Last week I emotion coached SATC character, Samantha Jones - an extremely promiscuous, unashamedly open, highly sexualised woman who was afraid to face her emotions and was afraid of emotional connection and love. She could also be an anomaly as far as her sexual behaviour goes, as we rarely see her requiring alcohol or any other substance to engage in her sexual pursuits. In fact, the one time we do see her looking disheveled is after spending the night with Richard and we see her walking home talking to Carrie and telling her that she “took a hit of x” and told him she loved him, something she was extremely embarrassed and worried about. An interesting little twist.
Carrie is the glue of the group, and unlike Sam, she is looking for love, and it’s Carrie I’m going to emotion coach this week.
So let’s start with the on/off toxic dynamic that was a consistent feature between Carrie and Big. It’s a relationship dynamic that is often romanticised in fiction, but in real life, is not healthy. I know because I’ve been there and it’s not fun. For me it signified a lack of self-esteem, low EQ as it signals an inability to process emotions and move on from something, or someone, that doesn’t serve you. This pop culture messaging doesn’t help as it ‘normalises’ or makes it seem exciting when in fact it’s neither.
So why did Carrie get caught up in this? Why wasn’t she able to move on? In terms of the story line, it kept viewers hooked and I have read that she was never supposed to end up with Big but it was what the viewers wanted. Viewers wanted her to end up with a man who consistently picked her up and dropped her whenever he felt like it? Viewers clearly didn’t respect Carrie either! From an emotional intelligence perspective, it might be safe to say that Carrie Bradshaw didn’t really know who she was and didn’t know what she wanted, or deserved which is why she allowed herself to keep going back to an emotionally unavailable man.
From the start it wasn’t good. In season one she meets ‘Big - she is 32 at the time ad it’s episode six when she has her first date and she wears, “the naked dress”. The four friends are together ahead of her date talking about sex on the first date. Sam accuses Carrie of being, ‘Victorian’ when she says, “well there is something to be said for restraint.” Restraint is a core aspect of emotional intelligence as we are able to exercise restraint by making choices in the present that are beneficial for the future we want. When Carrie walks out of her apartment she looks into the camera and says, “the truth is I was dying to sleep with him, but isn’t delayed gratification the definition of maturity?” Have you heard of the marshmallow test for children to test their ability to delay gratification? Perhaps it’s a test all children should be doing instead of maths and history.
She walks down the stairs, where Big is waiting for her, they have a brief conversation (if you can call it that) about her, “interesting dress” and within seconds of being in the back seat of his car, he looks her up and down and says “don’t worry I can restrain myself”, she agrees, then they start kissing passionately and the camera cuts to them on the floor of his apartment. Carrie narrates that she, “can’t be hemmed in by rules, and she goes with her emotions.” She’d probably have eaten her marshmallow and all the other ones too.
It’s the beginning of a toxic relationship. We also hear her narrate, whilst lying naked on the floor that, “if he never calls her again I will always think of him fondly…as an a$$hole.” She’s already blaming him for her choices, and expectations of where this is going.
She might not be hemmed in by rules, but she is being ruled by her emotions, her sexual limbic system, instead of being ruled by her logical, pre-frontal cortex that would allow her to leave the marshmallow alone and make better decisions that don’t have her feeling, “what a relief, I just escaped the sex-on-the-first-date-curse” when he finally calls her to ask her out again.
We then see her getting into her head after just a few dates, jumping to incorrect conclusions about not being introduced to his friends in the street, not wanting to meet her friends and being taken back to the same Chinese restaurant they went to after they had sex on their first date. So much so, that after too much alcohol, she turns up at his apartment late at night and starts accusing him of being his ‘secret sex girl’.
It is behaviour that should be concerning to her, as it’s irrational, especially so early on in their dating life. It perpetuates ‘lovebombing’ and she is projecting all of her insecurities onto him, because she ate the marshmallow and made a decision that didn’t serve what she really wanted - an emotional connection.
In episode 7 we see Carrie getting annoyed because he’s still seeing other women, and she asks viewers if men have an innate aversion to monogamy, again not taking responsibility for her part in poor communication and for jumping twenty steps ahead of where he was and what he wanted. Did she even tell him what she was looking for so that he could be honest with her and tell her where he was? She gets into overthinking and trying to decipher the ‘meaning’ behind his words, lies to him that she doesn’t want anything from him, she calls him to make him jealous, she turns up at his mother’s church where she hopes his mother will know who she is when he introduces her as, “my friend”, she talks about how she “can’t get inside. I don’t know what else I can do.” What she can do? No woman should have to ‘do’ anything to make a man (or a woman) like them. Are her actions and behaviour those of a confident, self assured, emotionally aware woman? I would say that’s a hard no.
By Episode 12, their relationship of twelve months ends when she asks him for a sign before they jet off on their first holiday together, “just tell me I’m the one” to which he can’t respond and she tells him she can’t do it, that she loves him and she can’t do it.
We never see Carrie stop to take stock of how her behaviour is affecting her own self-worth and her own life, her happiness quickly becoming dependent on how her relationship is going with Big. She never takes responsibility for her actions or her part in the choices she is making. She always puts the blame onto him, even though she has agency to know that he isn’t giving her what she wants, or choosing to leave him sooner so she can meet someone who will give her what she wants and needs. She allowed herself to get in over her head at the very early stages of dating a man who was emotionally unavailable, allowing her emotions to take over instead of engaging her brain and slowing things down so she could assess if he wanted the same things as she did. It’s that typical thing of falling for the idea of someone and not the reality of who they are. Or hoping that they will change.
I know her full speed ahead behaviour is a sign of insecurity because it’s behaviour I recognise in the rear view mirror of my own life when I was in my twenties and early thirties. It will very rarely end well but slow and steady wins the race isn’t romanticised or normalised in pop culture or taught in high school as part of sex education and emotional intelligence.
I don’t feel I have even scratched the surface of emotion coaching Carrie Bradshaw but all in all even just looking at round one of Carrie and Big, she is not a good role model for any adolescent or young woman. But I can’t help but wonder, how much of her behaviour normalises unhelpful behaviour when a relationship is what you are looking for?
To peace and prosperity,
jaxx x
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