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"  After we&amp;#039;d been going out for a year, Ben, my first serious boyfriend, went off to France for a few months. Before he left, he told me with studied gravitas that he thought we should see other people during his absence. I was devastated. It killed me to think that, on the eve on his trip, he was salivating over his upcoming peccadilloes. I didn&amp;#039;t want to see other people, but what could I say? I knew that insisting on monogamy made no sense; we were barely 21, and not even particularly in love. Still, I&amp;#039;m sure I cried and railed at him. But once he was overseas, I pulled myself together and managed to comply with his wishes. I slept with a couple of guys, including Nate, who became my next serious boyfriend. When Ben got back, I told him I&amp;#039;d met someone new. He was outraged. Outraged! He said he&amp;#039;d been faithful to me the whole time. I hope I didn&amp;#039;t laugh\u2014that would have been rude. But for sure my jaw dropped. &amp;quot;You were only faithful because you didn&amp;#039;t happen to get lucky!&amp;quot; He didn&amp;#039;t see it that way. For months afterward, he sent me wounded notes and angry, ironic gifts. Being jilted is wrenching, even if you&amp;#039;re the one who, like Ben, invited the possibility. The very thought of being cheated on can feel like a kick in the gut, as I&amp;#039;d noticed (not for the first time) the night before he left. But fidelity is funny that way. All the agreements and plans we make\u2014whether to be faithful or not\u2014have a habit of falling apart when they encounter the dice roll of reality. Part of the problem is that a paradox lies at the core of fidelity. Meeting someone new\u2014someone who makes your heart go slippery and then, oh lord, discovering that he likes you too\u2014feels nicer than just about anything on earth. Surely only the most self-denying ascetic would go through life refusing such pleasure. Yet this same bliss inflicts injury on whomever you&amp;#039;re involved with, and we want to protect the people we care about. So when we fall in love, we make promises and then do our best to avoid situations in which we might be inclined to break them. What if, instead, we could come up with a way of inoculating ourselves against the torment? For many years now, I&amp;#039;ve nursed a mild fixation with the &amp;quot;European marriage,&amp;quot; by which I mean a relationship in which discreet, tasteful philandering doesn&amp;#039;t threaten the central bond. I love to think that a couple could feel so utterly sure of each other&amp;#039;s devotion that dalliances wouldn&amp;#039;t faze them\u2014that a marriage could be so strong as to be impervious to the temptations of outsiders. I&amp;#039;ve craved that kind of self-confidence in love. It seemed to be on display at Fran\u00E7ois Mitterrand&amp;#039;s funeral, where his wife stood next to his mistress and illegitimate child. It also appears in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books: Because Erika Berger&amp;#039;s husband, Greger, has &amp;quot;the soul of an artist,&amp;quot; he &amp;quot;ac\u00ADcepted that she could love two men at the same time&amp;quot; and permitted her to spend weekends with her lover, Blomkvist. Actually, I rolled my eyes when I read that. Deep down, I&amp;#039;ve believed that there must be a catch\u2014someone must be in denial about the cost of such openness. I&amp;#039;m always looking for the flaw, the telling detail that proves one partner is downplaying his or her own jealousy, hurt, insecurity, anger. Perhaps, though, I&amp;#039;m more sensitive to these kinds of afflictions than most; I certainly went to great, dumb lengths to avoid them in my twenties and early thirties. At first, I did ordinary unwise things like reading journals and riffling through sock drawers, which only made me more suspicious. Later I tried dating incredibly nice guys (dull) and cads (exciting\u2014like falling onto a subway track); I tried breaking up with guys before they had a chance to cheat on me, or avoided getting serious altogether. Surprise: None of this worked. I got hurt, in staggering ways. Then I met my husband: a handsome, smart, talented, and trustworthy man. He flat-out repudiated the possibility of infidelity between us; with love and openness, he said, we&amp;#039;d avoid it. Eight years in, when our third child was an infant and I was overwhelmed by both the love and exhaustion of babies, he had\u2014you guessed it\u2014an affair. When he told me, I was wrecked. For months afterward, his confession made such a mess of our marriage, I would&amp;#039;ve rather been overseeing an orphanage of vomiting infants while suffering from, say, rickets. It was that ugly. Looking back, I marveled at the intensity of my suffering. It wasn&amp;#039;t news to me that such agony has a remarkably brief half-life. In my dating years, the crazy I-can&amp;#039;t-take-it-anymore misery of finding out that a boyfriend slept with someone else would be replaced with amused indifference within a few weeks or months. So why does it have to be so overwhelming in the moment? When Anne Sinclair, wife of the truly pathological womanizer Dominique Strauss-Kahn, appeared on the news a couple of years later, I was mesmerized. How did she manage to be so elegant and self-assured when asked about her husband&amp;#039;s debauchery? Where were the puffy eyes, the hangover pallor, the who-gives-a-shit sweatpants? Where did she find the nerve to look so sexy? And so I decided it was time to search for the formula for Europe&amp;#039;s no-fault marriages. The first thing I realized was that I had no clue what I was talking about. When I asked some European friends (from Scotland, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, and England) if they knew the phrase &amp;quot;European marriage,&amp;quot; one after another they shook their heads. When I told them what it was, most of them actually laughed out loud. Some insisted that it was especially absurd because Americans have more affairs than Europeans. I was dubious, but it turns out they are right, even with regard to the wanton French. In a 2007 book called Lust in Translation: Infidelity From Tokyo to Tennessee, Pamela Druckerman ranked some 40 countries from most faithful to least\u2014and concluded that the most reliable research indicates that the French and Italians cheat slightly less than Americans. In La Seduction, Elaine Sciolino, a New York Times correspondent, interviewed a sociologist who coauthored a study on couples in France and America and reported: &amp;quot;There are proportionately more long-term, committed, monogamous couples\u2014both married and not\u2014in France than in the United States. The French even seem to be more faithful to their extramarital lovers: their affairs last longer.&amp;quot; In fact, the number one way that marriages in Europe are different from those in the U.S. is that they&amp;#039;re increasingly uncommon. It&amp;#039;s not that Europeans are playing the field interminably, either. Couples may be monogamous and totally committed\u2014&amp;quot;they live together, have kids, buy houses, all the trappings,&amp;quot; as my friend Jeremy put it. They just do it without the pomp and paperwork. One explanation is that in countries where health care and education are largely state-sponsored, partners don&amp;#039;t depend on the benefits that come with each other&amp;#039;s jobs. Instead, families are alliances that are improvised according to the evolving needs of the partners. Time for a confession: I fell in love while trying to get a handle on this subject. With a book. Marriage, a History reads like a mystery despite being thick with facts\u2014anthropological, historical, and statistical. Its author, Stephanie Coontz, a professor of family studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, told me that Europeans have a habit of viewing marriage as one commitment among many. Right up through the eighteenth century, the prevailing notion was that &amp;quot;you need to be as good to neighbors and kin as to your spouse.&amp;quot; Accordingly, a love-based marriage was problematic: Overly besotted partners might neglect their duties to the community, church, farm, in-laws. Not that love and passion were forbidden; on the contrary, they were encouraged\u2014if pursued on the side. Says Coontz, &amp;quot;The French have a tradition that adultery is the purest form of love.&amp;quot; The Puritans brought this set of beliefs with them to the New World, but at the same time, they were consciously rejecting old-world social hierarchies, including the &amp;quot;loose marital morals and sexual mores&amp;quot; identified with the aristocracy. More important was the esteem for individuality that swept through the young nation. As social Darwinism became popular, Coontz says, &amp;quot;We came to believe that an individual can and should strike out on his own, deny all dependence on others. And to the extent that we deny our need for interdependence as a feature of social life, we tend to put it all within marriage.&amp;quot; My Swedish-German friend Annette, mother to two American-born teens, recalls wistfully that where she grew up, friendship was valued more than romance. &amp;quot;In the U.S., there&amp;#039;s this Disney idea that you just have to be pretty and sexy, and then a prince comes and loves you. You don&amp;#039;t have to be witty, clever, lovable, a good buddy.&amp;quot; Annette&amp;#039;s childhood idol wasn&amp;#039;t a princess or a pop star, but Pippi Longstocking. &amp;quot;She was cheeky and brave and lived by herself,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;and despite her naughtiness, she was the kindest, most thoughtful person.&amp;quot; Annette worries that even smart, ambitious girls here view tying the knot as the shining achievement of their lives, proof of their worth. Not surprisingly, the marriages they embark on can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. Having sacrificed outside interests and responsibilities to put their marriages first, they must convince themselves that the relationships deserve that privilege. Then there&amp;#039;s the American tendency to get caught up in convincing the world that our marriages are just great\u2014even when they&amp;#039;re only so-so. We cheat more than the Europeans, yet deny it, and we&amp;#039;re much more judgmental of both ourselves and neighbors when it occurs. Which sucks, frankly, if you&amp;#039;ve lived through an infidelity and come out the other side with your marriage intact. Even as my life with my husband got better, really and truly better, I was still keenly aware of my friends&amp;#039; solicitous, walking-on-eggshells curiosity, as if I were now in a special-needs relationship. It&amp;#039;s a feeling familiar to Kristin Duncombe, an American therapist who lives in France. She told me how she followed her husband, an Argentinian doctor with M\u00E9decins Sans Fronti\u00E8res, to Africa, where they both got involved with others. &amp;quot;My friends and family back in the States would say, `Dump the bastard,&amp;#039; `It&amp;#039;s over,&amp;#039; `Get rid of him,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Duncombe says. &amp;quot;Meanwhile, the attitude among my French friends was: Can&amp;#039;t you forgive him? and, `Courage! C&amp;#039;est difficile!&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; Before long, she and her husband realized they still loved each other; today they&amp;#039;re together and have two daughters. One thing that still puzzles me is the notion\u2014reiterated by friends as well as experts\u2014that living among people who are blas\u00E9 about adultery does little if anything to soften the blow if someone cheats on you. &amp;quot;While [French] people aren&amp;#039;t amazed to discover that their partner has cheated on them, they&amp;#039;re still devastated,&amp;quot; Druckerman writes. As L&amp;#039;Express once put it, adultery is &amp;quot;socially tolerated, individually unbearable.&amp;quot; Jealousy and rage are not mere cultural constructs, in other words. And that&amp;#039;s probably good. Because as rotten as jealousy feels, it&amp;#039;s worse to believe that you have to pretend it doesn&amp;#039;t exist. Indeed, this may be the downside to the French approach to fidelity\u2014at its dark extremes, it coerces wounded parties into censoring their emotions (or even fabricating counterfeit lives, as did Mitterrand&amp;#039;s beloved but illegitimate daughter). My English friend Jenny knows all about this. In her early twenties, she arranged to stay in Paris so she and her French boyfriend could be together. She arrived with stars in her eyes\u2014only to discover that he was living with a never-before-mentioned not-quite-ex girlfriend. &amp;quot;He said, `It&amp;#039;s no big deal,&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; she recalls. When she pointed out that his own mother referred to the ex as her daughter-in-law, the boyfriend brushed it off: &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t mean anything; she&amp;#039;s like a sister to me.&amp;quot; Jenny longed to stop being so prudish, but it felt like she had to muzzle her true feelings whenever she was with him. What&amp;#039;s so chic about that? Unless it&amp;#039;s what you&amp;#039;ve bargained for. The handful of people I&amp;#039;ve known who seemed prepared to face the trauma of adultery undaunted are those who married for money, status, power, or some combination thereof. One friend, a journalist, made an advantageous political alliance, marrying the editor of a top newspaper. She told me that she could put up with his indiscretions as long as he never, ever publicly humiliated her. A college friend who married an Italian has cultivated a convenient form of blindness. Her bubbling social life keeps her\u2014almost\u2014too busy to care. Which is to say that a woman (or, less commonly, a man) who marries for profit is expected to put up with her spouse&amp;#039;s misbehavior because she&amp;#039;s already gotten her end of the deal: the vacations in Gstaad, the house on Martha&amp;#039;s Vineyard, the spa weekends. By this reckoning, the &amp;quot;European marriage&amp;quot; has nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with economic and social class. In the end, I must admit that my curiosity about old-world philandering is probably just a distortion of our abiding national obsession with the French capacity to get away with anything: Eat triple cr\u00E8me cheese without getting fat, have children without turning into insipid mommies, turn 50 without losing sexiness, cheat without feeling the pain.  After my husband&amp;#039;s affair, my friend Cynthia said, &amp;quot;The great news is you have a get-out-of-jail-free card. It&amp;#039;s in the bank. You can use it whenever you want to cheat on him.&amp;quot; I wasn&amp;#039;t so sure. Tit-for-tat behavior isn&amp;#039;t something I generally aspire to. And sex is far too lovely and momentous to engage in out of the niggardly motive of revenge. But as the months went by, I saw that she was right about the free-from-jail part of it. I&amp;#039;d spent the first years of my marriage transforming my trust in my husband into a kind of fortress to protect me from getting hurt. I felt safe but entombed. It turns out that a fortress, yes, is an awful lot like a jail. And I was so hunkered down in there that I had begun betraying him too, in my way\u2014by not even bothering to try to cherish and adore him anymore. I had become blind to the other virtues of our relationship. Once I stopped believing our love was built entirely on fidelity, I felt less anxious about the daily ebb and flow of our affection and began to appreciate the small, ordinary things that knit us together\u2014the pleasure we take in each other&amp;#039;s opinions; the passion and brevity of our fights; our support for each other&amp;#039;s dreams, whether to go for a walk this afternoon or pursue a new career next year. Still, if I ever do cash in my get-out-of-jail card, I know where I&amp;#039;ll go. Poor Ben&amp;#039;s experiences notwithstanding, Americans have an illustrious history of heading off to France to get laid. As Sciolino writes, &amp;quot;There is anecdotal evidence to support the notion that France is an exceptionally good sexual hunting ground, especially for deprived Americans, male as well as female.&amp;quot; If I don&amp;#039;t succeed, at least I&amp;#039;ll be happy to admit that I went down trying, with the knowledge that failure to cheat is not the same thing as fidelity. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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