Carrie Bradshaw: Beyond the Manolos

“Can you ever really forgive, if you can’t forget?”

That is what Carrie Bradshaw, our pathetic protagonist writes in the seventh episode of the fourth season of Sex and the city, where in the same episode, she breaks down to Aiden as she repeats “you have to forgive me”.

Now first things first, and because I want to make this essay as understandable as possible even to people who didn’t watch this series, Sex and the city is an American television series that first aired June 6th, where action takes in New York city and in which Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie, a 32 years old woman, writer of a column about sex and men, is friends with 3 other women; Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha. The four friends are inseparable despite their diverging natures.

When you first watch the series, it is kind of confusing because you see 4 different women, with different ideas about life, approaches and principles. You seem to relate to each one of them in something and can’t really project yourself only on one, you can’t really identify yourself with only one of them, and as you progress through the series, you may find out that you are not actually supposed to do so, because the compilation of the four of them is what gives one person in real life, and that it is intended, sort of, to have this contrast between characters, and to me that represents what goes on inside each and every single one of us and the multiple voices we have in our heads that argue all the time (not in a schizophrenic way), because again, no one is a mess all the time like Carrie, or constantly a hopeless romantic like Charlotte, or regularly ambitious and cynical like Miranda, or regularly sexual and assertive like Samantha. None of us is only ever really one person ceaselessly through all seasons of life.

When it comes to men, we are only going to focus in this essay only on two; Mr. Big and Aiden, with whom Carrie had serious relationships.

Carrie meets with Mr. Big first, a man baby who couldn’t make it any clearer to Carrie that she will never be “the one”, he is careless, not serious, commitment-phobic, avoidant, self-centred, unreliable: the list goes on and on, and to be fairly honest, I don’t even blame him because he is presented to be someone who is not looking for something serious, at least not with Carrie, which is a fact she kept disregarding, I believe by choice, by falling for his deceitful “charm”.

Carrie on the other side, in light of Mr. Big’s behaviour and treatment towards her, if you would like to describe her as a hopeful romantic, I would only describe her as an embarrassment. Caught in a vicious cycle of emotional turbulence, torture and despair, her infatuation with Mr. Big has led her to be completely blind to the poor way he treats her with and to overlook his dismissiveness and inconsistency. He suck her vibrant energy and lively soul, and I wish I could find it in me to blame him, but her willingness and predisposition to accept the bare minimum and less than what she deserves makes it impossible to side with her against Mr.Big or to defend her position as a victim, and that is ladies, but gentlemen too, is what you get for dating someone for the hope of “it”, whatever “it” signifies to you.

I firmly believe that hope, in relationships, when wrongly placed is a very perilous risky gamble that most of the times ends with heartbreak, heartache and disappointment.

When you stay with someone because you believe they will eventually change, you are setting yourself up for a failing relationship. This dynamic creates an unbalanced and unhealthy foundation for your relationships, where your emotional well-being hinges and depends on the possibility of a transformation that may never come. And rather than fostering mutual growth and respect, rather than investing your time and energy with someone who is worth the trouble, it perpetuates a cycle of unmet expectations and repeated hurt and so you become frustrated all the time. In the long run, this can erode and erase your self-esteem make you settle for unhappiness and dissatisfaction, because by then, you think you have so much “history” with your current partner and that it is too late or too sad to let it go to waste after all the time that has passed.

After a series of low downs and… definitely not ups, but just regular downs with Mr. Big, he and Carrie break up for the millionth time.

That is when enters the room: Aiden. Kind-hearted, genuine, dependable, warm, nurturing and with a refreshing sense of stability. He is patient, good looking for Carrie, a healthy communicator, down to earth and most importantly: loyal.

Now you would think that this is the golden opportunity for Carrie to appreciate this man that God has gifted her, and that since she has antecedents of emotional negligence, she has finally found somebody who is “gonna match her freak”, and forget about whatever situationship she had with Mr. Big, set healthy boundaries and never look back.

Well no, she proceeds to have an affair with Mr. Big, who now is married to Natasha, a woman who is everything Carrie is not, and nothing Carrie is, and cheats on Aiden with Big. She

I don’t want to compare the two women, Natasha and Carrie, because that would go against everything I stand for and everything I wrote about in a previous essay “A woman: too much yet too less of a person”. But to say the least, Carrie once again proves how much of a pick me she is and how much she lacks grace, civility, decency and elegance.

I wished to have obtained more scenes of Natasha, and to see her more as a person than a personage through Big’s or Carrie’s eyes, but that is something the show has robbed us of.

When the affair happened, that was when the little of sympathy and respect I had for Carrie disappeared, I couldn’t stand her anymore but I couldn’t stop the show because I got too attached to it, it was very funny to see how ironic life is, and that, somehow, we always become the thing we despise the most, and so we got to see Carrie become Aiden’s Mr. Big, treat Aiden so poorly and accuse him of being too available (isn’t the point of being in a relationship having someone always only available for us?) which was a very distressing uncomfortable event to witness and which leads you to think that Carrie is an unhealthy, toxic, immature person who doesn’t know what she wants. You finally see Carrie for who she really is, even though it is clear from the beginning, you try to find excuses for her, for the terrible friend she is, the pick me she is, her attention seeking behaviour, her callousness, her bad spending habits, her tendency to romanticize her own suffering and repeat stupid hurtful patterns, you see now more than ever how much of an ego-centric, self-centred, selfish person who doesn’t care about anything or anyone but herself, and that she is an entitled brat who thinks the whole world revolves around her and that she suffers from main character syndrome. Carrie, they could never pay me to like you.

Aiden finds out eventually about Carrie’s betrayal. This devastating discovery shatters Aidan's trust in Carrie and marks a turning point in their relationship, ultimately leading to their breakup.

But time passes and Carrie and Aiden “find” their way back to each other. Carrie, thinking she will find the same person twice in Aiden, is slowly realising that he is not the same person she has left, that he got the “fuck boy” make over and that, surprisingly to her, her actions had irreparable consequences and that what she did had repercussions. She now knows that she has fumbled, how badly she messed up, and, classic cheater behaviour, realizes that what she had with Aiden was beautiful.

I, personally, hate realizations with passion when it comes in such contexts. What do you mean you are back now that you realized? Realized what? That you lack human decency and that you need forgiveness for the sanity of your mental health? For your own closure? To free yourself from the torments of your own behaviour? Realized that who you were with didn’t deserve how poorly you treated them? Wasn’t that clear before you mess up? There is just something so provocative about realizations and something so infuriating about people who finally realize and people who let people back into their lives after hearing their realizations.

Now what I don’t understand is why did Aiden take back Carrie if he didn’t forgive her, and don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for him to actually forgive her because I am a sole believer that once a cheater, always a cheater. And while I don’t necessarily think that cheating means an absence of love, it is something unforgivable for the fact that it is unforgettable; each and every time you are intimate with your partner, you have to think if they have experienced with someone else whatever you are doing at the moment and so even if you decide to forgive, you will never move on, even when you get all the guarantees you need and want that the disloyalty won’t happen again, nothing will be ever enough for you to calm your worries and turbulent thoughts.

Slowly, you become toxic and trapped in a toxic relationship where doubt and lack of certainty live forever. And that is why I personally could never forgive a cheater, and why, if hypothetically I was a cheater, I wouldn’t really seek forgiveness for the sake of getting back into the relationship, because cheating inflicts a deep lasting wound, gradually transforming it into a toxic environment filled with doubt and insecurity.

The initial shock and betrayal shatter the foundation of trust, replacing it with constant questioning. Every action and word becomes scrutinized, creating an atmosphere of anxiety and unease. The emotional turmoil fosters a persistent everlasting fear of further deceit. This cycle of mistrust and hurt becomes all-consuming, overshadowing any positive aspects of the relationship. And while the human reaction to cling to hope and seek reconciliation is understandable, and the negative aspects during the phase of reconciliation are understandable as well, reviving a relationship marred and painted by disloyalty often perpetuates this cycle of pain. And that is why it is crucial to break free from a relationship where betrayal has occurred, and to not put yourself in the position Aiden has put himself in by becoming flirtatious to a bartender, lying about where he is going and who he is meeting, becoming physically violent and rude to the person we supposedly have forgiven, because deep down you know that you didn’t deserve the hurt and you want to get even somehow.

But the scene that provokes me the most is where Aiden expresses his feelings to Carrie in Episode 7, Season 4, and where he sets a clear boundary to Carrie about her having to cut off Big, which she responds to by basically saying that she can’t since he is part of her life, whatever that means, demanding at the same time that “he has” to forgive her.

It was truly a moment of huge disbelief to me that people like this exist and that such entitlement is anchored within some people, reflecting how they think they deserve privileges or special treatment without necessarily earning them while also expressing disregard for the feelings and rights of others, fostering a selfish and insensitive attitude. Carries’ entitlement manifested in her relationships, friendships and interactions in many ways, where she sometimes expected special treatment or exceptions without reciprocating the same level of understanding, engagement or empathy. This behaviour not only alienated those around her but also perpetuated a cycle of self-centeredness that hindered genuine connections and mutual respect.

But what shocked me the most was how little of character development our protagonist has had throughout the series and that even years later, in the revivals, she has stayed the same, repeating the mistakes, hiding behind the same youthful mistakes we are supposed to grow out of and stuck in the same unhealthy patterns.

Her character developement is as non-existent as her savings account.

Carrie has had serious deeply rooted issues that she did not address because she thought her quirky behaviour added charm to her persona, news flash: it did not and I just know I couldn’t be friends with someone like Carrie, someone who has to make everything about themselves, whose whole life is about relationships and break ups, someone who refuses to take accountability for their wrongdoings, someone who takes my friendship for granted and someone who refuses to grow up and change. Carrie's character, despite her charm and relatability, serves as a cautionary tale of self-centeredness, emotional immaturity, and the dangers of prioritizing romantic pursuits over personal growth and that is portrayed by her tendencies of going back to Mr Big, accepting to be a place holder in his life, even when he gets second doubts and doesn’t show up the day of their wedding. And that is something I hated the writers for because they were desperately trying to make Big and Carrie’s story look like some sort of epic Shakespearian love that transcends everything. Please!

However, it is essential to admit that this series has a major influence on popular culture and its portrayal of women's relationships and sexuality in the late 90s/early 2000s. It was one of the first shows to be about main characters who are women, to follow their journey and see how they navigate through the adventures of life.

One aspect of the series that has truly fascinated me was the fashion. The fashion in Sex and the City was not merely a backdrop but a central character in its own right, often driving storylines and defining the personalities of the main characters.

Carrie Bradshaw, in particular, became a style icon with her eclectic mix of vintage finds, high-end designer pieces, and quirky accessories – most notably her obsession with Manolo Blahnik shoes. Each character's wardrobe reflected their personality: Charlotte's preppy elegance, Miranda's power suits evolving into more feminine styles, and Samantha's bold, sexualized outfits.

Finally, and so to answer the question asked at the beginning of this essay, I think that forgiveness can never be attainable if the “forgetting” barrier is not crossed, which is completely understandable in situations such as cheating, or where trust has been failed and hearts have been broken and hurt. The damages that follow betrayed trust can never be mended and the hurt that follows can never fully be healed, and for how broken you become, you will never fully recover, but at least you can gift yourself the grace of walking out and starting freshly with someone else, while also acknowledging that you will have to fix your broken self that you didn’t break or choose to break, that you will have to admit to yourself that your new partner isn’t your old one and that you shouldn’t punish them for things they didn’t do or mistakes they didn’t commit .

But when it comes to mistakes that are conventionally forgivable, mistakes that do not cross boundaries we set, forgiveness, whether from a place of forgetfulness or not, becomes a decision you either stick with or not. And most importantly, it is a decision that you shouldn’t keep count of through time.

Ultimately, Sex and the City offers viewers a mirror to examine their own relationships, choices, and personal growth. While it may not always present the healthiest models of behavior, it provokes important discussions about love, friendship and the complexities of modern life.