WHAT CAN THE FRENCH TEACH US ABOUT EROTICISM - YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD!

 

PARIS REVIEW : THE HABITS OF HIGHLY EROTIC PEOPLE  by Susannah Hunnewell

TEASER :  "Love, for the French, is tied up with adultery," explained Marilyn Yalom, a feminist scholar at Stanford.  Marriage in the Middle Ages, at least in the upper classes, was a contract related to the exchange of rank and property. Love was, therefor, to be found outside the marriage, leading to the mythic French threesome: the husband, the wife, the mistress.

Studies show that Americans and French have similar rates of infidelity, but the French, "marathoners," have longer, and therefore fewer, affairs.  Americans are "sprinters," with more frequent but shorter trysts.

Older French women are considered sexual beings. A nonagenarian is to be respected as a repository of sexual history...  When Colette was nearing fifty, pointed out her biographer Judith Thurman, she had an affair with her sixteen year old stepson, among other men- children.*

* Missy here. Today this is no doubt considered to be illegal child abuse and can lead to arrest, trial, and prison.