Marie Claire Australia

SEX, revisited

It’s been 23 years since Carrie Bradshaw’s married friend exposed himself to her in the Hamptons. It was the catalyst for a cock of her famous curls and the musing: “Is there a secret cold war between marrieds and singles?” While the intervening decades have ushered in more flexible ideas of coupledom than those posed in Sex and the City, the question remains: is there an unspoken enmity between the have (partners) and have-nots?

Firstly, it must be said: marriage is meaningless. As someone who’s been happily married for 10 years, I have the necessary credentials to make that statement. This isn’t to say relationships are meaningless – far from it. The years we’ve shared have been enriching and transformative. But marriage itself? It does nothing to define who we are as people.

Carrie concluded that it isn’t hatred fuelling the cold war but fear of the unknown. Here is where Ms Bradshaw and I disagree.

The unspoken battle between singles and the coupled-up is not about fear of the unknown, but fear of . It’s the awareness of the sliding-door alternative reality within each of us and the worry that it might have been better another way. When a single woman scoffs at her married friends for moving to

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