バートランド・ラッセル「結婚の倦怠期」
* 原著：Mortals and Others; Bertrand Russell's American Essays 1931-1935, v.1
* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』索引
下記は牧野力氏による「要旨」訳（注：ただし、少し字句を修正）に原文を追加したものです。
ニューヨークでタクシーの運転手から話しかけられた。「旦那はバートランド・ラッセルさんでしょう。」
彼は、昔、知識欲に燃えていた頃（知的であった昔）、私の講演を聞いた由で、「今では女房もらって、唯の人になっちゃいましたよ（個性をもった人間であることをやめてしまいました）」と付け加えた。これは、結婚の一つの痛ましい結果のように思えた。
なぜ人格の完成であるべき結婚の結果が、なぜ全く裏目にでたのか？（正反対に感じられるのか？）・・・。
彼は多くの人々の結婚についての考えを代弁している。その理由には、経済的な面と社会的風習の面とがある。前者より後者のほうが改めやすい。
夫婦はが余暇を共に過ごすのは当然という慣習は感心できない。・・・。相手への心遣いや遠慮から自分の楽しみを控えるようになる。夫婦間に新鮮な話題が乏しくなり、倦怠感を生みやすい。夫婦間にはある程度の社会的距離が必要である。
(A few days ago in a taxi in New York, the driver turned around (to the risk of our lives) and said: 'Excuse me, are you Bertrand Russell?'...
He then went on to say that in former days he had heard me lecture, but that belonged to his intellectual past. 'Now,' he continued, 'I am a married man and have ceased to be a person.'
There was no suggestion that his marriage was unhappy; it was to marriage as such that he attributed this dire result. I never myself experienced any such result of being married, but I know that the taxi driver was putting into words what a great many people feel. The reason lies partly in economics, partly in social custom. The latter, as being easier to set right, I will consider first.
The convention that husbands and wives should spend their leisure hours together is a bad one. No doubt my taxi driver's wife does not care for lectures and also does not like him to go to them without her. Many husbands and many wives will forgo their own pleasures out of jealousy of the pleasures that they imagine their partners as desiring. It is much more harmful to object to other people's pleasures than it is to be a trifle selfish in pursuing one's own, and a certain amount of social separateness of husband and wife is necessary if they are not to become dull and incapable of finding anything to say to each other.)
