Vol. 1, Post #25 Sex And The City

We need to discuss Season 3, 24 years later. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A modern dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.

Dear Readers, did you think I was the sort of writer who was going to prattle on and on about her fantastic new boyfriend for the second week in a row, ad nauseum? Nope, not that kind of girl.

Here’s the kind of girl that I am. In my very first post here, I described myself as “a cross between Samantha from Sex And The City (it’s vomitrocious to admit it, but almost everyone gets a SATC reference, so I’m giving in to it) and basically any character that Jackie Hoffman has played on screen. Or maybe a combo of Cynthia Heimel and The Bubbe from the film Crossing Delancey.”

With this in mind — the idea that SATC is pretty accessible to most people — I’m throwing it back to Season 3 of the series for this week’s post. And if you remember Season 3, you’ll also recall that while each of the characters had their moments in any number of storylines, we got a pretty in-depth look at Carrie and her kryptonite, AKA: Big. Specifically, why Carrie felt the need to first question her relationship with nice guy Aidan and then fuck it up via an affair with Big, the fallout from that affair, and what I think is valuable takeaway for Young Olds who are dating now.

SATC infiltrated my life last week when a client asked me to watch a specific episode at the beginning of Season 3, in advance of marketing a fundraiser she is hosting for FDNY this fall. The client wanted my opinion, as to if a reference in the episode would translate today, decades later. As you might guess, the reference does not (and this is not the first time a client has asked me to watch an episode of SATC. I had a fashion client who wanted to create an ad campaign around the show’s obsession with shoes and handbags so a few years back, I also dove into the now exceptionally dated series for a review. It was eye-opening. Smoking! In restaurants! The list goes on and on…)

In reality, my relationship with SATC stopped after the first eponymously named film was released. I never saw the sequel, nor have I seen the current And Just Like That… series beyond a quick dip into the first couple of episodes, since I had heard that something catastrophic happened in the early plotline. I won’t ruin it for you but the little that I saw of the reboot confirmed that it was indeed DREADFUL, IMO, but you can certainly read media reviews to see if it’s stream-worthy for you. So I’m stuck in a time warp from 1998 to 2004, when SATC OG was on air.

Season 3 aired from June to October 2000. I was 32 years old at the time, not remotely in a cosmos-and-stilettos phase. I was the mother of a one-year-old baby, doing stay-at-home-mommy things, pretty bored, and definitely sporting a questionable haircut.

I wish I could conjure up any feelings that I had around the Carrie and Big affair that played itself out during Season 3, but sadly they are gone with the wind, along my ability to remember why I just walked down the basement stairs five minutes ago, looking for…what? Contrast this to the fact that I know ALL of the lyrics to the Bob Seger songs that the singer-songwriter curated for the soundtrack for the 1985 movie “Mask” (Sam Elliot and that moustache!)? I could burst into song upon command.

But here’s what I DO know. The archetypal yin-yang of Good Guy vs. Bad Guy is nothing new and that’s the takeaway from Season 3 of SATC. Or more specifically, how we (even many of the best-intentioned we) manage to fuck up a good relationship when the siren’s song of a bad one calls to us. I’ll draw your attention to Season 3, Episode 7, entitled “Drama Queens.”

In this episode, Carrie tries to figure out “what’s wrong” with Aiden. And by “wrong,” I mean, she churns and turns thoughts over and over in her mind, out loud with her posse at brunch, and in front of her ever-present laptop with an ever-present question: “Are we so used to emotionally unavailable men that the idea of a nice guy seems foreign to us?”

Dear Readers, if you are someone who has done the same as Carrie, I encourage you to queue up this episode on Netflix or HBO and watch. I found it hitting uncomfortably close to home with regard to some not-so-distant behaviors of mine.

Oh the Good Guy — so very present, attentive to mundane details of your daily life that previously you assumed only your girlfriends cared about, sweet, caring, saying all the things, doing all the things! TOTALLY AROUND AND UP FOR ANYTHING. If you’re lucky (and I’ve been lucky — most of my Good Guys have all been fun in bed), there is sexual chemistry. But it’s not like the sexual chemistry you have (or think you have) with the Bad Guy. You know, the guy who’s NOT AROUND. The one who makes you wait. The one who gets you looking at your phone (or in those days, your answering machine’s unblinking light). The one who has that dark edge that you juuuuuuuuuust can’t stop touching, even though when it cuts you deeply and you bleed, you act surprised.

If you haven’t been here, Dear Readers, big Mazels. Except I think you’re maaaaaaybe lying (or you’re far more well-adjusted than me).

Back to Season 3. Although I do believe Aidan is somehow back in the picture in the current SATC reboot, in this his first incarnation on the show, he is Carrie’s whipping boy, and we all are meant to squirm at how NICE he is. As opposed to Big, who, let’s face it, is a Piece Of Shit. A piece of shit that Carrie can’t stop fucking.

In my own life, I can point to a few times when I made the mistake of choosing Big over Aiden. You would’ve thought that after one cut by that Big knife, I’d take my gauze and my Band-Aids and my bruised and broken heart somewhere else, but in life, those feelings of love, grief, desire, regret — we know this, correct? None of it is logical and none of it is linear. We usually circle back to Bullshit Base Camp once, twice, three times a dipshit, before we finally break free of it for good. I know I did.

I remember earlyish in my marriage (to my absolutely incredible now ex-husband) when my college boyfriend resurfaced. Nothing really hideous happened but... Boyfriend was back in NYC from South America; we had one or two lunches and went over one or two of the bits of unfinished business that remained between us. Yes, he looked hot as fuck. No, I had zero intent of having an affair. Didn’t matter. Shit still went sideways for a while.

Since this was the mid-90s, when College Boyfriend returned to South America where he was living, ostensibly starting a business but really just fucking around and escaping responsibility as a grown up, he started sending me letters. Letters that came addressed to me in my office, which seemed “safe” or at least away from my husband’s eyes.

When the mailroom brought up the daily deliveries, and the magazines, newsletters, envelopes big and small, et al were sorted and slotted into our respective office cubbyholes at the publishing house where I worked, I would feel my heart leap, anticipating a new letter. A letter meant a fresh source of fantasy, of dopamine, of some lingering feelings that might reveal themselves on a thin Airmail-approved piece of paper. College boyfriend told me about all the places where he was traveling, how he thought of me as he wound his way up the Inca Trail at Machu Picchu, how he wished I was with him to see what he saw, and semi-hidden in this verse were veiled promises of doing better if we ever reunited. I’m sure he and I both knew that “doing better” was fiction. I was happily married to a wonderful man and staying married. He was a lost soul with goals and dreams that did not align with mine. It did not surprise me when he told me about a year or so into our correspondence that he met someone who was in step with what he thought his life might look like, and further, that she told him never to mention my name to her again. He and I went our separate ways until 2023, when he popped up out of thin air, and asked me to breakfast, under the auspice of saying that since both of his parents were now dead, he wanted to connect with someone who knew them and loved them (they were lovely, generous people) and sort of have an “what’s it all about, Alfie?” moment?

We did have breakfast, we did talk about his parents, and we did have that moment, and as we said goodbye, I realized that he was also waiting for me to indicate it was OK to make a move. That was a hard no; would never have been OK. He was still married, and I was in the midst of a rare, uncomplicated happy chapter with my now ex. Cheating was something that NEVER appealed to me (even though now, looking back at those letters that arrived in my office, well, that itself wasn’t really kosher, now, was it?) I knew this breakfast was probably our final meeting. I haven’t heard from him since.

When I was tuning in to SATC Season 3 for this client project, I realized I was coming into the series just at the moment when Carrie is grappling with Big’s looming nuptials to his embarrassing cliche of young wife-to-be, Natasha. There is an episode ahead of the wedding, when Carrie draws comparisons to The Way We Were, and how Barbra Streisand’s character Katie was so untamable that Robert Redford’s character Hubbell (described as “a feckless WASP — PERFECTION!) had no choice but to leave her for another “easier” option. That’s well-played writing, by the way, that comparison (and I’ll use this opportunity to remind you that The Way We Were DOES NOT HOLD UP and watching it via today’s eyes and sensibility will make you insane). Next in the series, Aiden appears, and although he’s made to seem cringe-worthily available to Carrie, you see the two of them making a go of it. Until Big enters the scene, darkly depressed, maybe drinking a little too much, not so much full of regret but HINTING that he might have made a mistake in not choosing Carrie over Natasha

It comes to a head in Season 3, Episode 11, “Running With Scissors,” and it’s repulsive.

Carrie and Big’s affair, which starts in grand hotels with gorgeous bedding and crystal highball glasses, gets seedier and seedier. Half promises are made, agony is palpable, and as viewers of the show know, several episodes later, both of their relationships implode.

I couldn’t help myself. Once I realized I was coming back into the storyline at this precise moment, I watched intently. I wanted to see if what I remembered was accurate: that Carrie knowingly put her healthy, quality relationship at risk to validate herself with an ex who she KNEW was poisonous to her mental health, who she KNEW had already shown her signs that he was narcissistic, flaky, and just plain not nice, who she KNEW would probably hurt her again.

Yup. I was correct. Today, at our age, would anyone really be surprised with the outcome of this wretched affair?

What is it about emotionally unavailable people that triggers such interest in grown adults (and now I’m talking about me, not Carrie Bradshaw)? Is it the childhood wounds that are obviously part of the allure? Is it the challenge of capturing what was previously so elusive? Is it just plain immaturity that compels us to touch that scalding plate that the waiter sets before us with a warning, “Be careful, it’s hot”?

What I found incredibly interesting in rounding out that third season (and nah, I don’t think I’m watching any more) was that 56-year-old Abbe watched these half-hour mini-dramas with very different eyes than 32-year-old Abbe. Again, I don’t remember if I was surprised that Carrie and Big got caught in the act when the show was happening in real time, but as soon as this version of me started following along, I was both saddened and acknowledging that terrible pull. While I would like to think that I’d not find emotional unavailability attractive in any way at this point in my life, boy oh boy, did I remember when it was an itch I needed to scratch.

It made me think of the few dates I’d been on in this last stretch of singledom, one or two of which were with men who were handsome, in fact, wildly handsome, and clearly just a little bit off. Maybe it was the manner in which they both referred to their ex-partners. Maybe it was the reason they found themselves in their current living situation (the two men I’m thinking about were both “bouncing around” between NYC and upstate, not entirely sure where to next lay down roots, and it seemed like theirs was an overly complicated search for a home). Maybe it was the very strained relationship that one had with his sister, or maybe it was the begrudging acknowledgement that the other said he had when he realized his days of “party drugs” were over. No matter. After going on exactly one date with each of these guys, I knew immediately that they would be work. Lots of work. And I also knew that while I’m a hard worker and in fact, often enjoy a challenge, this was a challenge I did NOT want to take on.

In those moments, I congratulated myself on how far I’d come from thinking that sticky was sexy, realizing that brooding was in fact boring, and that inconsistency wasn’t a Rubik’s Cube to solve, but rather a sign to pick up my own toys and move to a different playground.

How are YOU, Dear Readers, thinking about smarter choices as you get older and wiser and what’s the best decision you’ve made in your current dating life as a Young Old that prompts you to pat yourself on the back and say, “Well done, Grasshopper”? How have you stopped yourselves from getting “Carried” away?

For next week’s post, I’d love to hear from YOU and what you’ve done different as your ass has aged like a fine wine. Please do email me at whatsshovegottodowithit@gmail.com and let me know if I can interview you for next week’s post, if you came to a big emotional fork in the road and chose wisely. And if we meet in person, first round of cosmos are on me.