Beauvoir and Sartre began their lifelong partnership as a temporary renewable contract

Evidence

Sitting on a stone bench in the Tuileries one evening, she and Sartre agreed a contract. They would be a couple for two years, after which they would decide whether to extend the contract, separate, or change their relationship in some way. Beauvoir admitted in her memoirs that this temporary arrangement frightened her at first. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 380

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘contractarian’ theme of The Social Contract and to the notion of contingency in relationship philosophy — the two-year lease as a formalized existential agreement.