Open relationships vs infidelity: rethinking love, freedom and social norms
In our Western societies, it sometimes seems more acceptable to betray in secret than to love openly in other ways. Infidelity, shrouded in silence, paradoxically remains more tolerated than a declared "open" relationship. Yet, things are changing. The figures indicate a slow but real transformation: according to an Ifop-Gleeden study from April 2025 (1), the proportion of French women reporting infidelity is expected to fall from 33% in 2016 to 26% in 2025. At the same time, open relationships, almost marginal yesterday, are gaining ground.
The world is changing, certainly. But lies often remain more comfortable than the truth. In the collective imagination, open relationships remain a murky boundary: they skirt the edge of promiscuity without always daring to acknowledge it. They are unsettling because they speak aloud what others experience in silence.
And then there are other societies, far from our norms, that have made other choices.
Among the Mosuo, on the border between Tibet and China, freedom in love is neither transgression nor a demand: it constitutes the very foundation of their social organization. A matriarchal and matrilineal society, it places women at the center. Names are passed down through the mother. Children grow up with her and their maternal uncles. Lovers, however, are merely passing through.
Through discreet gestures, men express their desire; the woman, sovereign, accepts or declines. No binding marriage, no marital home in the sense we understand it. Women can love several men, successively or simultaneously, without disrupting the collective balance.
Explorer Joseph Rock, who discovered this community in 1924, claimed that no word existed there to designate war or murder, describing this people as "the last peaceful place on the planet, where war has never existed, where the inhabitants live in harmony." (2)
Idealized myth or anthropological reality? Perhaps it doesn't matter. The image remains powerful.
Should we then ask ourselves whether a society that recognizes women's sexual freedom — without shame or secrecy — also gives itself the means for a deeper peace?
Are domination and jealousy, in part, cultural constructs rather than human inevitabilities?
What if peace began there — in the freedom to love, without fear, without lies, without possessions?
The question remains open.
Something to think about.
1 Ifop-Gleeden survey : https://www.ifop.com/article/observatoire-gleeden-de-lextra-conjugalite-le-couple-libre-est-il-lavenir-du-couple
2 Le Point article https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/le-tour-du-monde-du-sexe-les-moso-sans-pere-ni-mari-02-08-2017-2147480_3.php
3 National Geographic article https://www.nationalgeographic.fr/photographie/les-moso-une-des-dernieres-societes-matriarcales
4 Wikipedia article https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moso
