Between Excused Freedom and Preemptive Absolutism: The Emotional Price Men Pay in Contemporary Relationships

Young woman using mobile phone and checking messages in bed while her husband is asleep. EmirMemedovski via Getty Images

I was scrolling through newspaper articles as usual, looking for some noteworthy news, and my eye falls on this article, a woman writing to the newspaper and receiving a response from a psychologist:

The story of a forty-year-old woman, who cheated “out of nostalgia” and says: “I was not unfaithful only to my partner, but to the adult woman I have become.” The psychologist: “Cheating can be an opportunity for introspection and personal growth.”

I was speechless... But how is it that we are now literally flooded with articles that portray female infidelity as a path of “self-determination” or “personal growth”? Many other "articles" like this one have come to my attention recently, including:

Our reader pushed herself to cheat (multiple times, with different men) on a loving and respectful partner. The psychologist: “She lived security as a prison. But her final choice was courageous.”

All the references of the articles are at the end, I'm not inventing anything!

Are we kidding? These acts are praised glorified, and empowered but the man on the other side is not mentioned, he is completely forgotten: the one who loves, trusts, and finds himself suffering real, concrete, often invisible consequences. I am thinking about that male side of the story that is always overlooked, the emotional weight that falls on men in modern relationships, and the cultural double standard, because if the roles were reversed, the man would have been insulted, called a big in the best case, pand the woman would have been asked to divorce him and strip him bare.

The man who suffers the real and emotional consequences of choices made by the one next to him remains in the shadows... Repeatedly cheating on a loving partner is not an abstract path of self-determination: it is concrete pain for those who believe in loyalty, trust, and the stability of a relationship. I say this as someone who has seen friends and acquaintances go through this: the emotional weight is real.

I am not being moralistic, nor am I passing easy judgments. I am just saying that mutual respect has real value, and it does not change depending on who commits the act... When a behavior is described as “courageous” or “liberating”, while those who suffer it remain invisible, a clear message is sent: the rules of emotional responsibility do not apply equally to everyone, for some people they can be freely broken. And the psychologists even feed that narrative.

Real freedom is not doing whatever you want without consequences: it is being able to live without trampling on those next to you. And if our culture teaches that in certain cases the rules apply only to one gender, then we are not talking about freedom: we are talking about preemptive absolution.

In the end, who pays the emotional bill? The men who love, commit themselves, and try to build healthy relationships. And as long as this remains invisible, no narrative can be truly considered balanced. One wonders why marriages are declining, singles are increasing, and couples are disappearing... reading these articles the answer is clear. This is what I think, even if probably someone will wrinkle their nose reading it...

References:

https://d.repubblica.it/beauty/dossier/infedeli/2026/01/04/news/elisabetta_c_ho_vissuto_una_notte_di_passione_con_un_amore_della_mia_adolescenza-425065749/

https://d.repubblica.it/beauty/dossier/infedeli/2026/01/14/news/infedeli_storie_vere_tradimento_seriale_lucilla-425092802/