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

　　我们在生活中总会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.

　　也许是八竿子打不着的亲戚念错了你的名字，或者是某些朋友从来都不会还之前借你的衣服，又或者某些同事非要喝你昂贵的杏仁乳，即使他们不是奶制品不耐受体质。

　　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.

　　无论是谁，总有一个原因使你很难把他们从你的生活中赶走。研究显示：两个原因使我们允许自己的身边有难相处的人。

　　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.

　　根据以色列巴伊安大学、特拉维夫大学和加州大学伯克利分校这三所院校的研究小组的研究，我们允许身边存在一些难以应付的人，要么是因为我们需要他们，要么是因为我们根本无法避开他们。

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

　　这意味着通常这些人不是家庭成员就是同事。

　　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教授分析了加州大学网络研究的数据，该研究包含了旧金山湾区1100多名成年人的社会信息。

　　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.

　　他们要求参与者明确自己的社会关系，说出那些自己信任的、经常联系的、紧急情况下会致电的人的名字。

　　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.

　　参与者还要说出并描述那些和自己关系紧张的人，这些人占到所有参与者的15%，大部分是年迈的父母、近亲和女性亲戚。

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

　　“这些人与我们的生活是如此复杂地交织在一起。”

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

　　“这些人的大部分都是我们需要的、深爱的家人;另一些就是我们怎么也摆脱不了的人。

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

　　“社会准则不允许我们简单地从他们身边离开，尽管这样做有时显得那么诱人。”

　　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.

　　在明确一段艰难的关系时，研究人员发现关键的共性是，相比于你提供给别人的支持，有些人没有给你同等程度的支持。

　　They identified parental relationships as particularly difficult.

　　他们认为(所有的关系中)处理与父母的关系是最难的。