Charlotte York
“I proposed to myself. I suggested he have a tomato salad, then I suggested we get married.”
Charlotte can be best described by the word optimistic.. specially when pertaining to love. Having experienced a number of complexities in trying to find her soul mate, she still remains to have that positive outlook in love that someday, his knight in shining armor would come and rescue her. She believes in true love and is on a personal quest on finding it. Sensitive, sweet, romantic, conservative, and idealistic are some more words that best describers her. She knows what she wants to do in her life: To get married, to have children, to live happily ever after, but she rather tends to be impatient. As she shouted “I’ve been dating since I’m fifteen, I’m exhausted, where is he?!” She thought Dr. Trey McDougal was the knight she was looking for. Turns out, he is the ‘nightmare in shining armor.’ They were married, but the story doesn’t end with a fairy tale wedding specially when the leading man has a sexual dysfunction. Her marriage is far from what she expected it to be. They were able to solve their problems in bed but another problem arised when they decided to have a baby. Charlotte turns out to have a reproductive disorder, it would be much more difficult for her to conceive a baby. Discontentment and diversion of interests led to the separation of the two. Truly, not the ‘happily ever after’ type of ending.
It really is most frustrating for Charlotte to experience such problems, among the four ladies. With Trey being rich, professional, handsome, physically attractive and competent, it wasn’t a surprise Charlotte immediately liked him (he seemed to posses every quality we discussed in class). Being in that relationship with Trey, I believe she had tried her best to complete and balance (not to mention overexaggerate) the sides of the triangle of love by Sternberg. Sure, their first meeting was intimate, not to say very romantic. Intimacy developed and passion came rushing in very fast. But being the idealist that she is, Charlotte has to postpone the heat until they get married, so passion was nowhere to be expressed between the two of them. Marriage is important to them, so I suppose commitment is of the same valuation. Charlotte even said that she is glad to be coming home to the same man everyday. There’s intimacy, there’s commitment. But when they’re about to make love, Trey couldn’t get it up! Though, Charlotte’s passion cannot be expressed, she thought a marriage without sex would still work. Great optimism, I really admire her. As we all know, that might be her way to cope up, she had to view it positively instead of being pessimistic and she has to voice it out to her friends (this voicing out usually happens in restaurants)! Soon, she became discontented with what Sternberg would like to call companionate love.
She is a woman and she believes that sex is among her basic needs! She considers sex to be in the bottom part of the hierarchy triangle, sex is so important for her and for the relationship. When they finally got to solve the sex problem, the triangle was complete. But they realized their dissimilarities with problems of procreation. Separated interests led to separate bedrooms, that led to.. well, you guessed it divorce. I guess it’s true that similarity of the two people is important. Charlotte is such a big fan of different workshops.. ranging from African dancing, tap dancing, and interior decorating. After their separation, it was no surprise that Charlotte engaged more in these activities, she had to sublime, find other outlets and in some ways, overcompensate her failure on love.
Charlotte York's Famous Lines:
“I read that if you don’t have sex for a year, you can actually become ‘revirginized’.”
“I don’t think she’s (Samantha) a lesbian. I think she just ran out of men.”
“Trey, I’m tired of being married to your penis!”
“The only worse thing than being 35 and single is being 35 and divorced.”