Beauvoir and Sartre pioneered the contingent-affairs arrangement against bourgeois convention

Evidence

Soon aft er they met, they became a couple, and Sartre said to Beauvoir that although their love was a necessary one, they could still enjoy contingent affairs. Th e arrangement was for them to be together but to be free and, mostly, to be honest with one another and to tell each other everything about their other relationships. Beauvoir agreed. Th e external relationships formed by the two were certainly a shock for the bourgeois French society, who preferred (at least on the surface) a more conventional model of interrelationship. But it was precisely against such a model that the young couple rebelled. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 32

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Sartre and Beauvoir deliberately lived their philosophy of freedom in their relationship — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 50; Sartre and Beauvoir formalized honesty and primacy rules for their open relationship — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 383

Broader Connections

• Sartre and Beauvoir deliberately lived their philosophy of freedom in their relationship #expands (0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 50
• Sartre and Beauvoir formalized honesty and primacy rules for their open relationship #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 383