François Hollande’s affair ...[ 3377 ]

Inside Hollande’s love triangle

First published: Sat, Jan 18, 2014, 01:00

The French are entertained by the antics of President François Hollande, but will his new lover, Julie Gayet, become first lady, and will Valérie Trierweiler, his spurned former mistress, seek retribution?

Old flame: François Hollande with Valérie Trierweiler. Photograph: Ian Langsdon/EPA

 

It wasn’t supposed to happen under a Hollande presidency. When Nicolas Sarkozy made photographers the eager witnesses of his love affair with Carla Bruni, François Hollande criticised “this show-off president who makes voyeurs of us all”.

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Yet France has again became a nation of voyeurs, since Closer magazine published its seven-page dossier on Hollande’s “secret love” on January 10th. What the French refer to disparagingly as la presse pipol has boosted sales of mainstream magazines, all of which lead this week with the love triangle between the 59-year-old president, his 48-year-old mistress of nine years, Valérie Trierweiler, and the 41-year-old they’re calling France’s “second lady”, Julie Gayet.

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The story seems to confirm the stereotype of French infidelity. But is it infidelity when Hollande has never married, and both women were long separated from their husbands? Is it even particularly French, when one considers the escapades of, for example, John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton? What could be more “normal” than for a frumpy, ageing politician to succumb to the charm of a younger, adoring woman?

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• Hollande’s political future is likely to be decided by the economy, not his affair

That said, there are profound differences of attitude between the French and les anglo-saxons towards desire, sex and marriage. In her 2012 book How the French Invented Love, the US academic Marilyn Yalom cites a poll on whether marriage can succeed without vibrant sex. Only 34 per cent of French respondents said yes, compared with 84 per cent of Americans. 

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“A Frenchman or woman without desire is considered defective, like someone missing the sense of taste or smell,” Yalom writes.

The French invented courtly love in the 12th century, as an upper-class pastime that emphasised physical pleasure and recognised women’s desire and emotions. Marriage was not part of the picture. In subsequent centuries the French found that maintaining marriage through extramarital affairs allowed them to preserve wealth and social ties.

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Yet for all the pretence of sophistication and open-mindedness, infidelity still hurts. In his press conference at the Élyssée Palace in Paris on Tuesday, Hollande referred to “painful moments” in his personal life. He broke the news to Trierweiler himself, acknowledging the truth of rumours that had been circulating for the past year about his affair with Gayet.

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Not since Napoleon told Josephine he was divorcing her for the Austrian emperor’s daughter has a first lady taken the news so badly. Trierweiler is still in hospital at Pitié-Salpêtrière – not Val-de-Grâce, where presidents are cared for – reportedly in “a state of extreme nervous fatigue”.