What I Learned from the French About Extramarital Affairs

They were supposedly in “open marriages,” but the truth was more complicated

In 2023, I went through a phase of almost exclusively dating men in open marriages. I also went through a phase of living in France.

What I learned is that the French have a different approach to infidelity than Americans do — and it comes with a different set of pros and cons.

Is it better? Worse? I’m curious to know what you think.

Here’s what I discovered:

1. “Open” in France Is Not “Open” in American Terms

The first married man I met up with in Paris reassured me that his wife both knew about and was okay with his affairs. I’d dated a number of married men at this point where this was the case, so I took him at his word.

Later, while we were kissing in my bed, I commented that if I continued doing what I was doing it would leave a mark on his collar bone.

He pulled away. “Do not mark me,” he said, turning very serious.

Suddenly I was certain: “Your wife doesn’t know.”

He lay back and stared at my ceiling. “She doesn’t know details. She knows I do this, but she does not want to see the evidence.”

I pressed him: How did he know she knew?

“Because we’ve talked about it. Because at one point it became a problem.”

I wanted more details.

He sighed and explained that he had once fallen in love with one of his paramours:

“It affected my life with my wife and our children. She put her foot down. I had to let the other woman go. It was very hard, but I did it. Now our arrangement is that I can do this, but I can never let it affect our life together.”

I chewed on that for a long while. On one hand, this man and his wife had already weathered what is arguably the single greatest challenge of an open marriage. On another, the situation sounded suspicious to me — was his wife really on board?

“Does your wife have her own affair partners?” I asked him.

He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know,” he told me after a moment of reflection. “If so, she’s never let it affect our life together or our family.”

“It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of transparency there,” I told him.

He made a face. “Transparency is for Americans.”

2. For the French, Infidelity Isn’t a Tragedy: It’s the Norm

And you don’t need to just take my word for it: according to research, less than half of French people even think infidelity is immoral — 47 percent to be exact.

Think about that for a minute.

That’s staggering. It’s not that 53 percent of French people have affairs, it’s that 53 percent of French people don’t even think there’s anything wrong with having an affair.

By contrast, only 16 percent of Americans think it’s OK to have an affair. And we know that far more than 16 percent of Americans have them anyway.

I can only wonder at how many French folks do.

3. “Never Leave Your Wife for the Butterfly”

One younger French man I dated was in a more American-style “open” arrangement with his long-term girlfriend. When she called him during one of our dates, he volunteered that he was with me. Her reason for calling? To get advice on seducing another man.

This young man explained to me that in France, it was understood that every man had a butterfly. And he said that fifty years ago, it was understood that you never left your wife for the butterfly.

“You only have the butterfly because you are married to your wife,” he said.

“If you leave your wife for the butterfly, it’s a recipe for unhappiness. Because the butterfly is a normal woman, too, and you will learn this if you leave your wife for her.”

“But nowadays people have gotten confused,” he continued. “They think they will be happier with the butterfly than their wives, and so they ruin their families and their lives.”

I was glad to see that he supported his partner in having “butterflies” of her own.

It made me wonder though. Have the French landed on something in acknowledging that certain types of love and excitement can only exist in the narrow, compartmentalized, and often secret space of an affair?

And by acknowledging this, do they preserve greater stability in their marriages than Americans who have affairs?

4. Feel It All and Do It Anyway

At one point I stayed with a woman in the south of France whose husband had passed away. In talking about him, she alluded to his affairs. She seemed (understandably) resentful and bitter about that aspect of their relationship.

At the same time, on more than one occasion I observed her bring home a man in the evening — a man I quickly found out was married to another woman.

Though on one hand I judged her for this, on the other I saw in her a strange approach to the unsolvable sad math of life:

There is nothing in this world that can make you consistently happy. You will suffer. Make sure you also seek joy where you can find it.

Perhaps in their approach to the issue of fidelity/infidelity, the French have found a way to have their cake and eat it too, albeit with an inevitable side of bitterness and heartache.

But is it possible that in these arrangements, accepting the bitter with the sweet, they have found a way to live more fully than the rest of us?

Is it possible that the secrecy they often maintain around their affairs lends an additional layer of beauty and strange magic to the affair? And could the combination of both accepting affairs and keeping them so compartmentalized lead to less impact on their families than affairs often have in American culture?

While I am still chewing on these questions (and others), I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits all approach to non-monogamous relationship models. And if I’ve learned anything from the French, it’s that “ethical” non-monogamy may look different in different cultures.