When Chloe Walls was 19, she met a man who would float in and out of her life for almost a decade.
‘He was older, accomplished and charming, and I was initially really bowled over. When things were good, I was on cloud nine,’ Chloe, who is now 27 and lives in North Yorkshire, tells Metro.co.uk.
However, as their relationship progressed, she realised that those light-hearted, romantic moments became few and farther between.
‘He could be flakey and unreliable – and ghost me for weeks at a time. It became obvious he wasn’t being entirely honest about his life and relationships, and that his actions would never line up with his words,’ she reflects.
‘I was hurt, repeatedly, and started to feel stupid on top of that, idiotic for allowing it to happen over and over. But I’d always find myself hanging around for more, waiting for the next hit of excitement or attention.’
When Chloe reached her late teens, she started watching Sex And The City for the first time. She remembered her mum watching it when she was young, and discovering it as a young woman, she connected with the show’s protagonist, Carrie Bradshaw.
‘I liked to write and dreamed one day of moving to the city to do so,’ Chloe recalls.
But it isn’t just writing that Chloe and Carrie had in common: they both had a Mr Big who, despite the red flags and the consistent poor treatment, remained a recurring theme in their love lives.
In season three, after Carrie starts seeing Mr Big again after their first breakup, her best friend Miranda Hobbes famously gives her a talking to: ‘He is bad for you! Jesus, every time you get near him, you turn into this pathetic, needy, insecure victim,’ she screams at her whilst they’re clothes shopping.
Like Carrie, Chloe also had a talking to from her own Miranda – but, head over heels, she still wasn’t able to see the wood for the trees.
‘My friends and family could see what an idiot I was being, frankly. I had more than a few Mirandas in my life telling me to get over myself and move on,’ Chloe details.
‘At the time I was a bit miffed by what felt like a lack of understanding, but it was rooted in not wanting to see me get hurt. I ignored so many red flags and took him at his word when every instinct was telling me I shouldn’t.’
As we approach the anniversary of the release of the first Sex And The City movie, which first came out in May 2008, hype surrounding the franchise remains high. Earlier this month, the original series debuted on Netflix US, introducing a whole new generation (namely Gen Z) to the escapades of Carrie Bradshaw, Charlotte York, Samantha Jones and Miranda Hobbes.
Despite various concerns that younger generations, who did not grow up amid the SATC universe, would overwhelmingly reject some of its increasingly outdated themes (including its casual transphobia, racism and biphobia, to name a few), numerous Gen Zs do identify with the show’s controversial protagonist.
In fact, SATC has enjoyed discourse on TikTok, revived through audios of the famous scenes. One is of Samantha asking a man she’s been sleeping with ‘who is this?’, after he phones her to tell her that he told his wife about their affair. Another is of Mr Big’s famous ‘Armani on Sunday’ scene, where Carrie, confused rather than head over heels in love (as TikTok has since interpreted it), realises she knows nothing about her mysterious boyfriend.
So, with a SATC renaissance upon us (I mean, did its influence ever really die?), I couldn’t help but wonder… why do we keep going back to men like Mr Big? You know the ones: the men who repeatedly treat us badly, but we can’t help but go back to, time and time again. Like Carrie, is it a self-confidence thing? Or is it our egos?
As positive psychology coach and therapist Clare Deacon tells us, it’s likely a recurring habit that we’ve got comfortable with over the years.
‘We pick partners who can be bad for us because perhaps it’s familiar. It’s something we know; that feels normal. It’s what we expect a relationship to be,’ Clare tells Metro.co.uk.
‘For some it will be the thrill of the rollercoaster ride, the excitement and challenge that the relationship offers without realising the consequences the lack of stability and security have on their longer-term wellbeing. This would particularly be the case for anxious attachment styles.
‘For others his commitment issues will prove appealing, especially to those with an avoidant attachment style, as he embodies their ideals of autonomy and independence. He mirrors their own needs for space, enabling them to maintain a relationship without it feeling suffocating. This would also accommodate those with a fear of authentic intimacy.’
Elsewhere, picking partners that are bad for us can also be put down to low self-esteem, as clinical psychologist Dr Marianne Trent tells us.
‘Typically, if someone has lowered self-esteem, they may struggle to believe that they are worth anything more than the breadcrumbs dished out by an emotionally unpredictable partner such as Big,’ Dr Marianne tells Metro.co.uk.
When it comes to Carrie’s character specifically, Clare believes that attachment theory (AKA, a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and dynamics between people) can largely explain her interactions in various relationships, including with Mr Big.
‘This framework explains how the relationships we have in childhood can influence our behaviours in relationships that we have in adulthood. If you look at Carrie, she is an anxious attachment style, so she really wants to have those close bonds with people,’ Clare explains.
‘She feels generally insecure and she seeks out this reassurance, so she has kind of some self-esteem issues where she’s constantly having this need to be validated and for the relationship to be validated for her.
‘Whereas Mr Big is an avoidant attachment style, so he doesn’t commit. He values his independence and withdraws whenever closeness becomes too intense, and he has all of these barriers up.’
Elsewhere, Dr Marianne notes that, as viewers, we know little about Carrie’s childhood beyond the fact that her father left her mother when she was young. This could go some way towards explaining her behaviour in relationships and her constant attraction to the arguably toxic Mr Big, who essentially could mirror her father.
‘We never seemed to learn anything about Carrie’s parents but one theory about why she might have found Mr Big’s style appealing, thrilling and tolerable is that she had an absent or sporadic father,’ Dr Marianne outlines.
And when Carrie discovers Mr Big outside church on Sunday with his mother, wearing the famous Armani suit, these differences in attachment styles are highlighted even further.
‘This would seem to suggest that Carrie has only been shown certain elements of Big’s life and that he has left out key information for her to get a coherent picture of his real life. When we experience infatuation with someone, we can also have a tendency to elevate their status and forget that they do normal things like watch TV or even go to church, for example,’ Dr Marianne adds.
‘Again, with Mr Big, we know very little about his upbringing,’ Clare adds.
‘However, there are a couple of scenes, like when he’s packing up to go to Napa and Carrie goes round and visits him… He’s playing all those old records and talking about playing Moon River, and that was his parents’ song.
‘There seemed to be quite a strong, happy marriage and he had this romanticised belief around his parents’ relationship, and maybe that holds high expectation of what a relationship should be.’
So, before we romanticise and perhaps misremember what Mr Big was about, let his and Carrie’s relationship be a caution: if your guy casually drops in conversation that he’s moving to a different country, or fails to tell you he’s religious and goes to church every Sunday – or even turns up drunk at your new boyfriend’s log cabin while you’re trying to enjoy a romantic getaway, then that’s probably a red flag. Even if he’s wearing an Armani suit while doing it.
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.
source https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/26/sex-and-the-city-ignore-mr-big-red-flags-20717076/
0 Comments