Falling in love comes at the cost of losing close friends, because romantic partners absorb time that would otherwise be invested in platonic relationships, researchers say。

研究者稱談戀愛的代價是損失親密的朋友，因為戀人會占用原本投入到友情中的時間。

A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found。

一項研究表明，談一次戀愛平均讓人損失兩個朋友，使得他們身處困境時可以求助的好朋友更少。

The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, showed that men and women were equally likely to lose their closest friends when they started a new relationship。

這項研究由牛津大學人類認知與進化學研究協(xié)會會長羅賓·鄧巴發(fā)起，研究顯示無論男性還是女性，開始一段新戀情都會使他們失去親密的朋友。

Previous research by Dunbar's group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships – that is, people whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble。

鄧巴的團隊在之前的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)人們通常維系五段親密關系——也就是5個在發(fā)生情感危機或是財政危機時能求助的人。

"If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relationships, instead of having the typical five 'core set' of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who's come into their life," said Dunbar。

鄧巴稱：“如果你談戀愛了，那么你會失去兩個朋友。那些談戀愛的人只維系4段親密關系，而不是一般人的5段。并且其中一個是才開始關系，剛要融入他生活的人。”

The study, submitted to the journal Personal Relationships, was designed to investigate how people trade off spending time with one person over another and suggests that links with family and closest friends suffer when people start a romantic relationship。

這項研究已提交給了雜志《個人關系》，研究意在調查人們如何分配自己與人交往的時間，結果表明人們開始一段戀情時，親情和友情會受到影響。

Dunbar's team used an internet-based questionnaire to quiz 428 women and 112 men about their relationships. In total, 363 of the participants had romantic partners. The findings suggest that a new love interest has to compensate for the loss of two close friends。

鄧巴的團隊通過網上發(fā)起問卷，調查了428位女性和112位男性的個人關系。參與調查的人中，總共有363位有戀人。結果表明新的戀情是以犧牲兩個死黨為代價的。

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Birmingham, Professor Dunbar said: "This was a surprise for us. We hadn't expected it. "

在伯明翰舉行的英國科學節(jié)上，鄧巴說：“研究結果令人意外，我們從未料想過。”

"If you don't see people, your emotional engagement with them drops off and does so quickly. What I suspect is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don't get to see the other folks you had a lot to do with before, and so some of those relationships start to deteriorate."

“如果你不和朋友見面，你和他們的情感聯(lián)系就會淡化，而且會淡化地非常之快。而我認為你把所有的注意力都放在戀人身上，以至于見不到以前經常在一起的朋友，那么你和他們的關系就開始疏遠了。”

The questionnaire allowed people to mention whether any of their closest confidants were "extra romantic partners". In all, 32 of those quizzed mentioned having an extra love interest in their life, but these people did not lose four friends as might be expected. Instead, the extra person in their life bumped their original romantic partner out of their innermost circle of friends。

這份網絡問卷允許被調查者填寫他們的密友中是否包括他們的戀人。一共有32個人提到他們的戀人是生活中的密友，但是這些人并沒有像預料的那樣失去四個朋友，相反，新的戀人會將之前的戀人擠出他們的朋友圈子。

In a separate study, Dunbar's team looked at how men and women maintained friendships on the social networking website Facebook. They found that women's Facebook friends were more often friends from everyday life that they spent time with, while men tended to collect as many friends as they could, even if they hardly knew them。

在另一項研究中，鄧巴的團隊研究了男性和女性是怎樣在社交網站Facebook上維系友情的。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)女性在Facebook上的朋友往往是她們生活中的朋友，而男性則盡可能的多交朋友，哪怕是不認識的人。

"Boys seem to be in a competition to see who can have the most Faccebook friends and that could be a form of mate advertisting. One of the cues women use for male quality as a mate is the number of other girls chasing them, so signing up lots of girls as Facebook friends seems to be a good idea," said Dunbar。

鄧巴說：“男生似乎在互相競爭，看誰Facebook上的朋友最多，這似乎還是一種宣傳手段。女性評判男人質量的標準之一就是看他被多少女生追求，因此在Facebook上加更多的女性好友不失為一個好主意。”