Being cheated on is horrible, positive. It’s okay to not need to forgive it. However when you can’t, then it’s fairly easy: don’t get again along with the one that did it to you. You possibly can’t simply topic them to fixed shaming and guilt-tripping till they break—it’s gaslighting, pure and easy. And that is all earlier than he begins his marketing campaign of performative flirting with a bartender at Scout with the intention to piss Carrie off. Gross.
There’s additionally Aidan’s poisonous makes an attempt to coerce Carrie into marrying him. When she initially wavers after his proposal, telling him clearly that she wants extra time earlier than getting married, Aidan reacts generously. Nevertheless, by the tip of the SAME EPISODE, he’s attempting to influence her to fly to Vegas for a quickie marriage ceremony. His candy nothings embrace “come on, you’re simply scared,” “nicely, possibly you have to be pushed,” and “I wanna lock this factor down.” After which there’s that previous traditional: “What’s the large deal? It’s a silly piece of paper!” Romantic! Why does that silly piece of paper matter? As a result of Aidan isn’t proposing out of affection for Carrie, he’s proposing to realize a extra concrete maintain over her. He even admits it together with his wheedling: “I need the entire large world to know that you simply’re mine.”
Earlier than you say it, I do know that Carrie is way from excellent. In reality, she’s incessantly terrible. “Time and Punishment” can also be the “bullshit bagels” episode, through which she launches right into a narcissistic rant about Aidan as a defeated Miranda stares again at her from over the rim of her neck brace. She might be egocentric, and her rational pondering completely dissolves when Large is round. However she’s open about her flaws, she admits her failures, and so we forgive and even love her for them. Even when she makes the really horrible resolution to ask Large as much as Aidan’s nation home in “Belles of the Balls,” the boys one-up her with a combat so tragic it ends with Carrie screaming, “Cease it! You’re middle-aged!”
Carrie isn’t nice, however Aidan is a lot worse. I, for one, was delighted to see the again of him after SATC Season 4—apart from a short bounce scare in Season 6 and the disastrous second film. Alas, AJLT author and director Michael Patrick King was not fairly executed with Aidan but. However while lots of the authentic characters have modified past recognition on this chaotic spin-off present that followers have come to like/hate, Aidan, sadly, has not. His insistence that he wouldn’t set foot in Carrie’s previous residence as a result of it’s the scene of a lot unhappiness from a long time in the past? Bizarre. Melodramatic. Juvenile. And completely in character. (It’s not the residence that’s the issue, Aidan, it’s you.)