‘Sex and the City’: Carrie Bradshaw’s 3 Biggest Relationship Red Flags
For six years, Sex and the City fans watched Carrie Bradshaw try to navigate her romantic life in New York City. She might have ended up with Mr. Big, but she happened upon many men with some serious issues. She wasn’t without them herself. In fact, Carrie was a walking red flag in a lot of ways. We’ve collected three moments that would qualify as red flag behaviors from Carrie.
Carrie didn’t respect other people’s privacy
Carrie was terrible at respecting her significant other’s privacy. She couldn’t even manage to respect the privacy of relative strangers. In the season 2 episode, “The Freak Show,” Carrie met and started dating a perfectly nice guy named Ben. The relationship was fresh when Ben willingly left Carrie in his apartment while he went to meet his friends.
Carrie could have left it alone, hung out in the apartment, or gone home. She didn’t do that, though. Instead, she hunted for the one thing that would mean Ben was a “freak” like all the other men she had met. She couldn’t respect his privacy at all and rummaged through his house until she got caught.
That was the end of her relationship with Ben, but it wasn’t the end of her snooping. Carrie refused to respect Mr. Big’s privacy. She wasn’t that great about privacy with Aidan Shaw, either.
Carrie Bradshaw aggressively pushed boundaries
Carrie was super aggressive when it came to expressing her wants and needs. She was so outspoken about her needs that she often steamrolled her partner’s boundaries in an attempt to get what she wanted. Despite his obvious discomfort, Carrie pushed Mr. Big to let her have a key to her apartment. Later, Carrie basically forced Aidan to accept her friendship with the man she cheated on him with.
Carrie didn’t just push boundaries with the men she was in a serious relationship with, either. She had a bit of a habit of finding a man’s line and then crossing it. In the episode “Politically Erect,” Carrie dated politician Bill Kelley, a man with a secret kink. When he ended their romance because her profession wasn’t good for his public image, she outed his fetish in her column. She knew Bill wanted to keep his bedroom preferences a secret, and she revealed it anyway.
Carrie had a problem with honesty
Carrie expected honesty from her partners. She often worried about what they were up to when she was away and had serious trust issues with Mr. Big and Aidan. Carrie worried that Mr. Big’s ex-wife was a threat to her. She often worried about him flirting and looking at other women. Carrie also had trust issues with Aidan. At one point, she feared he was trying to sleep with a bartender at Scout.
Funnily enough, Carrie was more dishonest than both men combined. She didn’t bother to tell Mr. Big about taking a waiter named Jeremiah home with her. She spent weeks cheating on Aidan and often seemed to avoid telling him about her later meetups with Big. Carrie expected a lot of honesty for someone who wasn’t giving it in return.
