As Laurent's wife, I moved in a charmed circle. Our social life revolved around his wide group of gifted and beautiful friends, most of whom he had known since school, and many of whom he had slept with.
We'd been married two years and had our first child, Jack, when we went to a dinner party being held by one of Laurent's former girlfriends, Aurelie. I'd always been wary of her - Laurent had cheerfully told me she was a brilliant lover. He hadn't meant to hurt me. It was another example of his very French openness about sex. But the information left me feeling bruised and insecure. Heatwave, as I nicknamed her, opened the door that evening radiating sexual confidence, wearing a dress that made her perfect body look as if it had been wrapped in black bandages.
We sat at a long trestle table that ran down the middle of her garret flat and ate her magnificent food and sipped her carefully chosen wine. No one drank heavily. The guests, as I would soon realise, were anticipating more subtle pleasures. As the evening wore on, I noticed that a few men and women were peeling away from the table and moving into the next room.
As the Grand Prix was on, I assumed they were watching the highlights. Laurent was chatting to another male guest, so I wandered next door to see. When I opened the door, the scene that met my eyes left me reeling with shock. A handful of men and women were arranged on a bed, some naked, some clothed. One of the women, locked in an embrace with a male architect and a female psychiatric nurse, looked up at me and inquired warmly if I would like to join them.
I mumbled a polite 'no thank you' and fled the room. I felt like a child stepping into a grown-up world. I dimly remember that a man emerged and came over to whisper in Laurent's ear. Laurent shook his head, as if he were declining a cigar. Then he looked across at me and gave me a cosy smile. Even now, I don't know whether he'd been invited to join 'la partouze', as the French call these group trysts, but on the way home he made it clear that he was neither surprised nor shocked.
In fact, as I would soon discover, it was not unusual for the Parisian dinner party to end in this way. And although neither Laurent nor I ever joined in, I became used to it. What was uniquely French about that evening was the spontaneity of it all.
Nobody had to drink to oblivion, throw their keys on the table, or suggest a game of strip poker. Instead, this group of young, middle class couples had simply allowed the sexual charge to take over in a way that would be unthinkable in Britain.
It may be naive, but I don't think that Laurent was unfaithful to me, although if he had been, I would probably never have known because he would have been perfectly discreet. I never asked him. Bizarre as it might seem, it would have been rude. I myself was propositioned several times. The first was after we had been married a few years. I was One of Laurent's acquaintances, an auctioneer, asked me if I'd be interested in translating one of his catalogues.
He invited me out to an expensive restaurant off the Champs Elysee to discuss it. He was married, in his late 30s and not remotely attractive, and it never occurred to me to be suspicious. But, in the middle of a short lecture on modern art, he asked: 'Would you like to be my mistress?
I know a lovely hotel where we could meet once a week. You would enjoy yourself and I would spoil you. He looked at me as though I was utterly stupid.
What difference did my marriage make? By the rules of this very sophisticated game, it had been vulgar of me to mention it. Back home, I braced myself to tell Laurent what had happened. A British husband would have been outraged. But not Laurent. He was simply amused. Where's the fuss? How could he be so calm? But then I thought of his parents' marriage and the 'special French women don't just tolerate their husbands' affairs — they expect them We all know the French are, well, different.
But nothing could have prepared a very middle-class English girl for the soulless sexual carousel of life as a Parisian wife arrangement' they had. Every year Laurent's mother would spend six weeks in India and thus make room for her husband's mistress.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of nuance that's lost. There's a misperception, shall we say? I think the fact that the French are more willing to accept the notion that long-term monogamy might be difficult, they're willing to talk about it, they have maybe more expansive notions about matrimony -- a lot of them cohabitate rather than get married -- they're very free sensually, but all that does not mean that they're all happily screwing around with their neighbors and having extramarital affairs and getting away with it.
Infidelity is still the No. The myth is sort of perpetuated by the fact that of the hundreds of films that are produced in France, maybe we see three in the United States. And in two of them, everyone's fucking everyone else, right? The reality is they depict the French people as all, you know, having affairs. It basically always seems to be an element in every French film that ends up here. So you're keying in on the idea that the French are realistic about the challenges of long-term monogamy, not that infidelity isn't a concern.
She's French, but she's also a human being and has a heart and it gets broken and it doesn't matter how expansive your notion is about love and all that, it still hurts, right? We're very categorical and black and white. So we look at the French that way -- like you said earlier, we miss these nuances. First of all, even if the French are more willing to accept that infidelity is part of the human experience, you do it secretly.
It's a private thing you do. To suddenly trumpet it as a recreational, commercial opportunity for anybody who wants to do it, it's just vulgar. The French don't like it. They're not public, they're private. They're not confessional, they're discretional. And even though most French people are sort of lapsed Catholics, it's still a Catholic country. Marriage and the sanctity of the family are still really important. If you're going to have a lover, it's probably because you want to keep your family intact.
You'll have a lover and be satisfied and keep the family unit together. It's ironic, because we talk about family values in the United States, but we don't do anything to underwrite it. We have no social infrastructure, whereas there they do. According to the French women Piazza interviewed, avoiding the mundane is another key to keeping the romance alive.
That means eliminating small talk whenever possible and being present. Would a man talk about a broken toilet with his mistress? And above else, never be boring. Ever notice how French men look at their wives? The trick, many French say, is to stay mysterious.
Keep some things private! The topline for this data can be found here. Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings.
It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why.
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