Tall, dark, and handsome. He is charming in the way he can easily pull you back to sea. The mysterious allure adds to the rose colored lenses that you don’t want to take off. The slow pull of his mystery makes the cycle of the search for depth and meaning behind his stiff words endless. We all have been Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City.
Sex and the City (SATC) has been a huge conversation, as so many people are re-watching, or watching for the first time. I have decided to watch the series for the first time, and when I went online to check the discussion about the show, I realized how harshly Bradshaw was criticized and perceived.
Now, Carrie Bradshaw is not perfect. Trust me, I know, and I agree with most critiques. However, I could not help but see a part of myself, and so many other women, inside Bradshaw’s story with Mr. Big in the first season and slightly in the second.
SATC : carrie and mr. Big
Bradshaw in Sex and the City writes a sex column, which viewers get to see how her lived experiences with the men she dates are what she writes about. Bradshaw has her core group of girlfriends, all of whom are dating for various reasons. We meet Bradshaw as a cool, liberated woman who then meets Mr. Big. He is a top shot, rich, and older man, but also a mystery not only to the viewers but also to Bradshaw. In seasons one and two, we are all learning about this mystery man and watching the red flags that she brushes off, but mainly try to make it mean something completely different.
Whether it was him saying he did not want to get married (but ended up engaged) or trying to leave her things in his apartment and he gave them back to her… but she found a picture of them together that made up for it (in her mind), or if it was her overly explaining herself to her girlfriends to shift the disappointment that she felt when it came to Mr. Big, Bradshaw was consistently trying to overcompensate for where he fell short. As we are consistently trying to understand Mr. Big as viewers, we know that he was previously married and does not have the same lived experiences as she does. This could be the reason for his stoic nature, but not an excuse for his lack of emotional intelligence. When Bradshaw attempts to have in-depth communication with him about anything or communicate her feelings, he is stiff and he makes it seem as if her concerns are small or not important. Bradshaw consistently tries to make up for his lack of emotional depth by attempting to find meaning in the way he looks at her or in the silence of the things that he never says.
As soon as we think Bradshaw notices and learns from the silence or the fact that he blatantly chooses to be short with her, she ends up back in his arms. Although her best friends would say, “Hey Carrie, he’s just not it. Wake up,” it simply was not enough for her. Even if she had him in the shortest or most broken of ways, even if it meant they would never speak the same language and she would forever be translating her soul, as long as she had him, she was content.
We have been Carrie
Before we jump and say “I have not,” I ask you just to think about friends who may have been related to Bradshaw, even in the slightest.
I think my soft spot for Bradshaw is how I have seen her consistently try at what she believed was love. The limerence or grasp at what could be with a person is one of the most heartbreaking things to feel and experience. She had such a great option, Aidan Shaw, right in front of her, and yet she still yearned for the melancholic pieces of love that Big gave her.
I say that we all have a piece, even if it is a small piece of us in Bradshaw, because from the women I got to speak to, I’ve learned that we all, at one point, stayed too long in a place that did not serve us. We sat with our friends and tried to reason why he took so long to text back, overanalyze the silence and stolen glances from across the room, or tried to curate an image of him to our friends, even though it was not true.
Women, friends, and family that I have spoken in depth with about why they overcompensate emotionally for a man who lacks. The common answer was simply love of potential and their emotional projection onto them. The potential that if you talk to him enough, he would just instantly get it, or the consistent conversations trying to pull something out of him that was simply never there to begin with.
We all have had those moments with someone, and it does not make us weak or dumb. It makes us human and is a chance for us to have honest conversations with ourselves and our friends about who we date and why.
I think most women can all agree that Bradshaw made us really question her actions and her thinking. I do, however, see and understand even her in the smallest way. My only hope and wish is that women do not stay stuck there very long. Stuck in a cycle of trying to build something that does not want to be there.