Keeping the spark alive - and staying intimate - in a long-distance relationship can be challenging; sometimes nudes, FaceTime and phone sex are all you’ve got. However, as common as the latter may be, it’s not something we particularly expected Carrie Bradshaw to partake in.
In the first episode of season three of And Just Like That, Carrie and Aidan pick up where they left off: in relationship limbo. Quick recap: at the end of season two, Carrie had just sold her iconic apartment and purchased a four-bedroom pad in Gramercy Park so that she could host Aidan and his three sons on a regular basis. However, after 15 year old Wyatt got into an accident while on drugs, Aidan decided he needs to stay home in Virginia and be there for Wyatt until he's safely out of his troubled teenage years. So Carrie and Aidan agreed to park their relationship for five years.
At the beginning of the new season, they are still on ‘no contact’ terms but send each other blank post cards to let the other know they are thinking of them. That quickly snowballs into texts, phone calls and, eventually, phone sex.
When Carrie is awoken from a deep slumber by Aidan’s call, they are on very different pages. She’s tucked up in bed in immaculate pyjamas and he’s sat in a parked truck outside his family home with a beer and a clear agenda. ‘I miss you so much,’ he tells her, before admitting their no contact rule ‘went out the window’ after his third drink.
The only pre-amble we see is a little chatter about Aidan’s son Wyatt who has addiction issues. ‘I don’t want to waste this buzz on him,’ Aidan interrupts. ‘I want to talk about you. I ache for you.’ Aidan then instructs Carrie to touch herself before undoing his own trousers and accidentally honking his horn (not a euphemism) with his knee, puncturing the sensual vibes just a touch, before saying ‘I think I shit my pants a little’. Miraculously, it takes Aidan approximately ten seconds to finish, while Carrie, starring at the kitten at the end of her bed, fakes it instead.
This is not exactly a how to guide or the makings of a great porno, but it is a stark reminder that phone sex is not always easy to execute. It’s sometimes hard to meet each other in the moment.
When Carrie calls Aidan back later in the episode to try again, he’s lying next to his sleeping teenage son. Embarrassed, she swiftly ends the call and then her faulty house alarm goes off.
In their defence, can phone sex ever really be sexy? For a lot of millennials, the idea of a phone call is alien, let alone phone sex. 'It feels like something pop culture has convinced us is real,' offers Ella*. 'Millennials don't pick up the phone, so we're never getting ourselves into this situation. We're sexting, we're sending nudes, but we are not having phone sex.'
Beth* has other ideas. 'With my current partner the communication around sex was already open and comfortable before we ever had phone sex which made the phone sex much less cringe and sexier.'
'I've never faked it,' she adds, 'but I haven't always finished when it's more visual heavy rather than verbal heavy because that works better for me. It can be hard to be on the same page but also if you haven't had IRL sex in a long time that can make it even better because you want it more.'
However, Grace* thinks Carrie and Aidan's rendezvous rang true to real life. ‘I am convinced that nearly all phone sex involves one party faking it like Carrie, to some extent. And that’s ok – sometimes even IRL, one of you is more into it than the other. As long as everything is still consensual and unpressured, there’s no harm in letting your partner enjoy the moment over the phone, while you perhaps ‘exaggerate’ your own pleasure, particularly if you are using phone sex as a way to stay intimate in a long-distance situation.’
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).