% l" T& m* L# ~The morning after Francois Mitterrand's funeral, Le Monde reported that the late president's mistress and illegitimate daughter stood by the grave alongside his wife and sons. That tableau has become famous internationally as proof that the French are not like you and me - at least when it comes to affairs of the heart. 2 I+ u5 {/ g" P7 X& K ( b( b, I) x6 ZIn fact, although French presidents seem to have an infidelity record approaching 100 per cent, they don't deserve to be pilloried alone. Even supposedly more prudish countries have had legendary philanderers, from England's Henry VIII to the US's John F. Kennedy.% E8 a9 I- A1 t# B V
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But ordinary middle-class adulterers are harder to pin down. Despite the French public's apparently unconcerned response to Mitterrand's infidelity, most French citizens are quite faithful spouses and partners. According to a 2004 national survey, just 3.8 per cent of married men and 2 per cent of women said they had had more than one partner in the past year (the best approximation of infidelity) - fewer than in similar surveys in the US and UK. Alain Giami, director of research at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, says the French are also more faithful than Americans during courtship, and that both marriages and affairs last longer in France than they do in the US. ”In France, a relationship that has a sexual component appears to involve a higher degree of commitment than in the US,” says Giami in a paper he co-authored. 9 _8 W2 e/ d8 t P. P6 U3 y$ X 2 q- F. H; k! ^9 k0 I/ ?# |7 A/ A2 ?4 [) X4 J
If France isn't the world capital of adultery, which country takes the prize? Global sex research is patchy and incomplete. In Russia, for instance, there's never been a national sex survey. Soviet governments barely permitted public discussions of sex, let alone the sort of poll that might prove comrades were engaging in banned activities such as extramarital affairs. And now religious groups there have taken up where their atheist communist forebears left off, putting pressure on Moscow not to fund any research related to sex.3 D) n2 C2 n1 j0 y. I
6 I- K! Y. r/ ]6 `& k, H8 o4 FOfficial sanction and funding are only the first hurdles. Contemporary researchers can't even agree on what to call infidelity. In Nigeria, they prefer the term ”sexual networking”, while Finnish scientists call affairs ”parallel relationships”. One French team was so eager to appear morally neutral it opted for what sounded like a term you might learn in an accounting course: ”simultaneous multi-partnerships”. # o% \+ q R. q4 m: Z - I+ Q i$ |- X, B, L9 ZThat's just linguistics; what exactly constitutes cheating is also up for debate. A poll in one South African magazine created separate categories for men who cheat and men who cheat while drunk. And where some surveys ask Americans about ”either vaginal or anal intercourse”, others include a much wider range of activities. A 1992 survey defined sex as a ”mutually voluntary activity with another person that involves genital contact and sexual excitement or arousal, that is, feeling really turned on, even if intercourse or orgasm did not occur”.3 i1 N- T: |7 z% O6 `. l7 J
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Although it is easy to laugh at tongue-tied researchers, it is actually possible to get a handle on not just how many people cheat, but how they do it. Infidelity may seem like a secret, lawless realm in which people make private decisions about how to behave, but affairs do have rules. These differ by country, even by neighbourhood, and they dictate the valid excuses for cheating and the emotional narrative of affairs. 0 f2 Q4 p$ ]4 j G) ]: o - r& r1 H1 V* G: jArt can show us these subtle distinctions: in American movies, having an affair usually means you're the villain, while in French films, it more often means you're the protagonist. I found, while travelling the world to research a book on the subject, that simple conversation can also whittle out the emotional rules. In Japan, a married woman was confused when I asked if she felt guilty about having a lover; the thought hadn't occurred to her, as she was otherwise meeting her obligations to her family. ) q& A( y; F4 Y8 S: P$ ?& X2 r 5 t0 l2 Q' D8 @ v7 ]6 `In Moscow, a family psychologist perked up when I brought up the subject of adultery. ”It's obligatory,” she said. Surely I had misunderstood her? ”No,” she insisted, ”I think it's wise,” and went on to explain that she had enjoyed a number of extramarital affairs during her own 15-year marriage - although lately she had cut back because she was so busy at work. Then she wrote her name in my notebook to make sure I got the spelling right.5 O0 H! W6 E' p3 q
, e7 [ @: U( |+ v' RSince the 1970s, Americans have grown more tolerant about most social issues related to sex. They are more accepting of homosexuality, of unmarried people living together, of divorce and of having sex and babies out of wedlock. But on the topic of extramarital sex they have become stricter. In 1973, 70 per cent of Americans said affairs are ”always wrong”. By 2004, the figure had risen to nearly 82 per cent. And in a Gallup poll in 2006, Americans said adultery was morally worse than either polygamy or human cloning. A comparison of attitudes in 24 countries found that Americans were tied with the Irish and Filipinos as the world's most prudish when it comes to infidelity.