Alert: This article may contain spoilers for those who haven’t seen the full Sex and the City series!
Being in college, and being girls, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that a rather large majority of us have seen at least one episode of Sex and the City, or at least have seen one of the movies based on the TV series. A major plotline that runs throughout the show is the…errr… complicated relationship between Mr. Big and our leading girl Carrie. It’s funny; Carrie normally comes off as such a smart woman. Obviously, a part of the reason why SATC remains so popular today is that it’s relatable to women and our struggles to find love and success, and to balance the two once we have found both. Yet…when I first started watching the show, I couldn’t understand why in the heck Carrie kept going back to Mr. Big. Especially after the second time he hurt her. ESPECIALLY after Aidan, who clearly was a perfect fit for her, who wanted nothing but to give her the world. I posed this question to my 15-year-old self constantly (well, that, and why Samantha was so freaking obsessed with having sex all the time…I was young. And naïve). Yet, the older I’ve become, and the more experience I’ve had with dating, the more I begin to understand Carrie and her reasoning for doing so.
I was recently reading an interview that an airline magazine did with Taylor Swift (our resident go-to girl when it comes to a broken heart). One line she stated in the interview really caught me: “It’s every girl’s dream to date a bad boy when he’s done being a bad boy.” That line really got to me, because it honestly couldn’t be truer. A thing I’ve noticed is that a lot, not all, girls have a thing within ourselves that makes us want to help somebody else. We want to help a guy become a better version of himself. We can be nurturing; some of us want to believe that we can settle down the bad boy or change him to our standards, all while retaining that bad boy appeal. I think that is why Carrie kept going back to Big. It’s not like she didn’t know that it was probably going to end badly; heck, she’s dated plenty. She has a normal IQ. I’m sure she knew traveling down the same road again would lead to disaster. Yet…it was the small percentage of it working out between them, that little dim light at the end of the destructive relationship tunnel, that kept Carrie going. The small hope that maybe this time around, he would change.
That being said, people still question to this day why Carrie ended up with Big and not with Aidan. She and Aidan had a healthy relationship; he reciprocated her feelings. There was rarely any confusion between the two of them. He didn’t toy with her heart. They learned new things from each other. They loved each other. Yet, as I re-watch the show, I noticed something. I think that Carrie was in love with the idea of being with Aidan, and the comfort of the relationship he brought. She wasn’t truly, deeply in love with Aidan himself; she wasn’t being constantly thrilled like she was with Big, which is what she was truly seeking in companionship. She simply finally realized that while she loved Aidan and knew he was the perfect choice for her, that didn’t necessarily make him the right choice.
I think that for a while in our lives, we search for spice, spontaneity, mystery. We know that stability is the right path for us, and eventually many of us settle for it. Yet it’s the thrill of the unexpected that keeps us reeled in. That’s why it’s such a cliché for us girls to always fall for the bad boy. We want to retain the air of mystery that comes with dating him and the excitement of being with somebody so daring and thrilling. We obviously don’t want to get hurt though, and this is why we hope that we’re the one exception among the string of girls he’s been with. Since Sex and the City is television and not real life, of course things worked out in the end for Big and Carrie. And hey, sometimes in real life, things work out for you and the bad boy, too. Just don’t have expectations that are too high for your relationship if he’s clearly not ready for it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my dating experiences, and even from watching Carrie and Big’s relationship progress while watching Sex and the City, it’s this: you can’t foist change onto somebody else. You can guide them along to it, and be a factor in this change within them; but in the end, it’s completely up to THEM and THEM only to make that change. No matter how much you wish for it, or pray for it, or try to make it happen, it won’t happen until he’s ready. Sometimes, it just won’t happen at all, as hard as it is to accept. In many scenarios, it can take a good long while. Just look at how long Carrie had to wait until Big was ready to settle down with her!
As you can see, as much we may tend to criticize the SATC writers for putting Carrie with Big in the end and leaving Aidan to bite the dust, at least we can now understand that they had their reasoning for doing so. Sure, the outcome may have not been the best choice to some fans. Yet, it was possibly the most, well…human choice. I think part of the reason why we spend so much time criticizing Carrie’s decisions regarding them both is because a lot of us know deep down that in that situation, we would have done something along the same lines (maybe not cheat, but perhaps get back together with Big in lieu of Aidan, etc.). It may not make sense why we put ourselves through so much effort and pain when we could go for a much better choice, but that’s how life works sometimes. To quote Perks of Being a Wallflower, we just simply “accept the love we think we deserve.”
All opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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