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Adultery the key to a lasting marriage?
Matthew Campbell,
THE SUNDAY TIMES, Jan 4, 2010, 01.26am
PARIS: A prominent female psychologist has warmed the hearts of French men by shining an unusually sympathetic spotlight on the national sport in a book about adultery.
The church may not approve but Gallic womanisers will raise a glass to Maryse Vaillant for defending their right to stray now and then from the marital bed.
Fidelity, she says, is overrated. The occasional fling could even be good for a marriage, she proclaims.
It will no doubt reinforce France’s reputation as home of the sexual free-for-all. “To imagine that love always goes hand in hand with absolute fidelity will expose us only to painful disappointment,” says Vaillant, who adds that monogamy is not “natural” to humans.
Her book is aimed at “young women in love” who must “understand that mono-gamy sometimes conspires against a lasting relationship”. She could be accused of preaching to the converted.
Famously obsessed with seduction, the French have always seemed to put more effort into adultery than their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, and are also more tolerant of extra-marital affairs — a favourite theme of French literature and cinema — particularly when politicians are involved.
Where else would a leader get away with keeping a second family, including a mistress and an illegitimate daughter, at the expense of the state, as Francois Mitterrand, the last socialist president, did until his death in 1996.
From Felix Faure, the president who suffered a stroke in the Elysee Palace while being pleasured by his mistress in 1899, to Jacques Chirac, whose romantic energy was reflected in his nickname “three minutes, shower included”, sex has been considered a perk — if not a demonstration — of political power.
Nicolas Sarkozy kept alive the tradition by becoming the first president to divorce in office and marry a former supermodel in 2008.
Yet, according to Vaillant, author of Men, Love, Fidelity, tolerance for peccadilloes in the public arena should extend equally into the home. When men stray it does not mean that they do not love their wives, argues Vaillant, who divorced 20 years ago.
“Men dream of sex,” she says, but are able to separate sex from love more easily than women. “Some men,” she goes on, “can spend the afternoon in a hotel with their mistress and come home to dinner with the family without any feelings of guilt.” According to Vaillant, obsessive fidelity is as much of a plague in a marriage as serial infidelity and she quotes Josephine, one of her case studies, as an example.
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Matthew Campbell,
THE SUNDAY TIMES, Jan 4, 2010, 01.26am
PARIS: A prominent female psychologist has warmed the hearts of French men by shining an unusually sympathetic spotlight on the national sport in a book about adultery.
The church may not approve but Gallic womanisers will raise a glass to Maryse Vaillant for defending their right to stray now and then from the marital bed.
Fidelity, she says, is overrated. The occasional fling could even be good for a marriage, she proclaims.
It will no doubt reinforce France’s reputation as home of the sexual free-for-all. “To imagine that love always goes hand in hand with absolute fidelity will expose us only to painful disappointment,” says Vaillant, who adds that monogamy is not “natural” to humans.
Her book is aimed at “young women in love” who must “understand that mono-gamy sometimes conspires against a lasting relationship”. She could be accused of preaching to the converted.
Famously obsessed with seduction, the French have always seemed to put more effort into adultery than their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, and are also more tolerant of extra-marital affairs — a favourite theme of French literature and cinema — particularly when politicians are involved.
Where else would a leader get away with keeping a second family, including a mistress and an illegitimate daughter, at the expense of the state, as Francois Mitterrand, the last socialist president, did until his death in 1996.
From Felix Faure, the president who suffered a stroke in the Elysee Palace while being pleasured by his mistress in 1899, to Jacques Chirac, whose romantic energy was reflected in his nickname “three minutes, shower included”, sex has been considered a perk — if not a demonstration — of political power.
Nicolas Sarkozy kept alive the tradition by becoming the first president to divorce in office and marry a former supermodel in 2008.
Yet, according to Vaillant, author of Men, Love, Fidelity, tolerance for peccadilloes in the public arena should extend equally into the home. When men stray it does not mean that they do not love their wives, argues Vaillant, who divorced 20 years ago.
“Men dream of sex,” she says, but are able to separate sex from love more easily than women. “Some men,” she goes on, “can spend the afternoon in a hotel with their mistress and come home to dinner with the family without any feelings of guilt.” According to Vaillant, obsessive fidelity is as much of a plague in a marriage as serial infidelity and she quotes Josephine, one of her case studies, as an example.
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