In life you’re bound to come across people who grind your gears.

　　我們在生活中總會遇到一些和自己不合的人。

　　Maybe it’s the distant relative who pronounces your name wrong, or the friend who never returns your clothes, or the colleague who insists on using your expensive almond milk even though they’re not dairy intolerant.

　　也許是八竿子打不著的親戚念錯了你的名字，或者是某些朋友從來都不會還之前借你的衣服，又或者某些同事非要喝你昂貴的杏仁乳，即使他們不是奶制品不耐受體質。

　　Whoever it is, there’s a reason you may struggle to kick them out of your life for good, as a new study shows we primarily keep difficult people around for two reasons.

　　無論是誰，總有一個原因使你很難把他們從你的生活中趕走。研究顯示：兩個原因使我們允許自己的身邊有難相處的人。

　　According to a team of researchers at Bar-IIan University, Tel Aviv and the University of California at Berkeley, we keep tricky people around either because we need them in some way, or because we simply cannot avoid them.

　　根據以色列巴伊安大學、特拉維夫大學和加州大學伯克利分校這三所院校的研究小組的研究，我們允許身邊存在一些難以應付的人，要么是因為我們需要他們，要么是因為我們根本無法避開他們。

　　Typically, that means these people are either family members or colleagues.

　　這意味著通常這些人不是家庭成員就是同事。

　　Dr Shira Offer and Professor Claude Fischer analysed data from the University of California Network Study, which contains information on social ties for more than 1,100 adults in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

　　Shira博士和Claude Fischer教授分析了加州大學網絡研究的數據，該研究包含了舊金山灣區(qū)1100多名成年人的社會信息。

　　Participants were asked to define their social relationships, naming those they would confide in, those they socialise with and those who they would call in an emergency.

　　他們要求參與者明確自己的社會關系，說出那些自己信任的、經常聯系的、緊急情況下會致電的人的名字。

　　They also had to name the people they had tense relationships with and describe them; these people made up 15 per cent of those named by the participants and were mostly elderly parents, close kin and female relatives.

　　參與者還要說出并描述那些和自己關系緊張的人，這些人占到所有參與者的15%，大部分是年邁的父母、近親和女性親戚。

　　"These are people with whom our lives are so complexly intertwined," said Dr. Offer.

　　“這些人與我們的生活是如此復雜地交織在一起。”

　　"Many are close family whom we need and even love; others we just can’t escape.

　　“這些人的大部分都是我們需要的、深愛的家人;另一些就是我們怎么也擺脫不了的人。

　　“Social norms do not allow us to simply walk away from them, however much this might be tempting to do sometimes."

　　“社會準則不允許我們簡單地從他們身邊離開，盡管這樣做有時顯得那么誘人。”

　　In terms of what defines a difficult relationship, researchers found one key commonality was feeling like that someone wasn’t offering you the same level of support that you offered them.

　　在明確一段艱難的關系時，研究人員發(fā)現關鍵的共性是，相比于你提供給別人的支持，有些人沒有給你同等程度的支持。

　　They identified parental relationships as particularly difficult.

　　他們認為(所有的關系中)處理與父母的關系是最難的。