What is Up With Fellini's Protagonists Being Womanizers?

So I saw 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita this week and also La Strada months before. I noticed that the main protagonist in all of them were these perverts who treat women like objects rather than people.
Zampano in La Strada abandoned Gelsomina at moments so he could hang out with women he met at the bar. Although here Gelsomina is really the hero while Zampano is the villain, but compared to Marcello's two characters, Zampano is way nicer.
In La Dolce Vita, Marcello seems to not care for his fiance very much and instead hangs out with a Swedish actress, Maddelina, and Nico(without Velvet Underground but going to all tomarrow's parties).
Then in 8 1/2, Marcello as a different guy named Guido seems bored of his wife and reminisces of past women.

La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 feel like companion pieces as their atmospheres are equal, there are similar themes, and also the same guy playing the protagonist who in turn acts the same.

Now I must see Nights of Cabiria, Satyricon, Roma, and Amarcord.

Fellini was likely a womanizer but resented that element about himself because he paradoxically worshipped his wife and muse, Giulietta Masina. Juliet of the Spirits is the spiritual other half of 8 1/2, told from the wife's perspective. Also check out Nights of Cabiria, another film that focuses primarily on her and was a wonderful spiritual follow up to La Strada.

Also, Fellini's rise to prominence is post-war Italy, and much of the characterization comes from the moral failings of the machismo that Fascism glorified. La Strada specifically is a metaphor for Fascism destroying the beautiful spirit of Italy.

So, while Fellini was a serial philanderer, it seems to be an area of self loathing on his part that he frequently explores while centering the pathos of the negative impact this has on the woman or women in the man's life.

It's worth also pointing out that the harem fantasy in 8 1/2 isn't just every woman he's ever been with, but pretty much every woman he's ever fantasized about. Well, not counting the ones that were sent upstairs.
That entire scene really captures the fantasy and self-loathing guilt that follows that MKS was mentioning (and the further subsequent suppression of that guilt).