The majority of both men and women would surely admit that a cheating partner would be a low point in their relationship.
But according to France’s most prominent female psychologist, wives should welcome a cheating hubby’s affair as part of a healthy marriage, reports lemondrop.co.uk.
Maryse Vaillant insists that, far from frowning upon the French man’s reputation for extra-marital activities, we should be thanking them for keeping a mistress, as it will improve the marriage.
In her new book Men, Love, Fidelity, Vaillant claims her aim is to “re-habilitate infidelity”.
“[Most] don’t do it because they no longer love them, on the contrary. They simply need breathing space. For such men, who are in fact profoundly monogamous, infidelity is almost unavoidable,” she writes.
Which leaves us wondering whether we’ve properly understood the term “profoundly monogamous”.
And can it really improve a marriage?
Well, apparently once French women accept that the “pact of fidelity is not natural but cultural” and realise that the boys just can’t help themselves, despite still being very much in love, they will find it “very liberating”.
And fidelity, argues Miss Vaillant, is no proof of love. No, these “pathological monogamists” simply lack the strength of mind to take a mistress, she says.
They are, she writes, “often men whose father was physically or morally absent… during their childhood. These men have a completely idealised view of their father and the paternal function.
“They lack suppleness and are prisoners to an idealised image of a man of duty.”