because then 99 percent of the world will be very lonely. What you find attractive is your preference – just make sure that he or she has a face that you’ll be happy seeing every morning for the rest of your life.

我希望不是，因为如果那样，世界百分之99的人将非常寂寞。你想要找到的吸引力是你自己的喜好-仅仅要保证他或者她有一张你下半辈子每天看到都会开心的脸。

2.Your soul mate should share similar likes and beliefs, but not on all fronts.

2. 你的灵魂伴侣应该与你有着相似的喜好和信仰，但不是在所有方面。

Having things in common is essential to a loving and caring relationship. For one, it minimizes the amount of arguments, which is very useful in a relationship, and it makes life more enjoyable for both parties. You don’t want to always be doing the things that you hate because your partner loves them.

拥有一些共同的喜好对爱和心的关系必不可少。其一，它会减少吵架的数量，这对一段关系非常有用，并且它能令双方的生活更加有乐趣。

Sure, you won’t be able to mediate your interests all the time, but having things you like in common definitely helps. At the same time, you don’t want to be too similar; that gets boring. The right person will bring the right balance of new and familiar to the table.

当然，你不能时刻衡量这些兴趣，但是有一些共同的喜好上，确实有帮助。同时，你不会想太多相似，这样会很无聊。适合的那个人将会带来一些新的和熟悉的平衡。

3.Your soul mate should open you up to a new side of life – show you a new reality.

3. 你的灵魂伴侣能够为你打开一种新生活——为你展示一个新世界。

A great life is a life filled with discovery. Discovering new things is exciting and gives you new experiences to look forward to. More than that, the ideal soul mate will show you a better side of life – a side that you didn’t even know existed. Chances are that the person you will end up with is the person who introduces you to a better way of living.

美好的生活，是一个充满发现的生活。发现一些存在新事物是令人兴奋，给你值得期待的全新体验。不止如此，理想的灵魂伴侣将为你展示一种更好的生活方式——一种你甚至没不知道它的存在的生活方式。机会在于你将最终与之在一起的那个人，就是那个带你去领略一种更好的生活的人。

4.Your soul mate has to love you regardless of your flaws and imperfections.

4. 你的灵魂伴侣必须爱你的缺点和不完美之处。

We’re all flawed – we’re human. Loving someone doesn’t mean loving that person because he or she is perfect, but rather because he or she is perfect for you. Many will do their best to hide their imperfections for the duration of their relationships. However, this is impossible.

我们都有缺点-我们是人。爱一个人并不意味是因为所爱的人，他或她是完美的，反而是因为对于你来说他或她是完美的。许多人为了让关系持续得更久会尽最大努力掩盖他们的缺点。然而，这是不可能的。

While I don’t recommend necessarily laying your hand on the table from the get-go, you can’t hide who you really are or you’ll never know if your partner loves all of you and not just the better part of you.

虽然我不建议一开始就将自己的所有全都倒出来，但是你不能掩盖真实的你，否则你将永远不会知道你的伴侣爱的是你的全部，而不是更好的那部分你。

5.Your soul mate has to be capable of regularly putting your needs ahead of his or her own.

5. 你的灵魂伴侣必须能够将你的需求放在他或她自己的需要至上。

Love can arguably be said to be unnatural. It makes us put the needs of another individual ahead of our own – which is not what evolution teaches us should be happening. The beauty of a loving relationship is that we begin to rely upon each other so much that we feel as one and the needs of our soul mate feels more like our own needs than our actual own needs.

爱无疑是无法表达的。它令我们将另一人的需要放在我们自己的前面，这可不是进化中所教我们的所应该发生的。爱情的美是我们开始互相依赖对方，以至于感觉两人成为了一个人，并且我们的伴侣的需要比我们自己的需要更像我们自己的需要。

If your partner can’t put your needs ahead of his or her own, and you can’t put your partner’s needs ahead of your own, then you’re likely to fail. Of course, we can’t always be putting our partners’ needs ahead of our own – we’re only human. But, we can do our best to show them how much we love them by sacrificing our wants in order for them to meet theirs.

如果你的伴侣不能将你的需要放在他或她自己的之上，你也不能将你的伴侣的需要放在你自己的之上，那么你可能就会失败了。当然，我们不能总是将对方的需要放在我们自己的前面-我们只是人类。但是，我么你可以尽我们的努力向他们表示我们爱他们，为了他们想要的，我们可以放弃我们的需要。

6.Your soul mate should be able and willing to give you the attention that you need.

6. 你的伴侣能够或者愿意给你所需要的关心。

Different people have a different level of neediness. Personally, I’m on the lighter side of the spectrum. However, there are those who are very, very needy and require a whole lot of attention.

不同的人有不同程度的需要。就我个人来说，我处在光谱中轻松的一面。然而，也有许多人，非常非常需要许多的关注。

I can’t say that I find this healthy, but hey… not my problem. If you are one of those attention-seeking individuals then you better find someone that is more than willing to give you that attention. Your soul mate will likely be the person who has an identical level of neediness.

我不能说我觉得这是健康的，但是他...不是我的问题。如果你是寻求关心中的一员，那么你最好找到某人更加愿意给你关心。你的伴侣将很乐意成为那个有相同程度关注需求的人。

7.Your soul mate wants nothing more than to experience life with you because he or she feels that life with you is better than any life without you.

7. 你的灵魂伴侣想要莫过于与你在一起的生活体验，因为他或她觉得与你生活比没有你的生活更好。

This is a big one. There are only so many versions of our lives that we could possibly live – determinism aside. If you believe that your life cannot be any better than it is when you are with the person whom you love then you may very well have found the right person to spend your life with.

这是最关键的。这是我们生活中这么多版本，能使我们能够活下去的一个版本-宿命论除外。如果你相信你的生活不能够变得更好，当你和这个你所的人人在一起，那么你最好找到合适的人和你生活在一起。

Life is a chain of experiences of which can be experienced with either more or less pleasure. If the person we experience those with make those experiences joyfully memorable then we may have found a keeper.

生活是一连串的考验，让我们体验到更多或更少的快乐。如果我们与其一同经历的那个人制造出了更多快乐的记忆的体验，那么我们可能找到一个相守之人。

8.Your soul mate is willing to lose arguments for the sake of keeping the relationship intact.

8. 你的灵魂伴侣愿意失去避免争吵来挽救维持关系完好。

This is something that took me a long time to learn because, as you may have noticed, I like to argue. It’s not that some battles need to be lost… it’s that some battles simply aren’t worth fighting. Moreover, most of the arguments lovers have aren’t over concrete facts, but over opinion.

这是我花了好长时间学会的。因为当你可能察觉，我想要争吵。并不是一些战役有必要清理...有些简单的战役不值得争吵。然而，大部分争吵爱人们不能战胜事实，但能够战胜观点。

Opinions are opinions and we are all entitled to our own. Skip the less important arguments and fight the real important ones instead. Otherwise you are likely to lose what you have. And that’s the only battle worth fighting.

意见是意见，我们有权坚持自我。跳过不重要的争吵，代替真正重要的问题。否则你可能会失去你所拥有的。并且，那是唯一值得争吵的战役。

9.The two of you want to live very similar lives.

9. 你们两人想要去生活非常相似的生活。

When we’re younger, we don’t put much thought into lifestyles that we wish to live. Or rather, we don’t think much about the possibility that the lives that we ourselves want to live might not line up with the life that our lover may want to live.

当我们年轻时，我们不能把太多的想法放进我们想要的生活里。或者更确切地说，我们不能想太多关于我们自己想要生活的可能性，因为我们想要的生活，可能并不是我们的爱人真的想要的生活。

Do you want to travel constantly or stay put? Do you want to be incredibly rich or simply comfortable? Do you want kids? And how many? All these decisions affect different parts of our lives.

你想要一直旅行或者待在原地?你想要变得更富有或是简单舒适?你想要孩子?多少个?这些决定性会在不同程度上影响我们的生活。

It takes a lot of time and energy to do some of the more important things in our lives and because we are sharing our lives with another, both will likely be missing out on certain things. Hopefully those things aren’t incredibly important to our lovers because if they are then we’re setting ourselves up for disaster.

它会花费了太多的时间和能量去做一些真正重要的事情，并且因为我们在与另一个人分享我们的生活，两者很可能错过一些重要的事情。期待这些事情对我们的爱人不那么重要，因为如果他们是，那么我们就在为自己设置了麻烦。

10.Your soul mate is loyal and would never abandon you.

10. 你的灵魂伴侣是忠诚的，而且绝对不会抛弃你。

Life can be a bitch. It can make us miserable. It can make waking up in the morning and going about our day near impossible. It can make us moody, unhappy, stressed, rushed, angry, emotional, moody… And that’s fine enough – until you start to share your life with another.

生活可能是个婊子。它能令我们苦不堪言。它能使我们在早晨醒来，到了。它令让我们喜怒无常，不开心，压力大，冲动，愤怒，情绪激动...而且这还还是的，直到你开始与另一个人分享你的生活。

Can you deal with your partner when he or she is going through a rough patch? Can your partner deal with you? How much is simply too much? These are all questions that we have to ask ourselves. Loyalty does go a very long way and is incredibly important in a relationship.

你能够陪伴着你的伴侣吗，当他或她正经历不堪时?你的伴侣能够陪伴你吗?这些是我们需要问自己的问题。忠诚可以走得很长，在一段关系里是非常重要的。

Sometimes we lose control of ourselves and fall down that spiral. Will your lover stick around as you crawl back out of that hole?

有时我们失去了对我们自己的控制，像陀螺一样倒下。当你归来，你的爱人会仍然站在你的身边吗?

转载自：星光社