雙語閱讀：億萬富翁婚姻穩固的祕密

摘要：要成爲億萬富翁，你需要的第一樣東西就是人格障礙。

To be a billionaire, the first thing you need is apersonality disorder.

That is what I had always assumed, based on myown experience of having interviewed a few of I have corroboration from someone who knowswhat she is talking about. Justine Musk, who spenteight years married to the man behind PayPal,SpaceX and now Tesla Motors, has taken it uponherself to share with the world her view that thosewho achieve great things are mostly “freaks andmisfits”.

要成爲億萬富翁，你需要的第一樣東西就是人格障礙。

我一直是這樣想的，依據就是我自己以前採訪幾個億萬富翁的經歷。現在，我的猜想得到了一位懂行人士的證實。曾與埃隆•馬斯克(Elon Musk)夫妻8年的賈絲廷•馬斯克(Justine Musk)，主動與世界分享了她的看法。在她看來，那些取得了非凡成就的人，大多都“古怪、不合羣”。埃隆•馬斯克創辦了PayPal、SpaceX和特斯拉汽車(Tesla Motors)。

Her remarks were in response to an earnest question recently posted on Quora: How can I beas great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sir Richard Branson? The short answer, shewrote, is you can’t.

賈絲廷•馬斯克的話，是爲了回答Quara上最近貼出的一個嚴肅問題：我如何能像比爾•蓋茨(Bill Gates)、史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)、埃隆•馬斯克或理查德•布蘭森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)那樣偉大?她的回答用一句話來概括就是，你不能。

The longer answer amounts to one of the best explanations of success I have ever rding to her it comes in two types: normal success — involving hard work, talent etc — andextreme success — as enjoyed by her ex. The normal variety she recommends; the extremeversion is only available to those who are born that way. “They are dyslexic, they are autistic,they have ADD, they are square pegs in round holes, they piss people off, get into arguments,rock the boat.”

她的詳細回答則是我讀過的關於成功的最佳解釋之一。在她看來，成功分爲兩種：普通的成功(靠勤奮工作、天賦等等)和非凡的成功(如她的前夫實現的那種成功)。她推崇普通的成功;非凡的成功則只屬於那些天生如此的人。“他們有讀寫障礙，他們有孤獨症，他們有注意力缺失症(ADD)，他們是圓孔裏的方頭釘，他們把別人惹毛，跟人吵架，把平靜的地方攪得雞犬不寧。”

So they find something bigger than themselves to obsess over and work insanely hard, sheexplains. It is their way of coping.

於是，他們找到某種超越自身的東西去癡迷，並瘋狂地工作，她解釋道。這是他們與這個世界的相處之道。

At a stroke Ms Musk has destroyed the whole self help industry. Seen like this, there isabsolutely no point in studying extreme success. If you aren’t born like that, you will neverachieve it. And you would not want to anyway.

賈絲廷•馬斯克一下子就摧毀了整個勵志行業。照她的觀點來看，研究非凡的成功毫無意義。如果你不是天生如此，你永遠都不會實現非凡的成功。並且，你反正也不會想要這樣的成功。

However, these billionaires remain of zoological interest, particularly in terms of how theymanage their personal lives. Ms Musk’s view on this is pretty grim. Extreme success, shereckons, comes complete with “family drama, issues with the Significant Other you rarely see,dark nights of the soul . . . little sleep, less sleep than that”.

然而，作爲一個特殊的人羣，這些億萬富翁仍然是有意思的研究對象，特別是就他們如何安排個人生活而言。賈絲廷•馬斯克在這方面的看法非常冷酷。她認爲，非凡的成功少不了“家庭變故，與伴侶感情不好、很少見面，靈魂的黑夜……少眠，失眠”。

In other words, billionaires are rotten people to marry. Which is also precisely what I hadalways thought.

換句話說，億萬富翁是靠不住的結婚對象。這也是我一直以來的想法。

Mr Musk himself sounds like a particularly bad marital bet: shortly after divorcing Ms Musk hemarried an actress, only to divorce and remarry her in quick succession. Now he is in theprocess of divorcing her again.

埃隆•馬斯克本人聽上去就是個格外不可靠的結婚對象：與賈絲廷•馬斯克離婚後不久，他娶了一個女演員，然後兩人離婚，又迅速複合。現在，他已第二次與這個女演員離婚。

Yet just as I was congratulating myself on not having married a billionaire, I started thinkingabout the other names in the Quora question — Bill, Richard and Steve. The remarkable thingabout them is not that they have gone through wives as quickly as the twinkling of a bed post,but that they have mostly found one and stuck with her.

然而，就在我慶幸自己沒有跟億萬富翁結婚時，我開始思考Quara上那個問題中提到的其他幾個名字——比爾、理查德和史蒂夫。他們身上令人驚異之處，並非是他們走馬燈似地換夫人，而是他們基本上都找到了適合自己的那個人，然後對她不離不棄。

Bill Gates, who married Melinda 21 years ago, appears to have one of those marriages so solidthat if I discovered the two were splitting up, I would feel let down, as if the world had become aless dependable place. Sir Richard Branson, after a starter marriage in his early 20s, is stillmarried to his second wife after 25 years. And Steve Jobs remained married to the same womanfor 20 years, until he died.

比爾•蓋茨21年前與梅琳達(Melinda)結婚，兩人的婚姻看上去那麼穩固，假如有一天兩人分手，我肯定會備感失望，就好像世界變得不那麼可靠了一樣。理查德•布蘭森爵士20歲出頭的時候結過一次婚，他的第二次婚姻如今已走過25個年頭。史蒂夫•喬布斯與同一個女人結婚20年，直到他去世。

If you go down the Forbes billionaires list a weird pattern starts to emerge. More than 40 percent of all marriages end in divorce, but among the extremely successful, who one might haveexpected to be extremely unsuccessful in wedlock, the reverse seems to be the case.

如果你逐個研究福布斯(Forbes)財富榜上那些億萬富翁，你會發現一條奇怪的規律。他們的婚姻超過40%以離婚收場，但在那些特別成功、可能會被認爲婚姻非常失敗的人中，情況似乎是相反的。

Carlos Slim, number two on the Forbes list after Mr Gates, was married to the same woman for32 years, until she died in 1999. Warren Buffett (#3) remained married to his first wife for 52years (although for much of that time he was living with a cocktail waitress whom he married onhis wife’s death).

福布斯財富榜第二名、排在蓋茨之後的卡洛斯•斯利姆(Carlos Slim)，與同一個女人結婚32年，直到她1999年去世。沃倫•巴菲特(Warren Buffett，財富榜排名第三)與頭一任妻子結婚52年(儘管他很多時間與一名雞尾酒女招待生活在一起，頭任妻子去世後，他就和女招待結了婚)。

Further down the list there are only a few who have exhibited certain traits of ADD in theirapproach to matrimony: Larry Ellison has had four wives and Ronald Perelman five. They arethe exceptions — more of the billionaires seem to be on first wives than those who are is not much of an achievement for Mark Zuckerberg who only tied the knot in 2012, butJeff Bezos and Michael Dell have been married for more than 20 years apiece, Eric Schmidt formore than 30, Ray Dalio at Bridgewater has notched up about 40 while Phil Knight of Nike isheading towards his golden wedding.

排名略爲靠後的人中，只有少數幾個在婚姻中顯示出某種ADD症狀：拉里•埃裏森(Larry Ellison)有過4任妻子，羅納德•佩雷爾曼(Ronald Perelman)現在的妻子是他的第5任。他們倆是例外——億萬富翁中仍在與首任妻子相守的人數似乎超過了不是這樣的人數。對馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)來說，這算不上很大的成就，因爲他2012年才結婚，不過，傑夫•貝索斯(Jeff Bezos)和邁克爾•戴爾(Michael Dell)都已結婚20多年，埃裏克•施密特(Eric Schmidt)已結婚30多年，布里奇沃特(Bridgewater)的雷•戴利奧(Ray Dalio)已結婚40年，耐克(Nike)的菲爾•奈特(Phil Knight)還有幾年就將迎來金婚。

How can such stability happen? These billionaires have all lived in the grip of a rip-roaringobsession with work that should have ruined all relationships, and all have enough money toattract gorgeous new wives — and to pay off old ones.

這些億萬富翁的婚姻怎麼會這麼穩定?他們都是超級工作狂，這原本應該會毀掉任何的伴侶關係，他們也都有足夠的錢，能夠吸引漂亮的新妻子，以及向髮妻支付分手費。

I have no idea what the reason is, but I wonder if it might be that when the truly weird findsomeone who suits them, they don’t give them up in a hurry. Or perhaps it is that if you aretransfixed by your work, an affair offers insufficient thrill. Or it could simply be that if youhardly ever see your spouse, he or she is significantly less likely to get on your nerves.

我不知道這是什麼原因，但我猜想，或許這是因爲當一個真正的怪人找到了適合自己的人，他們就不會匆忙放棄。抑或這是因爲，如果你一門心思撲在工作上，外遇就顯得不夠刺激了。又或者，這只不過是因爲，假如你和自己的配偶很少見面，他或她把你惹毛的機率就大大降低了。