Sex And The City fans were left bereft when Miranda and Steve finally called it quits in episode eight of And Just Like That. Throughout more than two decades of relationship highs (Brooklyn Bridge) and lows (their respective infidelities) there was always the unspoken hope that they would find their way back to each other in the end.
Yet, Miranda hasn’t always been kind to Steve. She often criticised him, made him feel inadequate, blew hot and cold and breadcrumbed affection that meant he couldn’t resist going back to her when given the chance. It wasn’t unrequited love but inconsistent love, which is arguably worse because it leaves you clinging on.
And this behaviour was all too familiar to fans on Twitter. ‘Miranda is Steve’s Mr. Big,’ one user pointed out as thousands of others agreed.
This does make a lot of sense. Carrie and Big and Miranda and Steve were both off-again-on-again relationships. They had smatterings of cheating throughout, one partner that was arguably always more invested than the other, and a connection that was too strong to ignore despite all parties’ best interests.
Keeping in line with the unfortunate truth that you always want what you can’t have, Carrie and Steve chased Big and Miranda (at least in part) because they were hard to get. Not entirely unattainable, but just far enough out of reach that an attractive uncertainty was there.
But after the thrill of the chase wears off, what’s left is often insecurity. Carrie was never as unsure of herself as she was when she was pining after Big. Meanwhile, Steve coped by focusing on self-improvement and opened his own bar Scout.
This is not to say that Big and Miranda weren’t sincerely in love with Carrie and Steve. They respectively had their own feelings deeply hurt during the entanglements multiple times. But both Big and Miranda also put head over heart and struggled to be vulnerable enough to convey their feelings until they all came spilling out in a big romantic gesture when it was almost too late—the drama of this is romantic but undeniably exhausting.
Miranda said she loved Steve first, she initiated their first kiss, she proposed to him, and was subsequently in complete control of their relationship. She wanted him when she wanted him and when she didn’t, she didn’t.
As Steve said during their final break up: ‘It’s always this way. You don’t think I’m enough, then you think I’m kind of enough, and then you don’t think I’m enough. And I’m always there, hanging in there for us.
‘Then finally in the last couple of years we come to a place where it’s not so god damn, fucking up and down every day where it’s kind of the same… that’s married life, Miranda, that’s life. I’m too old to rally for us again. I don’t want to.’
READ MORE: All Of The And Just Like That Crew Wore Team Miranda Or Team Steve Badges On Set
The Male Nudity In And Just Like That Wasn't Shocking, Just Overdue