like followed and subscribed. this being such a big brained take on SATC and how i've been feeling about carrie for soooooo long. thank you for explicating all these big emotions into one cohesive dialogue! so very thankful feeling very warm hearted after reading this.
Hi, this is such an interesting question that I've been pondering on for a while.
There's so many levels to emotional manipulation and emotional abuse that I even don't fully understand. Like I said in the post, I don't think Mr. Big is an evil man, or someone that sets out to hurt Carrie. In scenes where he tells her that he never means to hurt her, there's a sincerity there. However, there's an active choice to lie and hide things from people in order to change their perception of reality and even if you don't say in your head, "I'm going to emotionally manipulate/abuse this person." it's still something that falls into a category.
I had a friend that I hurt a while ago, and when I apologized to them, I made the situation about me. I was self deprecating and didn't take the time necessary to even acknowledge what I had done and how what I had done affected them. I was so focused on making sure they knew that it was not my intention to hurt them and that I was torn up about it. I wanted my friend to see me as a victim and as someone who was also suffering so that they knew my choices were not an effort to hurt them. It got so self serving, the apology ended with my friend COMFORTING me and their pain didn't even get addressed. In all transparency, in that moment I was emotionally manipulating my friend. Completely changing their reality and perception of that situation to the point where the only person that got any closure was me, the person who was in the wrong. I didn't mean to do it, nor did I realize that I did it (I did realize eventually and gave that friend a proper apology for both situations) but it still happened.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even if you have real care and love for a person, how you treat them and how you impact them is the thing that ends up mattering most. As an adult, there are patterns of behavior we have to learn and recognize in ourselves in order for it to stop. There's a level of self awareness that is required also, that a lot of people just don't have. There are people out there who pre meditate their abuse and their control over a person 100% but I'm not 100% sure if it always starts that way or if that's the case in all cases of abuse. Obviously, I'm not a professional, I'm 20 years old and my experiences are limited to my one relationship and observations of other people's relationships but that's such an interesting question and thank you for asking it!
Hi, wow thank you so much for answering my question and you made me realize how I emotionally manipulated someone. How did you forgive yourself for it?
I think it's important to become comfortable with the idea that you make mistakes and sometimes you do things that are mean spirited, that are selfish, that are humiliating, that are rude, and things that you know deep down you shouldn't do. It's apart of the human experience, you would never learn to be better if you didn't make them. I didn't forgive myself for a long long time, there are pages and pages of my journal of me calling myself a selfish and terrible bitch.
I spent a really long time romanticizing the idea of living, like I would be a character in a movie, picture perfect with barely any flaws, adored by many (I'm a Leo lol). And breaking that idea of myself was hard. Having to accept the fact that I will never be a perfect person, and that I do things that I shouldn't do and that I have to take responsibility for was extremely hard, especially for this specific thing -- the thought of hurting my friend in that way was so unbearable, for a while I used to pretend it never happened.
But mistakes can never be corrected if you don't go out of your way to correct them, apologize, take real responsibility and blame. And even if the person doesn't forgive you, you have to forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself doesn't make what you did okay or invalidate the person's experience, but you're the one who has to live with you so you have to say. "Okay, I did this thing and it was wrong. And even if I never get forgiven, it does nothing to harp on the situation and beat myself up." because if you beat yourself up, you can never guarantee yourself any growth and you might do it again. There are so many people in the world, who harden themselves because of the mistakes they've made, and they decide that because they don't think they could ever be forgiven-- what's the point of ever doing better? They're already a bad person, there's no redeeming them, so who cares? But that idea is what makes you irredeemable, to keep going out of your way and making the same mistakes because you're afraid of what you've done makes you worse than you ever were. Speaking from experience, I had already decided I was a selfish bitch after that one mistake, and so I kept being a selfish bitch and ostracized myself from everyone. I'm thankful to have understanding and loving people in my life who have forgiven me for the things I did in retaliation with myself, but what if I didn't?
Now, I find it helpful to think about what you can do with your mistakes moving forward. Like I'm very thankful that I get to sit here and type out this advice, because that means I'm learning from it and I'm helping someone else who has similar experiences. I now also know more effective ways to take responsibility and better ways to give apologies. Maybe in the future, you'll be giving similar advice to someone else!
Carrie and Big were in an anxious-avoidant relationship. Ever since I learned about attachment theory, I've made my peace with their relationship. I'm glad someone finally wrote about this relationship with nuance.
carrie is so dear to me and it’s always pissed me off how much people hate on her, and mostly never for the right reasons to hate her. and this hatred for women like her translates in real life with the tiktok comments as you’ve said or that tough love that so many young women encourage in friendship (e.g. “of course he doesn’t like you are you stupid” and that whole ‘i give my friends 1-2 times to complain about a man then immediately tune out’ thing i’ve seen way too many times on tiktok. overall it feels like there’s both a lack of empathy towards other women but also this refusal to fully condemn the men, and understand that if a guy is manipulative then their ‘victim’ has been manipulated and it wasn’t all free will.
overall this was a lovely essay, and the playlist songs truly represent carrie and big’s awful relationship.
hey guys! i made a playlist based on carrie and big’s relationship. apple music: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/me-and-mr-big/pl.u-mJy89oEFzmlVP5l spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ZbcxSGUd60lbL68wqCPJS?si=5pge3OMCRQa0d8ed9Q5nOA
yes!!! i cant help but love carrie because she is so undeniably human
like followed and subscribed. this being such a big brained take on SATC and how i've been feeling about carrie for soooooo long. thank you for explicating all these big emotions into one cohesive dialogue! so very thankful feeling very warm hearted after reading this.
Hi, I just wanted to ask do you think someone can be emotionally abusive unintentionally?
Hi, this is such an interesting question that I've been pondering on for a while.
There's so many levels to emotional manipulation and emotional abuse that I even don't fully understand. Like I said in the post, I don't think Mr. Big is an evil man, or someone that sets out to hurt Carrie. In scenes where he tells her that he never means to hurt her, there's a sincerity there. However, there's an active choice to lie and hide things from people in order to change their perception of reality and even if you don't say in your head, "I'm going to emotionally manipulate/abuse this person." it's still something that falls into a category.
I had a friend that I hurt a while ago, and when I apologized to them, I made the situation about me. I was self deprecating and didn't take the time necessary to even acknowledge what I had done and how what I had done affected them. I was so focused on making sure they knew that it was not my intention to hurt them and that I was torn up about it. I wanted my friend to see me as a victim and as someone who was also suffering so that they knew my choices were not an effort to hurt them. It got so self serving, the apology ended with my friend COMFORTING me and their pain didn't even get addressed. In all transparency, in that moment I was emotionally manipulating my friend. Completely changing their reality and perception of that situation to the point where the only person that got any closure was me, the person who was in the wrong. I didn't mean to do it, nor did I realize that I did it (I did realize eventually and gave that friend a proper apology for both situations) but it still happened.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even if you have real care and love for a person, how you treat them and how you impact them is the thing that ends up mattering most. As an adult, there are patterns of behavior we have to learn and recognize in ourselves in order for it to stop. There's a level of self awareness that is required also, that a lot of people just don't have. There are people out there who pre meditate their abuse and their control over a person 100% but I'm not 100% sure if it always starts that way or if that's the case in all cases of abuse. Obviously, I'm not a professional, I'm 20 years old and my experiences are limited to my one relationship and observations of other people's relationships but that's such an interesting question and thank you for asking it!
Hi, wow thank you so much for answering my question and you made me realize how I emotionally manipulated someone. How did you forgive yourself for it?
I think it's important to become comfortable with the idea that you make mistakes and sometimes you do things that are mean spirited, that are selfish, that are humiliating, that are rude, and things that you know deep down you shouldn't do. It's apart of the human experience, you would never learn to be better if you didn't make them. I didn't forgive myself for a long long time, there are pages and pages of my journal of me calling myself a selfish and terrible bitch.
I spent a really long time romanticizing the idea of living, like I would be a character in a movie, picture perfect with barely any flaws, adored by many (I'm a Leo lol). And breaking that idea of myself was hard. Having to accept the fact that I will never be a perfect person, and that I do things that I shouldn't do and that I have to take responsibility for was extremely hard, especially for this specific thing -- the thought of hurting my friend in that way was so unbearable, for a while I used to pretend it never happened.
But mistakes can never be corrected if you don't go out of your way to correct them, apologize, take real responsibility and blame. And even if the person doesn't forgive you, you have to forgive yourself. Forgiving yourself doesn't make what you did okay or invalidate the person's experience, but you're the one who has to live with you so you have to say. "Okay, I did this thing and it was wrong. And even if I never get forgiven, it does nothing to harp on the situation and beat myself up." because if you beat yourself up, you can never guarantee yourself any growth and you might do it again. There are so many people in the world, who harden themselves because of the mistakes they've made, and they decide that because they don't think they could ever be forgiven-- what's the point of ever doing better? They're already a bad person, there's no redeeming them, so who cares? But that idea is what makes you irredeemable, to keep going out of your way and making the same mistakes because you're afraid of what you've done makes you worse than you ever were. Speaking from experience, I had already decided I was a selfish bitch after that one mistake, and so I kept being a selfish bitch and ostracized myself from everyone. I'm thankful to have understanding and loving people in my life who have forgiven me for the things I did in retaliation with myself, but what if I didn't?
Now, I find it helpful to think about what you can do with your mistakes moving forward. Like I'm very thankful that I get to sit here and type out this advice, because that means I'm learning from it and I'm helping someone else who has similar experiences. I now also know more effective ways to take responsibility and better ways to give apologies. Maybe in the future, you'll be giving similar advice to someone else!
Carrie and Big were in an anxious-avoidant relationship. Ever since I learned about attachment theory, I've made my peace with their relationship. I'm glad someone finally wrote about this relationship with nuance.
carrie is so dear to me and it’s always pissed me off how much people hate on her, and mostly never for the right reasons to hate her. and this hatred for women like her translates in real life with the tiktok comments as you’ve said or that tough love that so many young women encourage in friendship (e.g. “of course he doesn’t like you are you stupid” and that whole ‘i give my friends 1-2 times to complain about a man then immediately tune out’ thing i’ve seen way too many times on tiktok. overall it feels like there’s both a lack of empathy towards other women but also this refusal to fully condemn the men, and understand that if a guy is manipulative then their ‘victim’ has been manipulated and it wasn’t all free will.
overall this was a lovely essay, and the playlist songs truly represent carrie and big’s awful relationship.