Reverse Immigrant: Not Italian Enough For Italians, Not American Enough For Americans

Explores the challenges of reverse immigration and cultural belonging, detailing my experience as someone caught between two worlds at midlife. Reverse immigration is an increasingly common phenomenon, but the emotional and cultural complexities faced by individuals in this position often go unspoken. It blends personal storytelling with universal themes of cultural integration, alienation, and self-discovery in the context of Italian social structures, making it relatable for a wide audience.

My heart pattered softly as butterfly wings as I stepped off the train in Milan Centrale. I visited Italy many times, but now, I came to plant myself as an Italian American dual citizen. Not as a seedling, those years were gone and I was fully formed, but rather as a reverse immigrant to propagate myself like a stem cutting in the soil of my ancestors who were driven out of Italy at the turn of the century by grim hunger and desparation, for a better life in America, toward something sharp and brilliant, like the glitter of a sword. I can only imagine what they would say about this decision exactly a hundred years after they risked their lives, suffered stinging prejudices, and did the backbreaking labor that built America, only watch me undo it in a single six-hour plane flight, but I had good reasons. The United States was no longer the country I grew up in and I don’t think they would recognize it either. American felt stifling to me, like an old basement crammed with relics from my past I no longer found useful. In Italy, I was rebuilding myself, personally and professionally, which did not translate into the life of my country. Perhaps they will forgive me because I returned to the motherland for the same reasons they went America, for the promise of a better life.

On an ordinary Tuesday in Paris, I received the second email in two years to teach English Language and Literature at an international school in Beddizole, a small town in the Lombardy region of Italy, just outside Brescia. Since leaving the United States with only the clothes on my back, I had lived in Paris for four years, but found it increasingly exasperating. Paris was beautiful, but the honeymoon seemed to end where French cynicism began. It has been said that the French live paradise, but they think they are living in hell, and it started to feel that way for me. Like a job. My language skills were steadily improving, and my quality of life was quite good compared to the United States, but I could not locate the promise of a joie de vivre, living joyously. Paris is a private club, and I was not invited. I was suffering from a mutated strain of Paris Syndrome, the disappointment I felt that my experience was not what I expected.

Since my “gray divorce” my motto has been to say “yes” to everything and so, I said yes, to this repeated job offer, even though I had already accepted a university position at a private French university. Once more, I packed my bags (I felt like I had one more move left in me) and hopped on a train to Milan, and then another to Brescia. The teaching job turned out to be a disaster that ended abruptly on Christmas Eve when I was summarily fired without just cause, but I’ve faced bigger dragons than this before in New York. During those cold and dark January weeks, I picked myself up despite the horror of my predicament and found better teaching work and I am thriving. Italy may not be perfect, but the Italians make me feel welcome, unlike the French, and that has made all the difference.

I am an Italian dual citizen and strangely enough, Italian-Americans invariably identify as Italian but we aren’t, at least not in the way that Italians understand it. To them, I am American with Italian roots, and there’s a difference. It should have triggered an identity crisis, but it didn’t. Still, I don’t feel American enough for Americans and not Italian enough for Italians. On the other hand, I’ve heard some Italians say I’m more Italian than they are because I have retained and understand the Italian traditions of a hundred years ago that they have not. It seems the question of cultural identity cuts both ways. More than anything else I regret, yet had nothing to do with, is that I cannot speak Italian fluently (yet). Hunger drove my ancestors in a hurry like gathering clouds to America and with it came a clear sky of gratitude which they expressed by insisting my parents speak English. This gratitude, quickened by pride, resulted in a great language loss by me and a daily source of embarrassment. I was raised by Italians and I know many Italian ways, attitudes, behaviors and even a handful of Neapolitan words, but I do not speak the language very well (yet) and so, to Italians, I’m not really Italian. The ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (bárbaros) meant “babbler.” To the Greek ear, someone who did not speak the Greek language babbled, producing the onomatopoeic sound “bar bar bar” which became bárbaros, and later barbaria in Latin. They thought, if you do not speak my language, you are not one of us and you are a barbarian. This gaping deficiency places me squarely in that cultural netherworld where I am neither Italian enough for the Italians nor American enough for the Americans. At the moment, I try to cover my shame with humor and say that I speak advanced babytalk, but I am diligently taking Italian lessons to rid myself of that indignity. I try to be gentle with myself and remember that neuroplasticity decreases with age and I am learning as fast as I can. Italians think I am missing out on a lot, and maybe they’re right, but I’ve had enough deep conversations in my life to know there isn’t much that’s new in the way of everyday discussion. Secretly, I don’t mind these moments of my zen silence where I can observe the locals in their natural habitat. It’s my guilty pleasure of maturity and the torrent of transcript chatter, like prices are too high, can’t believe she did that, this weather is awful, I’m so tired, I hate my job, my boss is a ass, and so on, is often predictable. That’s not to say that my daily struggles as an expat immigrant can be compared to someone who is a political, climate, or war refugee immigrant. I cannot know what level of trauma or culture shock they have experienced, what unexpressed grief and loss they have endured, but I do feel the occasional waves of guilt for leaving my kids (who are now adults and have their own life and actually applaud my lifestyle). Today, I regret nothing and I am content with my choices.

At the same time, choices often come with a price and the promise of a better life has cost me my old one. Losses add up incalculably, like attempting to number the waves on the shore of a limitless sea. In the six years I’ve lived abroad, in Paris and now Brescia, I have crossed one ocean and six time zones. I have lived in two different countries and six different apartments.  Missed three weddings, four funerals, and two christenings I could not attend, and dozens of birthdays. Lived through a global pandemic. Received four COVID vaccines. Been scammed twice. One, which required me to file a law suit. Filled out one serious police report and one minor. I’ve been in the hospital twice. Locked myself out once. I’ve cried in the shower hundreds of times. Missed four Christmases and Thanksgivings, and five Mother’s Days. I also missed attending my daughter’s college graduation in person but that was because of the pandemic. Heard about three divorces. Acquired two national health care cards and lost my American driver’s license because it expired. Been told it was not possible when it was, too many times to count. Experienced countless days feeling lost and lonely. Felt confused and anxious, not always, but often enough. I have been treated many, many times like I am less intelligent than I am because I’m American until I was able to prove differently. I’ve made lots of new friends, good, fiercely loyal friends, and then they moved away or I did. Every day I can’t express myself the way I want to and I feel like I am much smarter in English, so much funnier but those around me will have no idea. For one year, I thought I knew how to ask where the toilet was in Italian, only to discover I had been saying it incorrectly all along. Every day I have had to relearn how life works. I’ve had some of the most intense relationships, sexual experiences, and emotional feelings of my life. I have had four teaching jobs and been fired from one without just cause which is really scary as a woman, alone and broke in a foreign country. I have had a complete change of career from Intercultural Trainer and Expat Career Coach to English Language and Literature professor. I’ve gone to uncountable resturants, bars, café, concerts, clubs, and dance events along the Seine. Drank hundreds of bottles of wine. Traveled as far as Norway and as far south as the Greek Islands. I’ve done dozens of things I thought I would never do but, to take a line from Fight Club, “It is only when you lose everything that we are free to do anything.” I cannot tell you when is the right time to take action to change your life, or leave the country, but as Dorris Lessing said, “ Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now, the conditions are always impossible.”

I am American by birth, Italian by blood and residency, but at sixty-two and divorced with two grown children, I am comfortable enough in my own skin to accept these, and many other scratchy certainties. Eventually, I will become more proficient and perhaps the Italians will feel more comfortable with me because at the moment, they don’t know what to do with me. There is no model for a modern, middle-aged woman who knows she has another another life in her, especially in a country like Italy where ageism and sexism are prevalent, where women often have a less power and agency despite the veneer of education, occupation, or income.

Old ways are fossilized in stoney tradition. A Sicilian friend of mine whose family immigrated with their four kids from Sicily to the States when he was about ten, told me, nothing ever changes in Italy, especially not Italian ways. I didn’t quite fully grasp what he meant at the time, perhaps because I was young and couldn’t comprehend the idea that nothing could change because I was raised in the newest, new world, Southern California, a place synonymous with change. To him, Italy was the “old country” while I perceived it as a dazzling completeness of beauty, but the example he gave was simple: that Italian farmer has been drawing water from a well for the last hundred years, and that’s the way he will continue to get his water for the next hundred. Maybe it was a bit of an exaggeration, but he wasn’t wrong. For example, when I told him I received my Italian citizenship ID card, he cracked, ha! And it’s still issued on flimsy paper I bet, and then I began to understand what he was trying to tell me about the well. The Italian ID card has been in paper form for the last eighty seven years and was one of the last to go modern in the EU. The project of an electronic identity card began in 1997 and is finally a plastic card with an electronic chip. Getting things done here can feel as slow as waves rolling in, long and lazy, like sea-worn travelers.

Perhaps what I represent to Italians, and my students in particular, is uniquely made of Italian American DNA; a photo negative of their unmet dreams spirited by Italian Americans like Fiorello La Guardia, Mario Cuomo, and Giannini who rebuilt San Francisco and created the Bank of America; Geraldine Ferraro, Madonna, and Nancy Pelosi, sons and daughters of immigrants who built their dreams in the United States for the sake of others. There are second acts in America and this is an example of how mine is playing out in Italy. Maybe it’s my third.

Hemingway said there are all kinds of hunger. Memory is a hunger. Perhaps I was headstrong and foolish to return to my ancestral home, but I was driven for as long as I can remember to Italy because I had an insatiable appetite to satisfy the strong memory of family experiences that accompanied me all my life like an unwavering, loyal friend; driven by a malnourished soul few Americans can comprehend. On the other hand, I inherited the nourishing quality of Neapolitan resourcefulness: Arrangiarsi meaning to “make do” and figure it out yourself, and this character trait, whether born of personality or genetics or both, has served me well as an expatriate immigrant. Americans would call it as self-reliance, but whenever I am suffering from the mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion that comes from the stress and frustration of a life in significant transition, I lean on these attributes and the samsonite strength of my ancestors, rather than scattering it in agitation, from people who courageously crossed an ocean when it was unlikely they strayed far from their own villages, like Margliano or Sciscianno. Relatives who suffered from the tyranny of poverty and hunger; a desperate force that hurled them on to ships, leaving everyone and everything they once knew, behind. Once, when I was much younger, I asked my maternal grandfather, Saverio Mascia, why he left Italy and he tilted his head down a little mournfully at the imaginary dirt of his youth, swiping his shoe back and forth like a weary windshield wiper and told me, because there was nothing to eat. In the silence between us, I sensed there was trauma in that reply and I’ve probably recieved some part of that unwelcome inheritance. He moved back and forth frequently between Chicago and California duirng my childhood, like an indecisive waiter, unable to commit to either place for very long. Perhaps he was searching for a “geographic solution” in the expectation that moving would cure the profound melancholy that haunted him.

I come from a long line of Italian farmers. Saverio or “Sam” was a farmer and his father was a farmer, and so on, as far back as I could document in the geneological descriptions. As a landless, post-unification Mezzogiorno peasant, life offered up a chronic plate of hardship, exploitation, and violence, particularly around the “triangle of death” outside Naples of Acerra, Nola, and Marigliano, the latter where my grandmother, Pasqualina was born. The soil was barren, yielding little; malnutrition and disease were prevalent during the Great Wave of Immigration between 1880 – 1924 when nearly a million Italians came to the United States, half of them between 1900 – 1010 when my ancestors came[1] which now makes up the nation’s fifth largest ethnic group in America. The reasons people immigrate are ususally this dire, or worse, but in my case although I was not starving, it felt that way, emotionally. Most migrants and refugees leave because they are desperate or live in fear, or both; forcably displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence, and unspeakable human rights violations. People who are desperate do desperate things because death is like a predator, chasing them from behind, and instead of fighting, they flee from it, too terrified to fight back. I left because I was tired of the quarreling at home, with the fallen ideals of my country, and a dozen other reasons strewn on the floor but my exodus was a choice and I believed I could, as a divorced, middle-aged woman on a fixed income, make a lateral move that would stabilize, if not improve, the standard of living I was accustomed to, but I could not explain this concept adequately enough to my American friends and family. I suffered from exulansis, the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness. And, I refused to be buried in New Jersey.

Sam arrived, first at Ellis Island. I know that because I saw his name commemorated on the immigrant wall. He continued on to Chicago, presumably because he had friends and distant relatives there, not unlike me when I first moved to Paris before coming to Italy, but we American expats don’t congeal into the jellied “little” enclaves like other relationship-oriented people. We are more individualistic and less likely to form tribes into a coherent diaspora abroad because that’s how we’re wired. He was unskilled, illiterate, and did not speak English. I am educated, skilled, and don’t speak much Italian (yet), but my advantages don’t make the foreign feel more any more familiar, they are only less worse, and cultural adaptation takes time. The difference is, he could become American and I am unsure if I will, or want, to become Italian. Perhaps I will be Italian-ish. He dug ditches and laid labyrinthian pipes at the feet of Chicago’s big shoulders. I reinvented my career as an English Language and Literature teacher, however we both felt the need to escape; for him, from a semi-feudal society that increasingy held little in the way of opportunity; for me, from a country that has veered off the rails into casino capitalism and gone mad politically. (Under Italian law, I have the right to asylum from an undemocratic country!) According to Freedom House, the America has experienced a 16-year decline in global freedom. The US score in Freedom in the World fell by 11 points on a 100-point scale in the decade from 2010 to 2020, with an accelerated deterioration of 6 points during the presidency of Donald Trump. In Freedom in the World 2022, which covers the events of 2021, gains in the US score were counterbalanced by declines and the total remained at 83. That put the country on par with Panama, Romania, and South Korea, and about 10 points below historical peers like Germany and the United Kingdom.[2] His thickly calloused hands built Chicago’s infrastructure and I unveil a new world perspective to my gregarious Italian students who are unintentionally ensnared in the old world. At the end of the immgration wave, he was one of five million Italians who came to America and I am one of five million American expatriates who live scattered around the world, one of the sixteen-thousand living in Italy.

Back and forth, Italians and their descendents have left Italy, settled elsewhere, and some, like me, have returned to the motherland, by a zionian pull so strong that some of us must go back, but it is not a paradise, and it is my impression that one day, this gorgeous and beloved country may become one of the least ethnicnally identifiable, culturally in the world[3]. It is rowing upstream against a strong downward current towards an epic demographic crisis; a perfect storm of an aging population, declining birth rates, and a brain drain. The aging population is called the “Silver Tsunami” with over half the population over 45 and one of the world’s longest lifespans. The low “fertility trap” or negative birth rate is twelve deaths for every 7 births. The fuga di cervelli or “brain drain” is the working age population leaving to be employed in other countries, however 30-50 percent of them returned (called the ritornati) so the trend is positive. The millenial exodus could be caused by many factors, but perhaps the most obvious is the lack of opportunity, employment, and chronic bureaucracy; a slow justice system and cumbersome tax regulations. However, like many other countries thanks to the pandemic, Italy has attempted to “trampoline” to become more modern and competitive. As a teacher, I hope I am part of this effort by exposing students to as many new ideas and perspectives as possible; to prevent them from becoming part of the fossilized Italy trifecta. That, and phrasal verbs.   

Italy is breathtaking, but this mozzafiato is a double-edged sword, preserved, or petrified, across landscapes, architecture, monuments, and basilicas, yet at the same time, it reflects the paralysis to change social systems, especially around income inequality and deep-seated sexism[4]. For Italians who are reluctant to change, it took, and will probably only take again sadly, another authoritarian figure like Mussolini (who built roads, bridges, and buildings) to retool the nation's economy. One look at the architecture of those fascist style buildings he built during his dictatorship, large and symmetric with sharp non-rounded edges, will tell you that this was revolutiony. One day, as I stood in the middle of the grand Piazza Dell’Loggia in Brescia where I live, an Italian from Udine told me, look at the difference between this post office he built and the old palazzo architecture beside it. To Italians at that time, this was New York City. It represented both innovation and a reverential nod to their Roman roots, and it was way ahead of its time compared to the medieval architecture that had stood like vigilant centurions for centuries. He was the future. They succumed to his authority not because they liked his politics so much as they needed someone like him to get things done. I never thought of it that way. Perspective is always about who’s telling the story.

To underscore this notion that change happens slowly in Italy, it was only recently in 1861 that it became a country. It is second only to the United States (1776) as one of the newest old countries to be formed which could not, and would not have thought to, unify itself. It is a combination of nearly 20 nations states that shared neither language (for the most part) customs, nor tradition. Italians were accustomed to living next to, but not in harmony or unity with, other Italians. They could, however, rely on two things: family and di arrangiarsi, and barring that, particularly in the South, below Naples including Sicily, the mafia stepped in to fill the void of law and order to provide “protection” where the state did not. The forgotton South took matters, for better or for worse, into their own hands when it came to law and order or economic prosperity until recently. Change happens at a gacial pace, a testiment to the often obdurate and defiant Italian mentality. It’s fitting to note that I live in the heart and soul of old Brescia, next to a Roman temple dating back to the first century AD during the Roman Empire. What’s important is that there are pre-Romanesque ruins below that site from the Bronze and Iron Age. Italian ways seem as old as their layered history. That’s not to say they’re not spontaneous which is a contradiction to what I’ve observed, and they are, but I think their spontenaity is born as a reaction to this rigidity, rather than an anomaly and they can be surprisingly flexible when it comes to la dolce vita or living life in the moment, enjoying the sweetness of doing nothing, which I’ve become spectacularly good at. If Italians, or other cultures, contain contraditions, then they contain the multitudes of humanity, of both the ideal cultural values and the possible negative perceptions.

What will happen to Italian culture and identity as a result of their history and current transition into the 21st century is anyone’s guess during this demographic winter. Who is Italian, what makes an Italian, or Italian American? What will Italy or Italians look like in the future given the current immigration dilemmas and short-termed solutions, like the 1 Euro housing scheme desgined to attract people, foreigners mostly, to revive abandoned hilltop villages, who can tell, but I suspect they will not be solved by selling off real estate which implies a doubt in the country’s ability to get at the root of the problem, systemically. When there is a vacuum of decision-making power, what takes the place may not be in the country’s best interest and it can be vulnerable to a cultural, socio-political malware that has nothing to do with the ideals, identity, or interests of Italians. Like the dinosaurs, Italy may look like it’s about to become extinct but perhaps the glimmer of hope may lay in their fossilization, in the amber of the ritornati; the returning millenials and Italian Americans who embody the ideals and work ethic they were able to demonstrate and execute successfully elsewhere, without the deterrant nuissance of tradition.

The contradiction that struck me most with remarkable surprise, was what I saw so clearly in myself for the first time; how Italian I was and was not. The Southen Italian I am is a dutiful mix of compliance to food, music, and the dialect of my immigrant ancestors from a hundred years ago. A time capsule preserved by sheer force of my memory’s carabiners to things which no longer exist particularly in the modern, dynamic, energetic North. A southern persona that is grossly mythologized by superstition (like the corna, cornetto, and malocchio) and of course crime, an idea that author and former Minister of Finance of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis has corrected because while the South is corrupt, it is low-level corruption, cheap corruption, whereas the north practices industrial scale, systematic, beautifully designed, high-tech corruption[5]. It was a staggering surprise for me during the entry phase that began with shock and ended with forelornness. I was not who I thought I was, ethnically. On the other hand, there is also a smugness I feel because I know, just as the arhictecture and Italian ways are set in stone, so is my Italian-ness. To return to my roots and to embrace its traditions. Italians may feel a sharp pang of regretful wonder at my particular species of Italian American, but I’d like to think I might be that minuscule grain of sand to an unsuspecting oyster, one that could contribute a slight pearl of knowledge and experience to my Italian students who might think differently about their world because I exposed them to the new one. Perhaps to prevent it from becoming “Like white sepulchers, beautiful on the outside but filled with dead men’s bones on the inside.”

Notes:

1.     https://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/usim_wn_noflash_5.html#:~:text=Italian%20emigration%20was%20fueled%20by,malnutrition%20and%20disease%20were%20widespread.

2.     https://italicsmag.com/2020/12/01/why-millennials-are-moving-back-to-italy/

3.     https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-italy-fde87cd63c7c388f2684cd0450b882f4

[1]https://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/usim_wn_noflash_5.html#:~:text=Italian%20emigration%20was%20fueled%20by,malnutrition%20and%20disease%20were%20widespread

[2] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2022/global-expansion-authoritarian-rule/reversing-decline-democracy-united-states

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/07/italy-births-far-right-demographic-winter?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/16/any-victim-is-a-liar-sexual-violence-scandals-in-italy-expose-deep-seated-sexism

[5] https://fb.watch/nhbdwB9tQq/

DECONSTRUCTING THE FEMALE POLITICIAN IN AMERICAN CULTURE

If the United States empowers American women, where are the women Presidents in America? When Carly Fiorina was questioned about her elect-ability, I couldn’t help but wonder, while Americans believe in female empowerment, where are the empowered women in politics?

The invisible hand of culture may be driving America’s inconsistent attitudes toward women when you consider 63 of 142 nations studied by the World Economic Forum have regularly elected women as head of state, except the United States. Electing a woman president may have less to do with America’s sincere wish for a woman president than our hidden cultural tendencies and expectations. Invisible dimensions such as our beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that account for how we make decisions; how we communicate and behave.

 Culture is why people do what they do, based on where they live.  Edward Hall said culture hides more than it reveals and strangely enough, what it hides, is most effectively hidden from its owners. While intercultural understanding, a branch of anthropology, has gone from the the field to the boardroom, I'm putting it in the living room for everyone, because knowing what makes you tick is a birthright. 

American politics presents a “president’s paradox”. It’s not that we won’t elect a woman president, we can’t because we are highly “competitive” culture. American is unlike France, Denmark, Britain, India, or the Philippines that have greater “feminine” or “quality of life” tendencies, especially in the context of leadership. Political (and religious) choices are not exactly personal preferences. They are more the result of cultural values, not the cause of them. You may think you are solely responsible for your political (or religious) choices, but in fact those decisions have already been made for you, by the invisible hand of culture.

Culture is the result of a series of historical events that have occurred in a particular geography. For Americans, the events of our past have driven us to be the best, often at the cost of what's best. To be Competitive means striving for the best we can be, or the best there is. This invisible dimension of culture is a key driver in our decision-making process and partly accounts for why a we have yet to elect a woman for president. We may say we support the idea (in theory), but our we can’t close the deal because somewhere, way in the back of our collective cultural unconsciousness, the expectations for a Commander in Chief are of someone perceived to be “tough, assertive, and competitive,” so through no fault of our own, women don’t fit that description. These are just some of culture’s consequences.

When it comes to the invisible forces determining the distribution of emotional roles between the genders, the United States (and Japan, Mexico) falls on the Masculine side of the spectrum where emotional gender roles are clearly distinct. Men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success which is the hallmark of competition. We live to work, unlike other cultures. This hidden driver determines how one should feel as a boy or a girl, by the majority of the population so that gender bias may not necessarily be a choice, but an unconscious one we have begun to overcome.

The Masculinity/Femininity cultural indicators explain assertive or modest interactive styles. Women and societies that embody feminine-like qualities are characterized as Feminine when emotional and gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life. For example, France and Nordic countries tend to fall on the nurturing side of the spectrum; caring for others and providing a social safety net. For them, maintaining a healthy work-life balance and liking what you do (Feminine) is how they measure success compared to the American definition of what it means to be a “winner” or the “best” (Masculine).

Consensus is also a characteristic. For example, France is dialogue culture in contrast to the United States because decisions are made through involvement which explains their historical role in diplomacy. The French language also contained the necessary components for reaching diplomatic consensus, most notably with the use of the third person singular “on”. If there was a crisis, blame was place on neither you nor me, but “on” (someone). They strive for consensus and resolve conflict by compromise and negotiation. The Dutch are known for their long discussions until consensus has been reached.

These cultures embed social safety nets into society and sympathize with the weak, unlike the USA where weakness is viewed with disdain. Americans can seem heartless when it comes to the marginalized, but the invisible hand of culture drives our behavior which accounts for acquiescing to inadequate social policies. Americans expect people to care for themselves and be self-reliant, so they have a relatively low level of social welfare, healthcare, and public services.

Culture is how people solve problems. When the American citizen steps into the voting booth, an instantaneous compatibility switch flips on to scan for a the “Competition” match. Whether it’s Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton, or Geraldine Ferraro, it doesn't compute culturally because we cannot suspend disbelief that she’s capable of it despite her fighting stance, or her rhetoric. Although American woman can succeed, they don’t to the extent men do; an inherent, implicit cultural expectation for a higher than average degree of Masculinity from leaders or authority figures.

This cultural expectation is not strictly limited by gender. For example, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders shared similar Feminine perception by voters because "socialists" essentially represent similar values: nurturing, dialoging, consensus, and quality of life. Nowhere could the American voter detect the desired Masculine code in the eminently competent women or Sanders of “winner take all”. We may be a long way off until the high Masculine expectation is lowered. 

As a card-carrying feminist, I've been waiting for a woman in the oval office since Geraldine Ferraro lost the race for vice president in 1984. I'd be remiss if I didn't say I hope (very American) that a woman (or a socialist) will be elected, but I know culture is to blame. I also know culture is a learned behavior, so it can be unlearned, but this takes time. The first step toward solving women's persistent and pervasive inequality is to recognize our existing explanations are inadequate and consider alternatives. In all likelihood, electing a woman has less to do with with gender politics, than it does with the invisible hand of culture that drives our behavior in ways you never imagined.

DECONSTRUCTING JACKIE

In a world where things are not always what they seem, I rely on my anthropologists' trained eye to help me connect some very unlikely dots about what makes the other guy tick. The flaneur in me likes to explain why people do what they do based on where they live. It's a handy insight during our increasingly frequent cultural encounters

The other day, as I was cleaning out my cache of files, I came across the one I saved from a Bazaar Magazine piece written by Nan Talese recalling her relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. As I re-read it, I realized why I saved it. It explained Jackie's French mind. I couldn't help but wonder, if we're enamored with our Francophile First Lady, could we fall back in love with the French?

American relations were strained by the French foreign policy recommendations during the Bush years because they resisted a hasty rush to war with Iraq. They wanted more time to let allow UN weapons inspector Hans Blix inspect for actual evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Turns out the French were right. There were none. More like weapons of mass distraction.

“What strikes me is how un-American Jackie was, and we loved her for it anyway. ”

So why are Americans  at odds with the nation that gave us the Statue of Liberty and our founding principles of liberte, egalite, and fraternite? If we’d taken their advice, we have avoided much of the death and destruction in Iraq. In retrospect, our American “need for speed” and "time-is-money" mindset cost us lives and world respect. I can’t help but wonder, if we’d been more “French” during the gulf war – by thinking deeply, at length -- lives would surely have been saved and the world would be more peaceful.

“Relationships are more important than things”

Nan recalled Jackie told the restaurant not to bring the bill to the table, a subtle gesture I admired and adopted. I still do it to this day. Taking money out, means she puts people in, before things. Jackie thought her relationship with the author was more important than business dealings. If you think this is antiquated or charming, a whopping 85 percent of the world conducts business this way. Deeda Blair rhapsodized in Vanity Fair about the exquisite atmosphere of restaurants and you felt that there were delicious conversations taking place at every table. Now you go into a place and everything looks transactional. Bingo.
 

“Aesthetics trump practicality”

I always admired how hard she worked and how devoted she was to her authors. She was also able to balance publishing books that she knew had an audience with books that were for her own reading pleasure. I remember once when we were both on a break, getting coffee in the little Doubleday kitchen, and I congratulated her on having just signed Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She said, "Well, every once in a while, you have to do something for the soul."
We are embracing a life quality that empowers people to change the impersonal nature of the globalized marketplace. One size doesn't fit all. It isn't surprising that to many that how much a like doing something is more important than making a lot of money for something that's not as meaningful. People are valuing the craft, authorship and provenance as much as price and convenience. 

“Love of the Absurd (or why the French think Jerry Lewis is funny)”

Jackie never expected to receive any special treatment, and she would line up just like the rest of us when seeking a few words with the publisher. Though in the outside world she was always known as Mrs. Kennedy or Mrs. Onassis, in the office she was just Jackie. She walked to work through Central Park every morning wearing slacks and a T-shirt or a sweater. She sat at a plain old gray metal desk. One day on the elevator, someone approached her and said, "Oh, you're Jacqueline Onassis, aren't you?" She said, "No, I'm not!"

“Children should be seen and not heard.”

I parent like the French, and I don’t apologize for it (like them either). If you're raising your kids like they're the center of the universe, then they won't think you have an emotional life of your own. I think that kids being the naturally out-sized egomaniacs that they are inclined to be require you to offset that struggle by standing your ground to stabilize that dominating tendency. I would often say I'm not a mother, I'm a lion tamer, so I carry around a whip and a chair. 

DECONSTRUCTING AMERICAN EQUALITY

No question, we are living in unsettled times. It seems impossible to predict what’s going to happen next. Step out for a Starbucks, and things have changed by the time you return to your desk. The unpredictable is followed by insistent distraction. Who isn’t mesmerized by all the twitter feeds, blog posts, podcasts, and headlines? When I can’t tell code from content, I focus on changing cultural attitudes that have the power to change lives for the better.  

As an expat career coach, I create smooth cultural transitions for people in global transition. Impassioned by a lifetime of travel and anthropology, I reveal insights about people who were raised very differently from you. This is a significant factor in how well we get things done, particularly at work. Culture is also a double edged sword. As a tool to problem solve and make sense of the world, it’s also responsible for culture clashes and the chief source of mutual frustration, from the living room to the boardroom. Yet we can create more harmony by developing awareness about our own attitudes, values, and behaviors. Transforming our higher selves changes our life and the lives of others, making with world a better place.

For example, what we believe to be “common sense” is actually cultural sense. Obtaining and understanding that awareness creates a pause. And in that pause, you may notice a shift occur making room for listening. This is the space where you’ll discover new ways of thinking, empowering you to change your attitude and your life profoundly because your world view – your cultural values, beliefs, and perceptions -- account for your behavior.

Today, in the globalized workplace, cultural awareness is no longer an experience. It’s an indispensable soft skill for successfully handling intercultural incidents and interactions. While you may not be able to acquire it through expatriate experience, it can be developed with the help of a cross-cultural coach because it’s a learned behavior. By making the foreign feel more familiar, you increase your value quotient and become more marketable.

It may sound contradictory, but by looking at ourselves and our national culture, we understand others because ae don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. By examining your American mindset with powerful cultural lenses, you’ll discover how the invisible hand of culture drives your behavior in ways you never imagined. It reveals the hidden values, attitudes, and beliefs that make you, American. That your cultural mindset – or any other perspective isn’t better, it’s just different. And anyone who has lived abroad will tell you, the evident culture like food, music, or language – doesn’t cause of culture clashes. Rather, it’s the hidden dimensions such as body language, ideas about time, attitude towards authority, and decision-making that account for it.

The invisible dimensions most Americans don’t know about America are Equality – Competition – Rules – Directness – Speed – Self-Reliance, among others. By examining Equality carefully and how it can be perceived by others, we notice people from other cultures observe that Americans are informal and they don’t understand why we insist on treating everyone the same. Equality is so central to our core values, it’s in the first line of the Constitution that “all men are created equal.” By treating everyone the same, our casual behavior is perceived as a lack of respect.

Equality is also rejection of the British and European class system by our founding fathers. We prefer a “level playing field,” so everyone gets a fair chance. Not everyone will succeed, but at least the same set of rules allows everyone to start with an equal chance. Equality accounts for random seating at gatherings and when standing in line, people are served on a “first come, first served,” basis. Each person waits their turn, regardless of age or rank.  

Equality also accounts for how Americans achieve social status, whereas in other cultures it’s ascribed by birth, title, or family heritage. Equality is a value we live by when we hear the sky’s the limit for anyone to achieve the American dream, even a “skinny kid with the big ears and funny name” who became the President of the United States. What we do makes us who we are and “everyone’s a winner”.

We believe power should be shared by everyone (in theory) and not concentrated into the hands of a few. In business, politics, and child rearing, we empower people to make their own decisions. Even children are encouraged to express their preferences and make their own decisions. They are encouraged to “play fair and share their toys” with everyone.

While we think equality is admirable, it’s the exception to the rule where class distinctions run in roughly 85% of the rest of the world. American informal ways of dressing, talking, and behaving can be perceived as rude by hierarchical cultures. Our empowered youth-oriented culture gives the impression we lack respect for elders and authority too. For example, some American kids call parents and other adults by their first name. Unthinkable in other countries.

Equality affects how we communicate with a preference for politically correct speech. While some say that such euphemistic talk disguises the nature of the truth. In the land of free speech, people from other countries are surprised that we avoid candid discourse amongst ourselves, and especially the double-speak of political discourse. This behavior has a censorial quality they perceive as misguided-fairness, rather than well-intentioned harmony. Intentional ambiguity or inversions of meaning makes the truth sound more palatable, calling layoffs, "downsizing,” "servicing the target" for bombing, “outsourcing” for employing people at low wages abroad.  

I’m not sure we may ever be free of culture’s consequences, but when you change your cultural attitudes, you change your life. The ripple effect is a positive impact that can’t help but make the world a better place.

Lisa La Valle-Finan is an expat career coach who reveals how the invisible hand of culture drives our behavior in ways you never imagined at work. She welcomes all comments and can be reached at LLFinan@Live.com.

DECONSTRUCTING FRENCH MARRIAGE

“Courtship is romantic. Marriage ... is an act of will,” said Pippa, taking a sip of water. “I mean, I adore Herb, but the marriage functions because we will it to. If you leave love to hold everything together, you can forget it. ”

— Rebecca Miller, the Private Lives of Pippa Lee

As my husband and I cross the threshold of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I thought of the 50-50 odds that we might become an “uncoupled” statistic. Until 1990, nearly half the marriages in America did end in divorce, but, we beat the odds. According to the data, there’s a good chance we will remain married. Nearly 70% percent of marriages that began after the ‘90s in America reached their 15th anniversary, and many may never divorce. 

Yet half the couples I know do. They live in the same house, but effectively lead separate lives. Others stay together, but live in different houses or states (or countries). These are the marriages of convenience, for the kid’s sake; either until the kids are in college or a way to keep the employee benefits rolling. There are couples who divorce because of an infidelity. Then there are the rare breed of couples who manage to stay together in spite of it, especially in the United States.

Overlooking the indiscretion is more common in other cultures like Italy, France, or Greece, who appear hardwired to ignore it.This is latter category intrigued me because those societies that tended to accept this behavior as part of the marital bargain, were unflustered by the American moral outrage. While we may not be above desire, we are unable to get past the deception. So I couldn’t help but wonder, why are those cultures less troubled by infidelity than others and why is infidelity a sin for Americans?

“The bonds of marriage so heavy it takes two to carry them, sometimes three.”

— Alexander Dumas

Infidelity is on my radar because I’m hooked on watching HBO’s dark soap, “The Affair.” I can indulge vicariously in the drama of an affair without the consequences. It’s a very American perspective of two people who have “cheated” on their spouses. Ruth, “the other woman” is wracked by the “guilt” of her past and the cad, Noah whom he has thrown his family overboard for. Season two unfurls this cautionary tale in the “aftermath” of their affair, strewn with the “wreckage” of their infidelities. The language of the narrative implies destruction and punishment. Our judgement is further beguiled by an innovative interplay two, sometimes four, different perspectives, but they are American. Viewers and creators alike condemn “the affair” because they’re sure they’re on the right side of morality. We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are, so that one man’s sin could be another man’s blessing.

Clues to decoding French attitudes concerning infidelity begin with self-awareness of American national culture. Not evident culture, such as language, food, and dress. If culture was that easy to identify, rest assured there would not be the current clash of civilizations. Evident culture is the tip of the iceberg. Unless you’ve spent a significant length of time abroad, it’s doubtful you can attest to culture’s consequences. The invisible hand of culture drives our behavior in ways you never imagined. By deconstructing the American mindset and comparing it to other cultures, we can steer safely around the unseen and more profound dimensions of hidden culture below the waterline, an avoid simplistic attribution to moral positioning.

For example, the French film “5-7,” (“cinq a sept” is the French expression for the time of day made for visiting lovers and has subsequently been adopted by other cultures as “happy hour”) infidelity is not only acceptable, it’s institutionalized. It shouldn't be a deteerent to love. The Greeks an view that if the gods intended making love strictly for procreation, they’d have made people come in heat like the animals once a year.  

Human attraction may be too hard to comprehend, but by connecting seemingly unrelated dots about why people do what they do based on national culture offers an interesting explanation. Culture is the result of a series of historical events that have occurred in a certain place. The result is a set of values, attitudes, and perceptions that explain the world accordingly to a certain group of people. What’s important, especially for Americans who rarely expatriate to understand this point is, people do what they do not because they don’t know any better, it’s culture making that decision for them

It doesn’t matter that we are offended by French views about infidelity no matter how much self-righteous indignation our views. There’s no way to shame them into monogamy because they don’t share our puritanical legacy. Of course, every culture thinks it’s on the right side of an issue, but it’s worthwhile to note that Homer’s Odyssey was the Greek bible for 5,000 years and continues to informed their mindset.  

Cultures are dynamic, yet few of us know who are we or why, but the powerful lens of culture helps us understand why behavior like infidelity is or isn’t tolerated. While every culture shares common traits -- how they think and make decisions, how they process information, view time and communicate -- culture explains the differentiating approach. For example, Americans believe people should be INDEPENDENT with the FREE-WILL to decide and form their own opinions. The truth is, we think our opinions are purely our own, but in reality, it’s a decision that was already made for us.

Americans prefer rules over relationships, so crime shows bringing offender to justice appeals to our values. The same show might get lost in translation in Asian or Arab cultures where the witness would look the other way. Most people are born dependent and connected. Americans are the exception to this way of thinking, not the other way around. In their mind, it is as if they were related to the offender, so they cannot betray that relationship. They don’t believe they are complicit, they’re just not going to squeal if it means sending mom to jail. In fact, for the majority of the world’s cultures, not all of the rules apply to everyone all the time. It depends on the situation and context. This is why we have difficulty negotiating with Eastern cultures.  Nevertheless, Americans think they’re absolutely right when people from other cultures behave differently. We think they’re being deceptive but actually it’s our linear thinking and expectations that everyone should adhere to the rule of law.  

DIRECTNESS is one of the 6 major values of the American national mindset. We need transparency, even at the cost of divorce. We view seduction negatively because it’s an indirect behavior. We’re also uncomfortable with “veiled” cultures because we feel manipulated by it. What’s more, because cultural maturity takes time, America is an “adolescent” culture that’s experienced few significant cultural shifts compared to older one, but when cultures do change, powerful imprints alter our frame of reference and the change is passed on to the next generation.

What is the basis for our national values and just how much the world shares them is important message for Americans to learn because most of the world doesn’t. The rest of the world may like Hollywood movies, not because admire American culture so much as a car chase is easy to understand. It’s LOW CONTEXT. Americans miss signals because we don’t know how to look for them. Listening goes beyond words. The Japanese call it reading the air. What’s not being said is significant. So is body language. Voice tone. Timing. Message location. I think of the closeness and implicit understanding relationship I have with my husband; certain references, messages, and ideas are understood without words or explanation. We speak a matrimonial shorthand. Our shared meaning is the backstory. Similarly, this is how other cultures communicate. Imagine trying to do business with high-context communicators and it becomes clear we’ve got a lot to learn.   

To understand French acceptance of infidelity, we must begin with the American mind that’s entrenched in INDIVIDUALITY perfectly defined by Robert Day, “American’s have a hard time telling you specifically why this is a good thing; either because it’s something they haven’t thought about, or don’t think it’s worth going over.” Again, thanks to our history, this is a fundamental American value that stems from the early PIONEER and PROTESTANT settlers who were brave RISK-TAKERS; nomads who left everything and everyone they knew to live somewhere else. Having said that, like so much else that’s changing right now in real time, America’s rugged INDIVIDUALISM is becoming uncharacteristically risk-averse, abrogating personal responsibility which is being substituted by rampant litigiousness. Crybabies. He goes on to say “Although Americans may think of themselves as being more unique than they actually are, what’s significant is that they think they are.”

The unintended consequence of expressing personal opinions and feeling so special can feel self-indulgent to the outside world. For example, while Americans believe each person is unique and entitled to a personal opinion, they cannot fathom that other people outside America differ with it, regardless that they represent only five percent of the world’s population.”

“The French communication style is clinically direct and they see no advantage in ambiguity or ambivalence. The French language is a crisp, incisive tongue, a kind of verbal dance or gymnastics of the mouth, which presses home its points with an undisguised, logical urgency. It is rational, precise, ruthless in its clarity.”

— Richard Lewis

Which brings us to their tendency for ASSERTIVENESS, which compels Americans to tell you what they’re thinking. Consequently, these unsolicited opinions can sound self-righteous. However, in their mind, this behavior is not desirable but a deeply help truth based on their certainty and entitlement to the Manifest Destiny; not considering they didn’t come to that conclusion personally. In the end, they are astounded that not all cultures share their views, much less their moral position on infidelity.

While the French are nothing if not articulate, they might even say nothing at all about their feelings, leaving you to “read the air” because the way to disagree may be to say nothing at all. Such silence leaves Americans genuinely bewildered and while they don’t mean to be rude, this direct US communication style is often irreversible in the wrong company. Once you've let it out of the bottle, it’s hard to get it back. For many cultures, saving face is impossible to reverse, and may resort to an error of omission, an outright lie, change answers, or rearrange the question to suit the situation. This appears deceitful to Americans and intolerable. In most other regions of the world, including Asia, Europe, South America, and parts of Africa, this kind of answer is a necessary function of interactions and holds no moral underpinning. For them, the goal is harmony and the end justifies the means to achieve peace over justice.

Brandi Moore underscores this utterly foreign notion, “Nothing like it exists in America or to Americans who never lose face. Being embarrassed is not losing face. Embarrassment is about guilt, which contains a causal nature. Face is about shame and the ripple effect of one’s actions on the group, now and for the future.” Striving for harmony, or “big picture” thinking conflicts with our “bottom line” mentality. She goes on to say “Americans operate in a matchlessly DIRECT culture, where losing face is nearly impossible. The level of separation, homogeneity, and variety in America that focuses on the individual, eliminates the possibility, and therefore why we seem to be so opinionated to others.”

Therefore, something as innocuous as expressing an opinion about infidelity can be perceived by others as self-righteous and the American will not refrain from doing it or become being embarrassed; remember, honor is not at stake. Moore goes on to explain, “Their remarks are born of a direct communication manner that’s essential to the dissimilar nature of Americans. Because virtually everyone originated from somewhere else, no matter how far back, they must understand one another and they must communicate with the utmost explicitness. Meanings relay through a direct route of words, unlike other cultures, and to a lesser degree France, that can feel like an eternal kabuki dance before getting to the point.” She concludes, “Communication consists of shared meaning, encrypted signals, environment, or an elaborate contextual backstory that requires a lot of deciphering. Americans who are not in the habit of hearing these messages and become exasperated with their circuitousness because they haven’t learned how to “listen loudly.”

“You can, believing that you’re obeying French dining etiquette, say bon appétit at the start of a meal — but you shouldn’t because this isn’t correct it’s too direct a reference to the body, leaving little to the imagination, and thus less seductive. Or you can treat food as a task (are you still working on that?) — but you shouldn’t do that either.”

— Elaine Sciolino

Clear and clever language from people who never apologize. They are known for being unafraid to share their opinions and argue a position. You’ll find this is embedded in their national motto of Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite and also Edith Piaf’s lyrics that are a battle hymn testament to this sentiment, “Je ne regrette rien” means “I have no regrets” (about straying from the marriage). The message itself, however, may not be expressed directly in the words. Reading between the lines is often necessary to find the full message. The way a message is communicated may be determined by relationship, rank, status, and position. The way someone speaks, dresses and behaves also communicates who that person is. Sitting quietly and not participating may show lack of interest or commitment to the French, so sharing opinions, demonstrating a passionate, well-presented position will earn you their respect. Use of title is the norm until a relationship has developed. New acquaintances address each other with “vous” until it is agreed that they will switch to the familiar “tu.” This is relaxing with Millennials but it’s still pervasive in traditional business or government settings.

“In Paris, women and men are supposed to please each other on the street, and never go out in public without looking impeccably put together. You can dress as you like, but you shouldn’t neglect your appearance; a reflection of the Gallic approach to virtually all area of life in which seduction is so pervasive.”

— Elaine Sciolino

When it comes to American INFORMALITY, our kids seem authorized to treat elders as equals. As adults, bosses are handled the same level as subordinates without much distinction. This kind of cultural tendency is famously depicted by Hollywood in the “California minute” in which two complete strangers can meet for the first time and yet immediately reveal intimate personal details without regard. Again, Americans hold no recourse in stating opinions publicly as mentioned before because as Moore concludes, “honor is not at stake. Everything must be said, and (it’s presumed) everyone is open to hearing it.”

Lewis points to the French education system, “From childhood, places a premium on articulateness and eloquence of expression. Unlike Japanese, Finnish or British children, French children are rarely discouraged from being talkative. In the French culture, loquacity is equated with intelligence and silence does not have a particularly golden sheen. Lycée, university and École normale supérieure education reinforces the emphasis on good speaking, purity of grammar and mastery of the French idiom.” The French language, unquestionably, is the chief weapon wielded by authority and less articulate French show no resentment. Masterful use of language and logic implies, in their understanding, masterful power.

“Americans don’t have sex, they have problems. ”

— Marlene Dietrich

While both the French and the Americans share the space of DIRECTNESS, it’s express differently. Americans are perplexed when they’re labeled rude and inappropriate, but they would be genuinely surprised to learn that eighty-five percent of the world views the American values of INDIVIDUALITY and ASSERTIVENESS not without reservation. To put their opinion of infidelity in sharp focus, the English Broadway actor, Allen Cummings aptly remarked, “America was established by Puritans who left England because it wasn't puritanical enough.” Yet, they hold these beliefs because they are “self-evident” or because they choose them, when in fact they were chosen for them by history.

If the underpinnings of the French communication style is of the mind and they revere history and AUTHORITY, the American mind has an honest aversion to it. With a past rooted the in both the PIONEER and ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM that prevents Americans from exploring profound concepts deeply, this may well be their tragic flaw; tainting the entire American education system. It seems as though American history categorically precludes itself from producing many more great thinkers, philosophers, or theorists given a COWBOY QUICK sense of urgency, pragmatism and self-reliance to survive. Diane Johnson observed this and an increasing “religious fervor comes and goes like seasonal flu, and each time leaves it weakened for the next attack.”

“Culture hides more than it reveals and strangely enough, what it hides, is most effectively hidden from its owners; not unlike the American attitude about infidelity. ”

— Edward Hall

While they prize the fine Cartesian mind: “I think, therefore I am,” PROCESS counts enormously. The revealing, enjoying, ritualizing, codifying, and tantalizing pursuit about the idea of an affair counts more than the affair. For Americans to characterize France as an immoral culture is the result of their unconscious PURITAN legacy the French were untouched by. A culture of taking mistresses was inherited by the French kings, beginning with Henry II during the Middle Ages, serving a practical purpose. It unambiguously established a kind of psychological national security with a demonstrable virility, signifying longevity and preservation of the throne through succession according to French historians. France created a culture of love by his wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine single handedly. Marriage had little to do with love and sex was vulgar. The rules of love codified by Andreas Capellanus, were idealized in poetry during the Crusades, enacted by Chivalrous knights, who declared Courtly love only to a married woman.

“You can remain faithful to your husband instead of taking a lover — but you shouldn’t. After all, you have your foundation as a couple, a history, and a marriage. You’ve built something you can be proud of, and this tiny romance in Paris is not going to disrupt it.”

— Inès de la Fressange

While they make a good case for taking a lover by elevating the behavior through poetic words, razor sharp intellect, and codifying love, not even the French have a vaccine to prevent the pain of infidelity, but the rules of love mitigate the possibility of exposure. Central to that is discretion and never to confess: “Rule #13. Public revelation of love is deadly to love in most instances.” Ines De La Fressange observed, “After all, why forsake the natural and inevitable pleasures of the long seductive run up to the affair, simply for the cause of loyalty?” Despite the long and winding history and process of these centuries old French attitudes about love, not even they are inured to the consequences. The real reason for the rules are to preserve the FAMILY because family preserves the order of society. The rules keep the HARMONY. Parents stay together; children are spared emotional trauma; property stays in the family; and voila, financial security is retained. In stark contrast, while Americans can’t tolerate dishonesty, we’d be just as inclined to take on a lover, but it seems the French handle it more pragmatically because does the American disclosure-confession solution really solve anything with the destruction of the family? The rules of love established the thought of a great epoch and explain this much-maligned propensity for adultery. They are French to the core; didactic, mocking, and lighthearted, preserving the attitudes and practices of a medieval tradition about love’s alternatives.

“Divorce rates are about the same and there’s the same amount of infidelity going on, and French spouses get as angry as American ones. The difference is that Americans carry the weight of a puritanical legacy that France does not.”

— Author Diane Johnson of the L’Affaire, Le Mariage, and Le Divorce

These attitudes persist through the 19th century, when love, marriage and infidelity are treated lightly in the popular comic "boulevard theaters". The plots were centered on a love triangle--a husband and wife and a lover who hides in beds and cupboards or jumps out of windows to avoid being discovered. For over the last hundred years, the cocu (cuckold) has been a source and symbol of amusement, characterizing adultery as less tragic and more of a laughing matter, explaining, at least in part, why their attitude seems blasé.

In 2001, Lynn Smith wrote in the Los Angeles Times that Americans won’t admit the nature of lust, forgive it, and create a separate compartment for it that doesn't affect our feeling for somebody. The French resembles the Dutch, who prefer transparency when it comes to pot and prostitution because they know people do it, so it might as well be regulated to minimize health risks. She goes on to say, “We insist our natural impulses must be managed and contained for the sake of the family or because adultery is a sin and violates marital vows. In reality, French and American couples behave about the same and they both want the same thing: to preserve the family. It’s just that we go about it differently.”

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Surveys

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/table/divorce/

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/01/14/extramarital-affairs-topline/