With the sociologist Jean Viard, director of research at the CNRS, we decipher on the occasion of Valentine’s Day, which celebrates love and the couple too, this model of the couple precisely, which has more and more lead in the wing or which, in any case, is evolving. And the health crisis is not for nothing.
franceinfo: Looking back, do we know how many couples did not resist confinement?
John Viard: It is estimated at one million, the number of couples who did not resist confinement, but we will do the accounts at the end. And then, above all, it is estimated that almost one in two couples, under the age of 30, have been strongly shaken by the situation. Because a couple, it is not necessarily to be locked up one-on-one, for two months. And in our societies, couples, men and women work, have their own lives. Basically, it’s a kind of system open to society, to family, to friends…
I think there are plenty of couples who have been very happy during this crisis. Young couples have taken the opportunity to discover all the pleasures of living together. And then, there is also this phenomenon of separations, of the fragility of couples. So, we must remember that in France, there are 20 million people who live as a couple. The couple remains by far the dominant system, but it is true that there is a development of loneliness. There is a development of singles.
Men also couple later than women. And then there is a real development of loneliness. In Paris, half of the accommodation is occupied by a single person. So in very large cities, where there are a multitude of opportunities for going out, meeting people, culture, work, etc., there are many people who develop solitary practices. They are not really solitary, but they live alone.
But is the couple still a really solid model in our society today?
Yes, but it’s a model that has become very tribal, because the longer life has become, the more we live it in short sequences. Why ? Because even at 60, you have time to rebuild your life, there is no longer any age to change your structure.
Until the 1960s, the goal was to settle the children before they died. To simplify, we wanted to marry off the daughter and the son to take over the farm. But for us, when the children leave, we have 20 or 30 years left to live. We are no longer at all in the same temporal logic. And so, the couple can change at any time. We move more often, we change jobs, we play sports, we campaign, we do something else.
We are a society of mobility, because we have gained 20 years since the war, in life expectancy, and we don’t live 20 years in the same way. So obviously, couples are more flexible, relationships more discontinuous. But let’s not dream about the “forced” side of couples either. Before, they were seemingly more stable, but the parallel lives were arguably more important. But there is a rise in loneliness that is real. We are not paying enough attention to it, it is a real question.
And precisely, the period is not necessarily obvious for singles. The health crisis has also played a role in our relationship with each other. More kisses, more hugs, more hugs. What could be the effects of this lack of tenderness, of gestures of affection in a society?
What are we going to keep tomorrow? La bise, me, when I was young, boys never kissed. Now it has become mainstream. The kiss, before the crisis, had become an almost obligatory ritual in many places. Today, not at all. And it is possible that tomorrow, for 10, 20, 30 years, we will no longer bother ourselves in the same way. Relationship codes change. The fact of greeting each other by putting fists rather than shaking hands, it will perhaps stay?
So, we have to say to ourselves that these codes have not always existed. It opens a period of change, no doubt, but of caution, because we fear other pandemics, and we still say to ourselves that we have somewhat entered the century of pandemics. This can result in patterns of physical relationships that may have changed.