“I just don’t understand her,” said my friend as the credits began to roll on, yet another, episode of Sex and the City. “How many times is she gonna go back to Big? It’s so frustrating.”
I’d heard it all before. The same critiques from different people, all echoing the same sentiment. “Carrie Bradshaw is the worst.” I find that viewers of the show don’t like Carrie because she mirrors the messy parts of themselves that they’re not ready to face. As a writer and jaded idealist myself, I often find myself sympathizing with Carrie. She’s messy and vulnerable, overall longing to be “the one” for someone else. I find that haters of the controversial character usually have one thing in common — they have never experienced their own Mr. Big.
I’ve been on the receiving end of countless lectures from my closest friends after sharing the news that I’d gotten back together with the same infamous ex — the one whose name they’ve forbidden me to even utter. I found myself relating to the cycle that Carrie and Big often revisited, wondering, just like her, if I’m secretly a masochist, or if I keep going back each time with the hope that, somehow, things will turn out differently.
I chased a version of him and us that only existed in my mind, an ideal I couldn’t seem to let go of. Every time we fell back into each other’s orbit, it felt as though I was torturing myself with a romanticized fantasy that could never become reality. Deep down, I knew better. I knew we lost all compatibility we may have had when we first met, but I believed in the tropes and love stories I had treated like the words of scriptures. “Love should leave you with teary eyes and pounding headaches,” I told myself.
It was never about the person at all, but the idea that being loved, even if just fleeting, is better than nothing at all. Just like Carrie, I was holding onto something that was never meant to be. We weren’t star-crossed lovers, we were a bad habit I couldn’t break.
Maybe that’s why people hate Carrie Bradshaw so much — because it’s easier to judge someone else’s mistakes than to face your own. Love, or whatever distorted version we cling to, has a way of making fools of all of us. Letting go isn’t about waking up one day and deciding you’re done, it’s about realizing that the version of love you’ve been chasing was never real in the first place. Some love stories aren’t meant to last, and some people will forever be your Mr. Big.