In the episode where Carrie and Big met, Big says Carrie has never really been in love, and then, when she asks him if he’s ever been in love, he says “abso-fuckin-lutely”. It makes me understand their relationship later on. Big had already fallen so fucking in love, while with him Carrie was feeling things she had never felt with anyone, and that feeling made her become paranoid. Besides, Carrie was always VERY impulsive. Who remembers when she went to his apartment, drunk, in the middle of the night, to ask him why he was ashamed of her? She says that it looked like he thought she was just a small fragment of the kind of woman he thought he should be dating, and then he says that he only got to know a small fragment of her, although he was starting to get to know more. And then he explains that he took her to the restaurant not because he was ashamed of her, but because he thought the best Chinese restaurant in town, that he didn’t introduce her to the guy they saw on the street because he couldn’t remember his name and that afternoon he had a ticket for a game, and so he didn’t celebrate her photo on the bus with her friends. The point is: For him, Carrie was too intense, too impulsive. And he thought that a relationship with someone like that would likely have no future. That’s why he didn’t say “you’re the one” to her at the end of season one. Because although he liked her, she didn’t seem like the “right” woman for him. Even unintentionally, Carrie became a bit invasive, to the point of going to spy on him at church (something he said was private between him and his mother). She wanted him to introduce her to his mother, but for him what they had was uncertain, and they had only been together for a short time. He says he didn’t want to introduce “another girlfriend” to his mom because he’s probably done it many times and the relationships didn’t work out. There’s an episode where Carrie farts (and he just laughs, because she was so embarrassed). Then he plays a joke on her and she just obsesses over it, thinking he doesn’t want her anymore simply because she farts. She turns out to be inconvenient for it, like in the scene where she’s snogging him and wanting sex, while he clearly wants to watch the fight on television. She leaves after that and doesn’t look for him anymore, so after days he shows up at her apartment and asks her why she walked away, and then they make up. But the point is that she showed an immature and chaotic part to him, as if she didn’t know how to deal with what she was feeling (and really didn’t). Big always liked his own privacy, he was a reserved guy who liked having his own space, and she starts to invade that space by purposely leaving objects in his house, and when he gives them back, she gets annoyed. But when she’s dating Aidan and he starts living in her apartment, she feels her privacy invaded, just like Big did before. She bothered to the point of putting a curtain to separate them. Big is not a saint, he was wrong with her a lot and that’s obvious, but why didn’t she speak clearly to him? She was almost a puzzle. When Big mentioned that he had already been married, she simply went after his wife to find out about her, but she could just ask him. When she actually tells him what bothers her (not having a key to his apartment, he never sleeps in her apartment, he be very spacious in bed, etc.), he shows up at her apartment and says that maybe she needs a key to know he’s crazy about her, and says she likes his bed, but he likes her in it, and then sleeps in her apartment for the first time. If she always dialogued with him, some problems would not have happened. She was so impulsive that when she said “I love you” to him for the first time, he was disconcerted and looked for other ways to say that to her (buying a bag because it was hard for him to say those words), but she is frustrated, kisses another and takes him to her apartment. And then he calls, saying that he loves her but that saying this is difficult for him. If Carrie respected his space, he would gradually surrender. But she wanted to force him to change right away, and no one can change that fast. Now about the marriage: He married a woman who was totally the opposite of Carrie, because he found her too complicated. Carrie herself alludes to the movie “The Way We Were” where the protagonist is madly in love with Barbra Streisand’s character, but she’s too complicated, so he marries a basic and straight-haired woman. Yes, he was a asshole, but he admitted it himself. And it evolved. And it didn’t take long for his marriage to fall apart, and he realized that he loved Carrie when he saw her with Aidan. That thing of “you only find out how much you like someone when you lose”. People say he always left her, but that’s not true. Of the three times they broke up, she was the one who broke up. The first two times, because she didn’t respect his time and put a lot of expectations on him. And the third, when they were having an affair, maybe because she felt guilty. She didn’t want to travel with him in season one, just like she told him to go to Paris in season two, while he told her to go back to bed. When they had an affair, he wanted to call Natasha and break up their marriage, and she didn’t want him to. About Carrie and Aidan: He was great, but they had different views on life. It wouldn’t work. I don’t understand who says Carrie should be with Aidan when they clearly want different things. He wanted a traditional family, kids, and Carrie wasn’t that type. He liked the country house and she hated it. She wanted to go out while he wanted to stay home eating chicken and watching football. When they went to the country house together, she just left him there and went to dinner with whom? That’s right, with Big. Because they shared tastes. I know smoking isn’t a good thing, but Big didn’t reprimand her so, quite the contrary, he smoked with her. They were a couple that contrasted with each other and at the same time were similar and had the same tastes. When they (Carrie and Aidan) moved in together she complained that she liked to do things she could only do living alone. She wanted to have the autonomy Big wanted when they were dating. During this period she was Aidan’s Big. Because of Aidan, she threw away a dress she loved. She even put up a curtain to separate herself from him, because her lost totally her own privacy. And that was how Big felt with her. She didn’t understand his attitude but after being hurt, she started to act the same way. Big and Carrie became friends, but they didn’t stop loving each other, even though they didn’t know it. Carrie and Aidan weren’t all that compatible, and despite having relationship issues, Big was the right guy for her. Big was dumped for Willow Summers and suffered for it, got his karma for what happened to Carrie. Meanwhile, Carrie had a good relationship with Aidan, and that balanced things. But love is different. Love, they only felt for each other. They didn’t work out, but he was always that friend she called when she needed him. When wanted to have dinner with someone. And on her birthday, he arrived from London and was there to congratulate her. They were there for each other, despite all the conflicts they had. They were lovers, then friends, then lovers again, then friends again. They were also colorful friends, all without ceasing to love each other. They got involved with other people, but what they had was different. After all that, they evolved, and then they were ready to live that love. And Aidan found someone who wanted the same things he did, and he had a child. The ending, for me, was perfect and coherent. They weren’t perfect, but they evolved. This is the best thing about this couple: They were imperfect, but made (and perfect) for each other. Now if they killed Big to put Carrie with Aidan in AJLT, it’s going to be ridiculous.
