Is There a Cold War Between Marrieds and Singles?
By Elisabeth LaMotte. Posted on .
IS THERE A COLD WAR BETWEEN MARRIEDS AND SINGLES?
Welcome back to Sex and the Psychological City! If you have read the earlier posts, you are familiar with my confession that I was a hipper psychotherapist when my go-to girlfriends -- Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha were on the air, with fresh new material on everything from masturbation to marriage. Granted, their wardrobes and lifestyles were totally unrealistic, but the fashion and fabulousness worked well as a delivery platform for groundbreaking discussions about sex, commitment, friendship and love.
Since I specialize in relationships and intimacy, the show became an ideal co-therapist that I've brought into the therapy session whenever appropriate.
In honor of the show, I am taking a trip down Memory Lane that considers each first season episode, from a psychological perspective. This week ponders episode three titled "The Bay of Married Pigs" in which Carrie wonders "Is There a Cold War Between Marrieds and Singles?"
Carrie visits her married friend, Patience, and her husband, Peter, at their Hamptons getaway. Describing her weekend hosts as "the perfect married couple" who "look like they fell out of a J. Crew catalogue," Carrie gets quite a surprise when Peter greets her in the household hallway, proudly naked from the waist down. Carrie, obviously surprised to be face to face with "full frontal friend," later mentions the reverse mooning incident to Patience and is immediately "shoved on a bus" and sent back to the City, sensing that she will not be receiving another invitation anytime soon.
Back in the City, Carrie and her go-to girlfriends, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha, try to make sense of Carrie's sudden estrangement with her married friend. Over salads, Peter's privates are equated with an unassuming waiter's pepper grinder (he is eventually named "big peppermill dick") and the fabulous four debate and wonder: "is there a cold war between marrieds and singles?"
Samantha believes that all marrieds resent single women for their sexual freedom and view them as a threat to the marriage. Miranda feels that the general sentiment of marrieds toward singles is one of pity; marrieds do not want to be reminded of their desperate, lonely past. Charlotte, on the other hand, views marriage, (in Carrie's words) as an exclusive "sorority she is desperate to pledge."
