The Modern Dating Maze — Are We Giving Up on Love and Throttling Up on Power?
We say we want love — but only if we don’t lose control.
When we lose love, we often find ourselves. When we give up on love, however, do we grow beyond it? Lessons from ‘Sex and the City’.
When I first started this series of articles, “I couldn’t help but wonder”, back in 2024, I was writing about love from the outside.
It came mostly from observation, imagination, and very little lived experience. I wasn’t out as a gay man yet. I hadn’t truly dated. Lots of things I had to censor so my family wouldn’t understand or see something as gay — or at least too gay — until further notice.
Still, writing about love felt freeing and it came from the quiet hope that one day, it would all make sense.
Today, having come out in 2024, having had two serious relationships — one of which an engagement at that — and a few situationships, all I can say is: it doesn’t make sense at all.
But I’ve lived it.
And now, all those same questions Carrie Bradshaw asked and couldn’t help but wonder about, don’t feel like theory, observation, and hope. They’re personal. Some of them messy, some of them unbelievable. But they feel mine.
So now, in 2026, it’s time to give this series the relaunch it deserves — messy, raw, and unfiltered, because isn’t that what love is about?
For those of you who are new, here’s what we do:
We take the question that Carrie writes about, we look for the answers — if there are any — and we see if everything about relationships has changed over all these years since Sex and the City, the movies, and And Just Like That have been released… or whether we’re still stuck in the same patterns, desperately seeking comfort and validation.
Are we witnessing an evolution or just a more complicated version of the same old dance?
As Season 1, Episode 1 opens, we see that nothing truly new presents itself.
We still belong to the age of uninnocence, as Carrie describes it.
The episode opens with the story of a journalist from London, Elizabeth, who moves to New York and immediately meets a fabulous bachelor who seems promising — nothing like the other fish in the sea.
They have great dates and chemistry, there is potential, and just when everything starts to get serious, the fabulous bachelor ghosts Elizabeth before ghosting was even a term.
What’s different today?
We text. We connect. We share intimacy. We build something that feels mutual — and right when we are on the crest of the wave, we find ourselves ghosted.
At some point, I asked my mother whether ghosting existed in Bulgaria in the 90s.
She’s the perfect person to ask — she had various friend groups and lots of dating experience. I was convinced I was going to hear at least one fascinating story that I could share with you, but…
Nothing.
It turns out that Bulgarians in the 90s still had the dignity to name the problems before announcing the end of a relationship or a situationship. I am now wondering when Bulgarians picked up ghosting, so I’m definitely going to research that and share the results with you.
However, if we look at the current evidence on ghosting, most of us have been ghosted at least once — or have ghosted someone ourselves, or both.
Is it fear of attachment? Is it fear of responsibility?
Do we all safely assume that if we just leave without a word, we can come back at any point looking for comfort?
Whatever the reasons might be, they all welcome us back to the age of uninnocence when, as Carrie says…
“No one has breakfast at Tiffany’s and no one has affairs to remember. Instead, we have breakfast at 7 a.m. and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible. Self-protection and closing the deal are paramount. Cupid has flown the co-op.”
And then she asks:
How the hell did we get into this mess?
Good question, Carrie.
It seems no one has learned from the past, and it seems things are actually… worse.
In the rush of our lives, we still have breakfast at 7 a.m. while scrolling through Google Calendar, dreading the hell of a day that’s lurking in the little multicolored tabs.
We proceed to going on social media to doomscroll a little, but just enough to start comparing ourselves to the people we follow, only to start beating ourselves up on why we don’t look a certain way or have a certain lifestyle.
And then, after social media, drumroll, we open dating apps. We begin swiping on Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, whatever, hoping to find the perfect match.
I’m wondering — if aliens were observing us, would they assume that the activity of finding a good match resembles the search for the freshest greens and veggies at the market?
Can you imagine? Social media, Tinder, and Bumble have become the new battlegrounds where we seek connections. Yet, despite the technological advancements, disappointment is just a swipe away when we are one step closer to saying — I found them.
And as the first episode unfolds, taking us on a walk around the question, why are there so many great unmarried women and no great unmarried men, it leads us to the main topic presented by Samantha:
“If you’re a successful saleswoman in the city, you have two choices. You can bang your head against the wall and try to find a relationship, or you can say screw it and just go out and have sex like a man.” (without feelings)
After a brief chat about guys that Samantha and Miranda have had sex with and a debate about whether they believe in love or not, led by Charlotte and Carrie, we see Carrie herself in her flat typing the question:
“Was it true? Were women in New York giving up on love and throttling up on power?“
But shaped by my attempt to make this whole thing more universal, I guess the question should instead sound more like:
Are men and women, gay, bi, or straight, giving up on love and throttling upon power?
This question is deep because it feels like in the past, love was about emotional fulfillment, but nowadays, it’s more about love turning into vulnerability and unpredictability. And at the same time, power has always been about focusing on control over your life, prioritizing career, independence, money, status, and self-protection, and most importantly, choosing agency over emotional risk.
Love and power are two different forces. They function differently, but can’t we stay powerful while choosing love?
Today, we all have our guards up, and we respond to affection differently, while power presents itself in various ways, such as:
not texting first
not over-investing too early
walking away at the first red flag
keeping options open
saying “I’m focusing on myself”
Is that healthy, or is that actually fear?
Think about it. When we have two people doing the same things I just listed while trying to build some type of connection, is that connection even possible?
People say they want love, and yet they still expect it to fail.
So at the end, we stay guarded, we stay ironic, we stay without commitments longer while waiting, while wanting both deep connection and full autonomy. And when we face the moment of having to make a choice between the two, most of the times we protect autonomy first.
Which leads to a deeper spiral to the same pattern with someone else.
Something that I have observed has changed since the 90s, though, is Stanford’s, Carrie’s gay bestie, comment on the topic.
“I’m beginning to think the only place where one can still find love and romance is the gay community. It’s straight love that’s become closeted”.
Well, I for one can say this is no longer valid. As a gay man, I’ve observed that as we, gay people, might still be romantic and willing to show affection, it’s until most of the gay men get you under the sheets. Once their business over there is done, things are over and you will never see them again, although their promises might be different. That’s what most Grindr dates are like.
Now, as much as we love Samantha’s character, that symbolizes autonomy and empowerment, in order to become like her, we most probably must have gone through something very traumatic that has made us crave that level of control over the situation… to stay within our power and to purely enjoy sex as just… sex.
Later on in the series, even Samantha showed she was capable of having relationships, she was able to love, and she wanted a deeper connection.
So what? How can we stay in control and can we stay in control while being in love?
Many people are confident enough to say they have found the perfect formula. What we must be aware of, though, is that we will have to go through a lot to find our match, and Tinder won’t be really helpful when it comes to this, even if it’s already seen as the normal “place” to find someone to go on a date with.
In the meantime, can we find hope in “sex like a man” while we are looking for that connection that would allow us to stay “powerful”?
Well, Carrie did make her experiment of having sex like a man with an ex-boyfriend of hers, and she left “powerful, potent, and incredibly alive,” as she described, and she didn’t even wait for the poor guy to finish. Victory achieved. After she left the guy’s building, she even bumped into Mr. Big for the first time, who happened to become the love of her life later on in the series.
While this is a nice scenario to believe in, meeting the love of your life after having NSA sex with another person… are the feelings that Carrie mentioned — powerful, potent, and incredibly alive — enough for us nowadays?
Are we, in essence, trading genuine connection for momentary empowerment and pleasure?
Well, when it comes to Carrie, it proved totally pointless after she came across that ex of hers for the second time at a party, because the guy seemed happy and even relieved that Carrie finally understood what he wanted — no commitments.
And just like that, “powerful, potent, and incredibly alive” suddenly became just five meaningless words.
Why? Because it turns out that you have to change who you are even to just get laid. And frankly, after hearing this, Carrie was even wondering why she didn’t feel more in control.
I have been there, too. Sometimes I have felt very empowered (usually when seeking validation) and other times, I have felt terribly miserable after a hookup because of the connection fading away. Getting ghosted after sleeping in someone’s arms, after having a wonderful time together, not just wonderful sex, is far from empowering, especially when you feel so deep. Where do the smiles, the shared conversations, even the shared secrets go after a hookup?
Maybe that’s why after I ended my engagement, I haven’t been able to hook up. I guess I am just waiting for that meaningful connection, the one that will allow me to stay powerful in love and not consumed.
Is love the key?
When Mr. Big drove Carrie home after the party, he told her he wasn’t even half a drop like the men who had sex without feelings. When she asked him what was wrong with him, he told her that she had never been in love.
Can love truly be the key to overcoming disappointments and navigating the maze of modern dating?
Do we even realize how much the meaning of the phrase “falling in love” has changed over the years? Once, falling in love had been framed almost like an event — sudden, overwhelming, and a little out of your control. That’s why the verb to fall is so telling — the lack of control, the risk, the suddenness of it all.
Nowadays, we’ve built a whole vocabulary to delay that fall. Maybe because we fear the judgement of others, and maybe… even our own.
We’ve invented phrases like:
I have a crush
I like them
I’m seeing someone
They all act as a buffer zone, while we still want the look across the room, the instant knowing, the electricity.
So we live in a contradiction — we live fast, but we label slowly.
Is love the feeling that will make us forget about all the disappointments? And can love slowly change somebody who doesn’t believe in its power?
I don’t know…
But there is certainly a glimmer of hope in this age of uninnocence.
Love.
Which leads me to wonder… maybe we stopped falling in love the moment we learned how hard it is to get back up. Or maybe we started calling the fall something else…
Until we’re sure it’s worth the landing.
And until we’re sure we stay in power…
An earlier version of this essay was originally published on I Couldn’t Help But Wonder on Medium. It now belongs to The Wonder Mag archive.