‘Sex and the City’: Was Carrie’s Move To Paris a Desperate Attempt To Shake Things Up?

Carrie Bradshaw dated a lot of men during Sex and the City’s six-season run. The majority of Carrie’s beaus were short-lived romances, but a couple of them were great loves. In season 6, Carrie attempted to turn Aleksandr Petrovsky into a great love, only to find herself stranded and lonely in Paris. Why did Carrie decide to move to Paris? Was she really after a life with Petrovsky, or was she looking for something entirely different?

How long were Carrie and Aleksandr Petrovsky an item when she agreed to move to Paris?

Sex and the City was never great about identifying the month an episode took place in, but context clues make it fairly easy to figure out how much time has passed. In the season six episode “One,” Brady Hobbes turned a year old. Fans may remember that Brady was born just as New York entered fall the previous year. Assuming Brady’s birthday is at the end of September or early October, it can be assumed that Carrie and Aleksandr begin dating sometime in October or November.

The season six episode “Splat” is the episode where Aleksandr revealed he wanted Carrie to move to Paris with him permanently. The episode obviously took place in the winter because there was snow on the ground. Generally, snow is most common in New York in January or February. If you assume the party took place in January, that means Carrie and Aleksandr were dating for just a few months when he asked her to uproot her life for him.  She left for Paris shortly thereafter.

Carrie originally didn’t intend to get into a relationship with Aleksandr Petrovsky

When Carrie first met Aleksandr, she had no intention of having a relationship with him. Fresh off of her breakup with Jack Berger, Carrie insisted that Aleksandr was a little dark and a little strange. She, however, was willing to consider “taking a lover.” When Charlotte suggested Aleksandr was Carrie’s new “boyfriend,” she was quick to correct her. Just a couple of weeks later, though, Carrie was falling quickly for her new beau.

Did Carrie ever really like Aleksandr, or did she just like the idea of being with someone? The pair had little in common and appeared to have vastly different world views too. Could it be that Carrie, fresh off of a breakup, clung to the idea of Aleksandr in hopes of changing her luck? It’s entirely possible.

Did Carrie move to Paris because she was tired of New York?

Aleksandr wanted Carrie to move to Paris with him, but why did Carrie ultimately agree to such a move when their relationship was hardly older than her newest pair of shoes? One Reddit user argued that Carrie’s wording in the argument she had with Miranda Hobbes before leaving was telling. She told Miranda that everyone had moved on. The Redditor theorized that Carrie moved to shake things up because she felt largely left behind by her pals. The theory makes a lot of sense. By that point, Carrie had been in New York for decades. She, unlike her friends, was still very much single, and save for a few career moves, hadn’t had a significant change in years.

Her friends, on the other hand, had hit significant milestones. Miranda had a child and had gotten married. Charlotte York was on her second and much happier marriage, and Samantha Jones was coupled up with Smith. The prospect of being alone in Manhattan for yet another year could have scared Carrie. Maybe it was troubling enough to make her gamble on Aleksandr and Paris, even though she knew he wasn’t right for her. Carrie, like Mr. Big, had grown tired of Old New York and was hoping to find something fresh and exciting in Paris. Aleksandr was just the vehicle to get there.