大学英语三

Unit Three

Reading Selection One:

Friends, Good Friends – And Such Good Friends

By Judith Viorst

Women are friends, I once would have said,* when they totally love and support and trust each other, and bare to each other the secrets of their souls,* and run—no questions asked—to help each other,* and tell harsh truths to each other (no, you can't wear that dress unless you lose ten pounds first) when harsh truths must be told. T In other words, I once would have said that a friend is a friend all the way,* but now I believe that's a narrow point of view.* For the friendships I have and the friendships I see are functions, meet different needs and range from those as

all-the-way as the friendship of the soul sisters mentioned above to that of the most nonchalant and casual playmates.*T

Consider these varieties of friendship:T

1. Convenience friends. These are women with whom, if our paths weren't crossing all the time,* we'd have no particular reason to be friends: a next-door neighbor, a woman in our car pool , the mother of one of our children's closest friends or maybe some mommy with whom we serve juice and cookies each week at the Glenwood Co-op Nursery.T

Convenience friends are convenient indeed. They'll lend us their cups and silverware for a party. They'll drive our kids to soccer when we're sick. They'll take us to pick up our car when we need a lift to the garage. They'll even take our cats when we go on vacation. As we will for them.*T

But we don't, with convenience friends, ever come too close or tell too much; we maintain our public face and emotional distance. 'Which means,' says Elaine, 'that I'll talk about being overweight but not about being depressed.' T

2. Special-interest friends. These friendships aren'tintimate, and they needn't involve kids or silverware or cats. Their value lies in some interest jointly shared.* And so we may have an office friend or a yoga friend or a tennis friend or a friend from the Women's Democratic Club. T

'I've got one woman friend,' says Joyce, 'who likes, as I do, to take psychology course. Which makes it nice for – and nice for her. It's fun to go with someone you know and it's fun to discuss what you've learned, driving back from the classes.' And for the most part, she says, that's all they discuss. T

3. Historical friends. We all have a friend who knew us when …maybe way back in Miss Meltzer's second grade, when our family lived in that three-room flat in Brooklyn, when our dad was out of work for seven months, and when our brother Allie got in that fight where they had to call the police.T

The years have gone by and we've gone separate ways and we've little in common now, but we're still an intimate part of each other's past. And so whenever

we go to Detroit we always go to visit this friend of our girlhood. Who knows how we talked before our voice got un-Brooklyned.* And who, by her presence, puts us in touch with an earlier part of ourselves, a part of ourselves *that's important never to lose. T

4. Crossroads friends. Like historical friends, our crossroads friends are important for what was—for the friendship we shared at a crucial, now past, time of life.* A time, perhaps, when we roomed in a college together, or worked as eager young singles in the Big City together, or went together, as my friend Elizabeth and I did, through pregnancy, birth, and that scary first year of new motherhood. T Crossroads friends forge powerful links, links strong enough to endure with not much more contact thanonce-a-year letters at Christmas.* And out of respect for those crossroads years, for those dreams we once shared, we will always be friends. T

5. Part-of-a-couple friends. Some of the women we call our friends we never see alone *—we see them as part of a couple at couples' parties. And though we share interests in many things and respect each other's views, we aren't moved to deepen the relationship. Whatever the reason, a lack of time or—and this is more likely—a lack

of chemistry, our friendship remains in the context of a group. But the fact that our feeling on seeing each other is always, 'I'm so glad she's here' and the fact we spend half of the evening talking together says that this too, in its own way, counts as a friendship.*T

6. Men who are friends. I wanted to write just of women friends, but the women I've talked to won't let me—they say I must mention man-woman friendships too. For these friendships can be just as close and as dear as those that we form with women. Listen to Lucy's description of one such friendship. T

'We've found we have things to talk about that are different from what he talks about with my husband and different from what I talk with his wife. So sometimes we call on the phone or meet for lunch. There are similar intellectual interests—we always pass on to each other the books that we love—but there's also something tender and caring too.T

It's only in the past few years that I've made friends with men, in the sense of a friendship that's mine, not just part of two couples.* And achieving with them the ease and the trust I've found with women friends has value indeed.*T

There are medium friends, and pretty good friends, and very good friends indeed, and these friendships are defined by their level of intimacy. And what we'll reveal at each of these levels of intimacy is calibrated with care. We might tell a medium friend, for example, that yesterday we had a fight with our husband. And we might tell a pretty good friend that this fight with our husband made us so mad that we slept on the couch. And we might tell a very good friend that the reason we got so mad in that fight that we slept on the couch had something to do with that girl who works in his office. But it's only to our very best friends that we're willing to tell all, to tell what's going on with that girl in his office.T

harsh: unpleasant, unkind, cruel or unnecessarily severe

nonchalant: behaving calmly and seeming not to worry or care about anything; without warmth or enthusiasm

car pool: a group of car owners who agree to drive everyone in the group to work, school etc on different days so that only one car is used at a time

cookie: (家制)小甜饼

co-op: a business or organization run by the people who work for it, who share its benefits and profits.

depressed: feeling very unhappy

intimate: having an extremely close relationship

Yoga:瑜珈

Brooklyn:布鲁克林(纽约市东部一城区)

Detroit:底特律(美国密歇根州城市, 汽车工业中心)

pregnancy: the condition of having an unborn baby growing inside a woman's body; the period of time when a woman is expecting a child

forge links: to develop a strong relationship, with other groups or other countries endure: to remain alive or continue to exist

medium: being in the middle between an upper and lower amount, size or degree; average

reveal: to make known something that was previously secret or unknown calibrate: to mark an instrument or tool so as to use it for measuring; fix, measure

Unit Three

Reading Selection Two:

Why We Love Who We Love

By Joyce Brothers

Have you ever known a married couple that just didn't seem as though they should fit together—yet they are both happy in the marriage, and you can't figlure out why?T

I know of one couple: He is a burly ex-athlete who, in addition to being a successful salesman, coached Little League, was active in his Rotary Club and played golf every Saturday with friends. Meanwhile, his wife is petite, quiet and a complete homebody. She doesn't like to go out to dinner. T

What mysterious force drives us into the arms of one

person, while pushing us away from another equally

desirable to any unbiased observer? T

Of the many factors influencing our idea of the perfect mate, one of the most telling, according to John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and pediatrics of Johns Hopkins University, is what he calls our 'lovemap'—a group of messages encode in our brains that describes our likes and dislikes. It shows our preferences in hair and eye color, in voice, smell, body build. It also records the kind of personality that appeals to us, whether it's the warm and friendly type or the strong, silent type. T

In short, we fall for and pursue those people who most clearly fit our lovemap.

And this lovemap is largely determined in childhood. By age

eight, the pattern for our ideal mate has already begun to float

around in our brains. T

When I lecture, I often ask couples in the audience what

drew them to their dates or mates. Answers range from 'She's

strong and independent' and 'I go for redheads' to 'I love his sense

of humor' and 'That crooked smile, that's what did it.'T

I believe what they say. But I also know that if I were to ask those same men and women to describe their mothers, there would be many similarities between their ideal mates and theirmoms. Yes, our mothers—the first real love of our lives—write a significant portion of our lovemap.T

When we are little, our mother is the center of our attention, and we are the center of hers. So our mother's characteristics leave an indelible impression, and we are forever after attracted to people with her facial features, body type, personality, even sense of humor. If our mother was warm and giving, as adults we tend to be attracted to people who are warm and giving. If our mother was strong and

even-tempered we are going to be attracted to a fair-minded

strength in our mates. T

The mother has an additional influence on her sons: she not

only gives them clues to what they will find attractive in a mate,

but also affects how they feel about women in general. So if she

is warm and nice, her sons are going to think that's the way

women are. They will likely grow up warm and responsive lovers

and also be cooperative around the house. T

Conversely, a mother who has a depressive personality, and is sometimes friendly and suddenly turns cold and rejecting, may raise a man who becomes a

'dance-away lover.' Because he's been so scared about love from his mother, he is afraid of commitment and may pull away from a girl friend for this reason. T While the mother determines in large part what qualities attract us in a mate, it's the father—the first male in our lives—who influences how we relate to the opposite sex. Fathers have an enormous effect on their children's personalities and chances of marital happiness. T

Just as mothers influence their son's general feelings toward women, fathers influence their daughter's general feelings about men. If a father lavishes praise on his daughter and demonstrates that she is a worth-while person, she'll feel very good

about herself in relation to men. But if the father is cold, critical or absent, the daughter will tend to feel she's not very lovable or attractive. T

What about opposites? Are they really attracted to each other? Yes and no. In many ways we want a mirror image of ourselves. Physically attractive people, for example, are usually drawn to a partner who's equally attractive. T

In addition, most of us grow up with people of

similar social circumstances. We hang around with

people in the same town; our friends have about the

same educational backgrounds and career goals. We

tend to be most comfortable with these people, and

therefore we tend to link up with others whose families

are often much like our own. T

However, there are instances where people of

differentHowever, there are instances where people of

different social backgrounds end up getting married and being extremely happy. I know one man, a factory worker form a traditional Irish family in Chicago, who fell in love with an African-American Baptist. When they got married, their friends and relatives predicted a quick failure. But 25 years later, the marriage is till strong. T

It turns out that the woman was like her mother-in-law—a loving and caring person, the type who rolls up her sleeves and volunteers to work at church or help out people in need. This is the quality that her husband fell for, and it made color and religion and any other social factors irrelevant to him. T

There are certainly such 'odd couples' who could scarcely be happier. We all know some drop-dead beautiful person married to an unusually plain wallflower. This is a trade-off some call the equity theory. T

Indeed, almost any combination can survive and thrive. T