‘Sex and the City’: Was Mr. Big Just Terribly Misunderstood?
Sex and the City fans are deeply divided when it comes to Carrie Bradshaw’s main love interest, Mr. Big. While he was positioned as one of Carrie’s great loves, some fans can’t forget how poorly Mr. Big treated Carrie time and time again. Was Mr. Big that bad, though? If you look at him from a different perspective, it becomes pretty clear that Big wasn’t a bad person, he was just terribly misunderstood.
Mr. Big was actually the reasonable one in the relationship
Mr. Big was largely viewed as the unattainable man, too cold and calculating to really give Carrie the kind of love she desired. That’s why so many fans still think Carrie belonged with Aidan Shaw. If you look at it from a different angle, though, Mr. Big was the reasonable one in the relationship when compared to Carrie. Carrie was prone to outbursts of emotion, and she often went out of her way to push Mr. Big’s boundaries. More often than not, he just let it go.
Carrie tried, time and time again, to draw explosive emotion from Big, and he never let it happen. Some fans see it as proof that he was unfeeling, but, perhaps, Mr. Big was just incredibly even-keeled and reasonable. It takes a pretty big person not to engage in a screaming match after someone hurls a Filet-o-Fish at them in their own kitchen, after all.
Mr. Big was set in his ways, but he was always honest about it.
Mr. Big was a lot of things. He was charming and successful. He was good looking, and he knew it, but Mr. Big was also kind of a weird guy. Think about it, Big knew a lot of people, but his list of actual friends was pretty short. Vice points out that the mysterious man who drove Carrie crazy was basically Jughead Jones in high finance.
Even though Big was a little bit weird, he was honest about it. In fact, Carrie was only disappointed by Mr. Big because she never stopped to listen to him. He told her why he was unwilling to introduce her to his mother and why he was reluctant to give her a key to his apartment. Carrie just didn’t want to hear it, which means the only reason Carrie was blindsided every time Mr. Big did something insensitive was because she didn’t really ever listen to him. That seems more like a Carrie problem than a Mr. Big problem.
In the end, Big really did love Carrie, even if he didn’t always show it
For the majority of the series, it seemed pretty apparent that Mr. Big didn’t really respect Carrie’s other romantic relationships. In fact, he appeared to show up just in time to mess things up for Carrie and only seemed to want her when he couldn’t have her. It was infuriating for fans. By the end of the show, though, it was clear that Big had really matured. He sat down with Carrie’s three besties and was honest about his feelings. More importantly, he made it clear that he was willing to let Carrie go if everyone thought she was doing the right thing.
Sure, Big wasn’t very good at showing his emotions, and he could be cold and distant, but it’s pretty clear that he really did love Carrie. After all, he wouldn’t have been willing to walk away if that would have been better for Carrie if he didn’t really love her. One has to wonder if Big was so distant early on in the series because he knew Carrie was the one and was too afraid to admit it.
