DO THE FRENCH ACCEPT AFFAIRS and THEN STAY MARRIED TO PRESERVE THE EXTENDED FAMILY?

HELEN FRITH POWELL - WHAT LIVING IN FRANCE TAUGHT ME ABOUT MYSELF - SEX, MARRIAGE AFFAIRS

The author is British and is comparing France and Great Britain.

TEASER: The French notion of liberte is at the very heart of their attitude towards fidelity and marriage.  As Professor Micheal Worton, vice-provost and Fielden Professor of French Language and Literature at UCL, tells me: "The notion of freedom is deeply inscribed in the French psyche. Marrying and then misbehaving is seen as being free." Are they right? After all, their divorce rate is slightly lower than ours is - in Britain it is currently 45 per cent.

"The family is the main issue," says, Delphine, a French friend and mother of three. "The reason we accept the natural human urge to wander is that the family is more important than the individual, and when I talk about the family I mean the extended family; we are talking about 50 to 60 people. So if you break up the couple, you affect all those people. It's just not worth it."