There we sat, 4 of us (unplanned but ironic), watching the notorious ladies of Sex and the City, last Thursday night. The whit was up to par, the outfits and style glamorous and the skin and sex scenes surprisingly more than expected including one of full male frontal nudity. Now you don’t get (I mean see, ha) that very often!

I can’t say I would know what I expected but I definitely left the theater feeling like the challenges and twists of life that occurred in the film where some of the ones that we do face in our real world. However, I wouldn’t say we all have the luxury of running off to Mexico at a moment’s notice with our best friend at moments notice leaving our child, dog, job, husband, etc behind. Or that we can afford to hire a personal assistant to bring us back to life when the most unimaginable occurs. That would be nice…unlikely but nice… and I know I would have started interviewing for an assistant myself about a month ago when my own worst nightmare came true.

So that leads me to Mr. Big, aka John James Preston, as I finally found out in the movie. Although Carrie spends 10 years on and off with him and he devastates her several times, he ultimately still is in love with her and wants to share a life and be committed to her. All ends happy. Wouldn’t it be lovely to think that the real life story always ends with the main couple making amends? Really, I would wish that for everyone as relationships these days just are WAY to hard. As my sister says (I wonder if my sister and my mom know how often I quote them in my blog), “How come it’s so easy for all the other species? They just pick a mate and do it and that’s that. But not for us humans.” So what if the only resemblance Mr. Big and your man have in common, is the word BIG as in BIG WASTE OF TIME? What if after you spend all those years believing you were the one and he was the one and the ending doesn’t go like the movie? I think there are more of us that (unfortunately) can relate to that, BIG time.

My BIG experience was 6 years of my life. I met my soul mate about 8 years ago.. or so I thought. For two years I was in another relationship, as was he, and we became great friends, colleagues and confidants sharing and supporting each other in lots of ways even in regard to the other relationships in our life. When my long term relationship ended he lifted my spirits and made me feel special and loved. Soon, although I resisted, I was enjoying being high up on the pedestal he placed me on and loved the fact that he was so into me. The time we spent together was amazing. We felt so connected and so compatible. We often said our souls must have known each other in another life. It was the best feeling I had ever experienced and I felt like he knew me and accepted me for who I truly was, which I had never felt before with anyone. So why is this a bad thing??? Because, although my relationship had ended, his had not (you figure it out) and he pursued me all the same. BIG mistake on my part. I didn’t stop it and at times even encouraged it. So 6 summers without getting to spend days at the beach with him, 6 Thanksgivings of not being able to have my family meet him at dinner, 6 Christmases having to find a secret way to exchange our gifts, 6 New Years not being able to kiss him at midnight, 6 Valentines wishing he could tell everyone how he felt about me and just after the 6th birthday that he couldn’t spend with me it happened….the call came… he left his wife! Deep breath. Wow. Finally we can be together.

BIG problem… he was also already seeing SOMEONE ELSE!

BIG eye opener for me to say the least. A month after finding out this information I still don't have any words that really explain completely how it makes me feel. How could this person that I truly believed was my soul mate and who just wouldn’t leave home because of his commitment to his daughter, be such a BIG misrepresentation? My BIG dreams and hopes must have made him be what I wanted him to be not who he really was or is. BIG disappointment and BIG lesson learned on my part. The aftermath has been challenging especially without that trusty personal assistant that Carrie had in the movie to put my life back together again. But no matter how BIG the love (and it was BIG) or the loss (which is equally as BIG), my life does go on. As my mom would say, “You have to keep living…the alternative is not so good.”

And hopefully, there are BIGGER things on the way.