A couple of nights ago, I met a friend of my host brother’s whose name was Frederick. After he left, Colette explained to me that his fiancée lives in Paris and that they commute often to see each other. My next question, which seemed logical to me, was “When are they going to get married?” The response was a loud laugh followed by, “They are not going to get married, they are ‘pacsés’” (pronounced p-axe-ay). Baffled, I asked her what this meant and learned something very interesting on the subject of marriage in France.
Many French couples are choosing not to get married these days. Due to a sharp rise in the divorce rate coinciding with a decline in religious participation, most young couples are opting for something different from marriage—more liberal and less ceremonial. This option, called “pacser” or “PACS”, grants couples the right to be together officially but provides an easy “exit-route”, so-to-say, if needed. It is similar to a civil union but more loose. Since divorces can be expensive and monetarily devastating for one or both parties, many French are choosing this cushion or safety-net--if the couple breaks, each party takes whatever started as their property or money without argument. This situation grants couples the possibility to jointly buy a house, adopt a child, or to make other similar official decisions. The couples still wear rings and are officially recognized as “pacsé.”
After hearing this explanation, I made a statement about how this union is similar to those proposed for homosexual couples in certain states in the US. Colette told me that it started here as a manner for homosexual marriage and was nationally voted into utilization by a large part of the French population. The idea was so popular that heterosexual couples began opting for it and now it is certainly “à la mode,” more so than getting married!
