When Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s partner Andrea Giambruno was caught on tape appearing to flirting with a colleague, saying he’s known to cheat on Meloni and inviting a woman to join a “threesome or foursome”, you could almost hear the waves of Schadenfreude crashing across Europe.
Many dislike Meloni for her right-wing politics. Many find her style abrasive. Many in Italy just weren’t ready for their country to be run by a woman. But even those who feel she is a good thing were gripped by the drama.
Meloni has had to exercise high levels of restraint about Giambruno’s gaffes before. He made a controversial comment, as a current affairs TV presenter, in the context of a string of high-profile rape cases. He advised avoiding becoming drunk and unconscious because that is “when the wolf appears”. It was seen as victim-blaming. Meloni surfaced to say he just meant, keep your eyes and ears open, as her own mother had told her. The common-sense vibe plays well with Meloni’s power base, but she could have done without the ammunition he gave to her opponents.
This scandal, though, was one too far. Meloni gave a graceful statement thanking Giambruno for their years together and their daughter and announced that their relationship “ends here”. She sacked him on social media. He disappeared from public life; exit stage left the delinquent partner. The lesson is: don’t humiliate and undermine someone driven enough to become the first woman PM of Italy.
But it raises two broader issues: is there a compulsion for some men to choose powerful women only then to bring them down? And is there a compulsion for powerful women to choose men who will do that? Psychology suggests: yes.
Again and again, the highest profile women find that the men they marry become their Achilles’ heel
The idea is that insecure men burnish their egos by conquering strong, impressive women only then to batter them, literally or figuratively, into line. When the women rise above and beyond the men, they resort to passive-aggressive subversion: affairs, controversy, reckless behaviour. Kanye West wouldn’t stop his controversial tweeting, even though he knew it was a nightmare for Kim Kardashian. Nicola Sturgeon, once the apparently unstoppable Scots leader who transformed SNP’s fortunes, was broken when her husband was arrested in a probe into the party’s finances. Again and again, the highest profile women find that the men they marry become their Achilles’ heel.
You might say the same thing happens to men. Carrie Johnson’s hold on Boris was what caused people to see through the charm, the talent and the charisma into the void within. It’s arguable that he would have kept pulling it all off if she hadn’t driven out Dominic Cummings. So now, Boris is remembered for partygate and overspending on wallpaper, not a landslide victory and working himself near to death when he had Covid. But the fact is that Boris made these decisions for himself. He let Cummings go. He let his staff have a party in lockdown. He chose to lie about it. He wasn’t a victim, he was a player. It’s very different. He was influenced, perhaps, by Carrie, but he made bad moves himself.
With high-profile, powerful women, they don’t have to do anything themselves to be brought down by their husbands or partners. The news can hit them from the front page or Twitter, and then their whole story starts to be about their husband, and they become someone who is judged only in relation to what they did or didn’t do to deserve it.
So why do these women get hooked on guys like that? Psychological opinion favours the idea that, having started out seduced by charm and passion, women who are used to making things happen believe they can fix things even when they go to hell. They can save their man, their relationship, their family.
But also, so often, strong women have been made strong by pain. Paternal abandonment — that’s a good one. Meloni and I share that. On the one hand you have a strong woman role model, if you’re lucky. But at the same time, you live with the pain and fear that you might not be lovable. That it’s your imperfections that are causing the problem. Or if not that, then certainly that if you cut loose from this man then you may never find another to love you — you may be alone, abandoned as you were as a child.
I’ve certainly persisted in relationships that trashed my career, wellbeing or both. Only when I had decided I didn’t want a serious relationships did I end up with a solid one. In my experience as a divorce lawyer, women who have been deprived of paternal love are especially prone to persist after all reasonable prospect of happiness has gone.
Meloni was strong. She stopped trying to keep a relationship that had started to bring her down. She provided all women who are being brought down by their men with the one phrase they need to remember: “It ends here.”
