It doesn’t feel dignified to admit that a friend’s romantic relationship—especially a new one—makes you feel bad. But I’ve been wary of how my friends’ romantic relationships might freeze me out since 1994, when my best friend bailed on our plans so she could spend an evening with her boyfriend for their “three-month anniversary.” I was bereft. Even though I felt skeptical about whether a three-month anniversary was one that warranted celebration, I knew I’d been dropped, and I had no idea when (or if) I’d be picked back up again.
It’s been decades since I had a romantic partner. It’s not that there have been no love interests during that time—there have been—and I too have succumbed to the all-consuming power of a new obsession. But I’ve had no great loves or long-term partners… and lots of experiences of being a third wheel. I remember when the members of my friendship group all got coupled up. As we texted each other to make plans for trips, meals, and birthdays, one friend would inevitably ask: “Are we bringing the boys?” And the others would reply in the affirmative. I would feel preemptively alienated—I didn’t always want to share my friends with their partners, as much as I liked them.
More than that, I didn’t want to be the only one at the table without one. It made me feel like a child among adults and lonelier than I felt in my daily life. But since I’ve spent most of my adult life single, I have had to get used to it. Sometimes I’ll avoid certain trips and gatherings. Occasionally I will stick my neck out and risk coming off as difficult to say that I’d rather it was just pals rather than partners too. But for the most part I swallow my feelings, and delay the emotional fall-out until after I get home.
I recently published a book about living without romantic love, and while writing it I had to confront how I had suppressed some of my feelings about this dynamic in order to appease others. I was ashamed, but also frightened I might be rejected, or worse, that I’d be dismissed because I “couldn’t understand” what it’s like to be in love. That one is hard to argue with because it needles my feelings of inadequacy, and so I can’t marshal my response without emotion flooding in. I would say it’s the experience of not having had romantic love that is the harder one to understand.
I’ve been watching And Just Like That for several reasons, one of which is the sheer entertainment it provides for the group chat. But more earnestly, I have grown up with the characters of Sex and the City and feel I owe them a kind of psychic debt. So, I watch AJLT, even if I don’t expect it to move me in the way SATC so often—sometimes inexplicably—did.
Episode 8 found Carrie and Aidan loved up once more a few weeks after reconnecting. Carrie is keen to introduce him to her new friends and reconnect him with her old ones over dinner. As tradition has it, Charlotte “I love love” York Goldenblatt is puppyish with excitement and Miranda is supportive but cautious. Seema—new to this side of Carrie—is impassive. Later, we see Carrie’s phone—Seema has left her on read about joining the planned group reunion dinner with Aidan. And Just Like That has not been an especially subtle show so far, and I felt defensive. I was concerned that Seema—perpetually single (although she has a new love interest in Episode 9)—would end up as a caricature of a jealous best friend: brittle and cynical about love.
Later, Carrie confronts Seema after she attempts to avoid her at the hair salon, and the two women have it out. In the previous episode, the friends had committed to spending a summer together in the Hamptons (this was a storyline I loved, because it let me indulge in the fantasy that I, too, might have a friend I could one day “summer with”), but since being reunited with Aidan, this plan—a commitment financial, domestic, and social—had fallen out of Carrie’s head altogether.
“He won’t be there every week,” she assures Seema. “You’ll love him!” It hadn’t occurred to Carrie that the introduction of a third would change the whole prospect for her friend. A fabulous single girls’ summer in the Hamptons would become weeks of her relationship status being magnified by her proximity to a happy couple.
Carrie admonishes Seema for pretending not to see her in the salon. But Carrie is guilty of not seeing Seema: who she is and how things might feel for her, as the one being left behind. “She’s jealous,” some viewers might have thought. “She should get over it.” A reality the character was aware of. As she tells Carrie: “There’s no way to say this without seeming petty or pathetic.” Because, while Seema was happy for her friend, she recognized there’s complexity within that happiness. She calmly explains to Carrie that while she could go along with a Hamptons summer for three, she knows it will ultimately make her feel terrible. She’s putting herself first—just as Carrie did.
This was the first time AJLT had made me cry. I rewound, turned on the captions, and screenshotted every bit of the scene. It gave gravity to Seema’s feelings, allowed her dignity in the situation, when it might easily have punished her for it. For me, it was a quietly powerful representation of how it can feel when you’re long-term single and your friends only ever speak as “we.” “We like this,” “We’re doing that,” “Oh, we’d love to!” Coupledom isn’t just a relationship, it’s a language. It can make your own “I” feel paltry and vulnerable—even if you cherish being able to say “I,” even if it can feel freeing and defiant.
Although Carrie initially protests, she ultimately respects Seema’s boundary. They both took a risk. Seema spoke plainly about how she felt and Carrie stopped trying to argue, instead listening to what was needed to keep the friendship not just intact, but possibly stronger. As the episode ends Seema arrives unexpectedly at the dinner and a chair is pulled up to make space for her. And perhaps that’s one way to think about all this. How can romantic pairs create enough space in their love so that friends aren’t relegated to being an afterthought? That way there might be room for everyone at the table to be loved, as equals.
Amy Key is the author of Arrangements in Blue.