There is something deeply puzzling about the breakup of the Sarkozys announced this morning. Aren’t the French meant to be so sophisticated that they can love as they please? Since when is mere adultery considered such a big deal? And is it not traditional for a wife, both of the loyal and the ambitious variety, to stick by her man when he has reached the very top?

In France, l’amour may be readily available, but it is never straightforward. The great division between the Anglo-Saxons and the continental Europeans when it comes to affairs of the heart can best be summed up by the difference in approaches to solving any mystery. Where we say, “Follow the money,” the French say, “Cherchez la femme.”

“La femme” in this case is by no means a traditional long-suffering first lady, like her two immediate predecessors, Bernadette Chirac, who smiled weakly when Jacques Chirac confessed he had enjoyed a number of extramarital affairs “as discreetly as possible,” or Danielle Mitterrand, who had to endure her love rival, Anne Pingeot, François Mitterrand’s mistress, attending her husband’s funeral along with Mazarine, the grown daughter from the until then secret liaison.

Cecilia Maria Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albeniz Sarkozy, at 49 three years younger than her husband, is cut from very different cloth. And her marital record is as complex and confusing as anyone’s, except perhaps Mayor Giuliani’s. Mr. Sarkozy, when mayor of Neuilly, Cecilia’s Parisian arrondissement, even presided over her first marriage, to a 51-year-old children’s television presenter, Jacques Martin, who was almost twice her age.

At the time, Mr. Sarkozy was married to Marie-Dominique Culioli, the modest daughter of a Corsican pharmacist, and they had two sons. Cecilia, in turn, went on to have two children with Mr. Martin.

Before long, however, both marriages were on the rocks and Mr. Sarkozy and Cecilia were in love. He said he was “struck by lightning” by her. They began their affair when both were still married, then divorced their respective spouses before marrying in 1996. They have a son, Louis. Mr. Sarkozy promised his new wife, “Together, we will climb the ladder of power.”

At first Mrs. Sarkozy was an enormous political asset. From 2003, when he was minister of the interior, she had an office next to his and she remained his principal adviser for many years. By 1995, however, the bloom was off the affair. Mrs. Sarkozy separated from her husband and began an affair with the Moroccan head of the public relations company Publicis, Richard Attias. She said she was tired of being considered “part of the furniture.”

The lovers came to New York to celebrate, but a photographer from Paris-Match pursued them and outed their affair. Mr. Sarkozy, meanwhile, embarked on a liaison dangereuse of his own with a political reporter. The Sarkozys eventually got back together.

Here, such top-flight infidelity would be political suicide. But France is more forgiving. The Catholic country, which could never quite work out why America was so angry with President Clinton over his petty indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky, found little to fault in the Sarkozys’ dalliances. Indeed, such a healthy love life in a presidential candidate appeared to commend itself to voters.

Nor did divorce appear to be in the cards. Mr. Sarkozy wrote in his autobiography, “Testimony,” “Today, Cecilia and I are reunited for good, for real, doubtless forever. … We are not able and do not know how to separate from each other.”

On the election trail, Mr. Sarkozy was upbeat about the woman at his side. “If you loved Jacqueline Kennedy, you are going to adore Cecilia Sarkozy,” he declared. But when she dropped the bombshell “I don’t see myself as first lady — the whole idea bores me,” he, too, began expressing doubt about her dedication to her new role.

“She’s my strength and my Achilles’ heel at the same time,” Mr. Sarkozy said. And, more recently, “At the end of the day, my only real worry is Cecilia.”

When Mr. Sarkozy was elected president, it didn’t take long before France’s new first lady began letting it be known she remained her own woman. She agreed to visit Libya to help free the Bulgarian nurses who were convicted of contaminating children with HIV, but in other ways she remained decidedly wayward.

When the Sarkozys were vacationing in America this year, Cecilia ducked out of a hamburger and hot dog picnic with President Bush and his father, pleading a sore throat. The press on both sides of the Atlantic eagerly reported that the following day the French first lady was not too ill to go shopping. However embarrassing her behavior was to Mr. Sarkozy, she repeatedly made clear she was not prepared to toe the line.

Now, according to two French press reports, the Sarkozys are negotiating a final separation. Gossip writers suggest that she feels he is too difficult to live with. Again, the French are sure to give a Gallic shrug and commiserate with both sides.

How different it is here, where anything except a perfect marriage is considered a political liability. Take the daily tragedy being enacted in the marriage of Senator Craig, the Idaho lawmaker who pleaded guilty to soliciting gay sex in an airport washroom. As his anguished, painful, incredible account of his arrest to NBC’s Matt Lauer on Tuesday night displayed, with his unhappy, loyal wife sitting by his side, we still have a gratuitous need to probe into the deep interiors of the marriages of our elected representatives.

Until Ronald Reagan became the first president to have been divorced, the very fact of a divorce or hint of a troubled marriage could halt a presidential bid in its tracks. Now three of the four Republican presidential front-runners have been divorced, with the favorite, Mr. Giuliani, having been married three times. It is a pity they are not standing to be elected president of France.