Paul was out of town last night so I did what I usually do when he is away: I stayed up late and watched Sex and the City reruns in bed. I have seen each episode at least 50 times. Paul has never commented about my fixation on this show although I know he must wonder why I watch it so much. Even I was baffled by my own fascination with Carrie and her friends until I realized that listening to them rehash their Saturday night dates over Sunday morning brunch was my way of reliving my youth. I too lived in NYC in the late 80’s,  danced the night away at The Palladium and attended my share of “Fleet Week” flight deck parties. My photograph appeared  on Page Six of the New York Post and when I married the first time, my wedding was announced in Town and Country Magazine. Those were the days. Sigh. I am now a soccer mom of five with  plantar fasciitis. (My kids tell me the orthotics I place in my shoes squeak when I walk.) So waiting to see if Miranda is going to have the baby or if Charlotte and Trey will ever get back together (even though I already know the outcome) is my fun escape from the sometimes monotonous routine of  a middle-aged woman who can’t find her reading glasses.

What always gets me though and is kind of hard to take, is suffering through Carrie’s screwing up of her life.  A particularly difficult episode for me is when Aiden breaks up with Carrie when he finds out she has been  cheating on him with Big. I realize of course that the plot twists are the writers way of driving the story line while maintaining viewer’s attention. (In much the same way that Erica Kane is now on her 10th husband.) And I understand Carrie’s motivation. None of the four main character’s parents were  ever directly involved in the story line. An occasional sibling showed up for a brief cameo but that was it. Mostly you had to learn about the character’s backgrounds from the characters themselves. Samantha, the sex pot, didn’t want to end up saddled with four kids like her mother. Miranda’s mom died in one episode, but we never met her. Charlotte’s dad’s face was not even seen when he walked her down the aisle. And Carrie was apparently an only child who’s father walked out on her when she was five. Could that be the formulaic, cliched motivation behind Carrie’s attraction to bad men? I’m sorry, even though Big redeemed himself in the movie, I still thought he was  an emotionally withholding, aloof, arrogant piece of shit.  And yet …  I got his appeal. As the  daughter of a distant, unavailable alcoholic father myself, I painfully understood Carrie all to well. Which is why I always wished she had ended up with Aiden.

Aiden was a doll. He was normal. He was loyal, trustworthy and kind. And he adored Carrie. He embraced her. Wanted to understand her on the deepest level. (He refinished her floors for God’s sake.) He was available. But Carrie, like so many emotionally unhealthy women raised on romance novels, had to keep chasing the unattainable, ungettable man with the sad hope that if she finally caught him, it would validate her worthiness.  I learned that lesson the hard way having  dated my share of Mr. Bigs, which is why I married an Aiden.

Paul is refreshingly stable, kind and giving. He knows a good thing when he sees it, so he would never dream of doing anything to mess it up. When he met me, he staked his claim and worked his hardest to woo me. There is very little internal conflict in our marriage. We have the outside forces of the world working against us sometimes, but our relationship is solid. It is so much easier and calmer to go through life with someone you don’t have to worry about. And I never once doubted that he would show up at our wedding.

I hear there is another Sex and The City movie coming out. I have to admit I am curious to see what the dramatic conflict is going to be this time.