sex & the city

for a period of about two years around 2002, i was subjected to the hbo show sex & the city on a consistent basis.  my girlfriend at the time was a fan of it and would enjoy watching carrie and the girls’ exploits as thirty-something new-yorkers.  i admit that had i not had a girlfriend i would not have watched the show, but long-term relationships sometimes make you do things which are out of the ordinary.  i tried to go in with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the show.  the acting was ok, the writing was good and the plots were plausible, for the most part.  it was good for college-type women to have a show that dissected real life scenarios and encouraged openness about sex, love, and what it means to be an adult in contemporary times.  looking back however, i do have a problem with carrie’s two major recurring love interests.  when i was actually watching the show, i witnessed how carrie would bounce back and forth between big and aiden.  she was burdened, one minute being seduced by the suave, charming, wealthy mr. big who clearly had less emotionally invested than her, and the sincere, down to earth, softspoken furniture designer aiden.  the dynamic between the three made for pretty interesting television. carrie would go through all the cycles every relationship goes through with these men.  she would hurt the sincere new interest by sleeping with the charming old flame, then make it up to him.  his understanding ways lasted for a while but inevitably his patience wore thin and he had to save face and break up with her.   this process repeats itself in various ways with other men peppered in, but for the most part, this is what you would see.  over and over.  seven years ago this felt like a realistic scenario, and it pretty much holds up today.  unfortunately the characters of big and aiden are drastic exaggerations of real-life men, or at least not characters a 19 year old girl would be able to relate to on a nonfiction level.  essentially everyone has encountered situations where they try to have the best of both worlds, hanging on to an old shitty relationship while probably ruining a perfectly good new one.  the problem for real-life girls watching this dynamic was that im not sure they were aware that these were merely characters on a tv show.  john corbett did to young men what models do to young women.  it gave the opposite sex an inflated idea of what to expect, subsequentially setting them up for failure time and time again.  mr. big’s character was pretty universal.  sleek businessman with all the right moves but little conscience.  he’ll fuck you and leave you time and time again.  and you’ll come back because he’s smooth and you like to be treated like dirt.  pretty standard.  aiden on the other hand is more of a combination of things women probably want.  softspoken, long-haired furniture designer who plays the guitar and catches you off-guard with remarkably insightful comments on friends, love, and art.  he’s too much of a pussy and he knows it but not readily changing for you, because he’s also a better person than you and you know it also.  so you continue to fuck big because you can’t handle how nice aiden is. he probably wont find out anyway and if he does you can talk your way out of it, because you have no problem lying to someone who is a forgiving pussy.  your friends won’t help in the long run because their advice will all be geared towards the short term unless its just completely self-serving.  mr. big will most likely marry someone foreign or younger than you and aiden will find someone with as gentle of a soul as his after his heart was broken by you and you will lament the missteps of your past while never finding someone as good as either of the two.  you become a miserable alcoholic and a bad sister, making extravagant claims like, “im never hosting a holiday at my house again!” you die tired and alone, with nobody to weep at the foot of your casket.  your life was pointless and there is no afterlife. if there was, you’d go to hell.  punishment? john corbett hugging you saying “i like YOU” in his earnest, pussified way. then disappearing and reappearing for all of eternity.  or however it works down there