The hit show and our writer’s dating life have a lot more in common than she would like to admit.
The third season of The Bear dropped yesterday with all ten episodes available for us thirsty little “Yes, chef” monsters. And thirsty, we are.
The food industry people I know have uniformly trembled when describing The Bear as one of the most accurate portrayals of restaurant life to hit the screen. Just last week, a chef I went on a date with (yup, that’s my kryptonite), told me watching it gives him PTSD—but he still can’t get enough.
It’s truly incredible television. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to talk about Carmy, and all the Carmys that are still in our lives, way after you’d think we would have aged out of them.
While I will gobble up each episode of the new season, drooling over Jeremy Allen White’s character—the utterly succulent blue-eyed sensation that has buttered the bundt pans of nearly every woman I know—with the best of them, I’m well aware that he is nothing more than a fuckboy. And the worst kind of fuckboy: a sensitive fuckboy. (Fuckboi to some, but I am too old for that shit.)
Carmen Berzatto is captivating. He’s an artist, and a perfectionist. A man who carries the weight of the world, or at least the sizable heft of his incredibly dysfunctional family, on his shoulders. He is only in his 20s, so perhaps he will grow out of this fuckboy state, but I have found that dating in midlife is still rife with men of this nature. And I’ve come to the conclusion that while the sex is hot, the havoc is just not worth it.
So read on for four signs you might be dating a middle-aged fuckboy—and please, abort mission if you check these boxes. **Spoilers ahead if you have not watched seasons one and two of The Bear.
Fuckboy Sign #1: Tunnel Vision
In the second season of The Bear, we meet Claire, who Vogue accurately and unfortunately describes as a “pure male fantasy.” She is beautiful, attentive, quirky, vulnerable; known to Carmy since childhood when he lusted after her from afar. Now she’s back, making moves on him; there to make him feel safe, held, and seen. At first he can’t believe it, then it seems he can’t get enough.
As someone in the throes of a medical residency (she’s going to be a motherfucking doctor!), Claire has just as many high-stakes moments in her professional life as Carmy. But she completely sublimates herself to him, listening adoringly as he talks about menu tweaks and failing fire code inspections. Oh sure, Carmy makes her dinner once during the season, but never do we hear him ask Claire about her day, her toils, or her life challenges.
Raise your hand if this sounds familiar: You’ve found someone who is making bonafide magic with you in the sheets, and with all this NRE (new relationship energy), you are practically glowing in the dark. Then you start to notice that things outside of the bedroom are kind of lackluster. He doesn’t know much about you, because well, he’s never asked. And making plans is always an, “I dunno, what do you wanna do?” situation. He’s not so up for dinner with your pals. “Meet you at my place after?” he says with a wink. Been there, done with that.
Fuckboy Sign #2: Self-Sabotage
Throughout all of season two, as Carmy and Claire seem to cement their connection, Carmy can’t quite get it through his head that this woman is indeed his lady. He constantly worries about “the other shoe dropping” in the relationship, as if she’s playing him.
He gets chastised by his kitchen staff for not referring to Claire as his girlfriend, and then, ultimately, blows the whole thing by announcing the relationship is a waste of time within earshot of Claire on his restaurant’s opening night.
Just reading the room again, but has a phrase akin to, “This feels really good but I’m scared” come up for anyone else lately? Carmy confides in one of his friends that he likes Claire so much that it scares the shit out of him. Scared? Excuse me, is he 12? Nothing dries a pair of panties faster, in my opinion, than a man who needs to disappear “to think” for more than a day or so. When he goes MIA after shit has gotten real? Fuckboy territory.
Fuckboy Sign #3: Lone Wolf Mentality
Carmy thinks no one understands him. This is a tricky one because it’s easy to miss straight out of the box, particularly with sensitive fuckboys like Carmy. But it’s not that no one understands Carmy, it’s that Carmy believes that no one understands him. When in fact, if he made room for anyone in his life, he’d actually have a coterie of support. Instead, he shuts down, gorgeous head in hands.
As a middle-aged adult woman who has been around the proverbial block, when someone tells me that no one understands them, I assume it’s because they are speaking a different language. I’ve navigated a lot of heavy stuff, including the end of a marriage, single parenting, getting older before my very eyes, and running a household, with the glories of both paying bills and changing the blaring smoke detector at 2 a.m. (why must they always go off in the middle of the night?). I understand Big Bad Grownup Feelings.
If you can’t see that, it’s a no from me—although I haven’t always been so good at detecting the middle-age fuckboy red flags. When I first started dating my most recent ex in early 2021, I texted my besties, “Well, he’s delicious but he’s going to be a whooooooole lot of work.” I had no idea. Over the next three years, we blew each other’s minds in bed, laughed a lot, and loved each other, but he was never really boyfriend material.
He was Mister in the Moment, Mister You Get Me So Fucking Hot, Mister You Really Drive Me Crazy. Until he became Mister Ducking Out of Meaningful Conversations and Mister No You Did Not, when he crapped out on my birthday earlier this year. Turns out my guy, over two decades older than Carmy, was just a middle-aged fuckboy.
And, yup, a chef. To be specific, my fourth chef. (If you have a thing too, you must pick up Alyssa Shelasky’s memoir Apron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs In & Out of the Kitchen.) With this fuckboy chef, our time together was limited because of his restaurant. When we did see each other, it mostly revolved around being in bed—which we both deeply craved over dinner and a movie any day, so I felt okay with it. I often told myself that with this setup, I was free to devote my time to my career, my friends, my grown child, my travels, and my hobbies… until I realized that, shit, I wanted my guy to be available to come along for some of those rides.
Untangling from him was difficult and long-winded, and at one point, resulted in him saying something along the lines of…
Fuckboy Sign #4: Manipulation
“You have no idea how painful this is, me disappointing you, no idea at all.” Which is basically another way of saying, ”I’m upset that you’re calling me out for causing you pain.” Basically, it’s killing me to hurt you this way, but it’s what I do. Wanna sit on my face?
You’ve been warned. Okay, who’s binging season three of The Bear with me?
Want more stories like this? Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook for regular updates and a lot of other silliness.
by Abbe Aronson
Abbe Aronson heads the eponymously named editorial and PR firm Abbe Does It and writes a weekly Substack on sex, dating, and love, What’s Shove Got To Do With It? Just out of J-school, she cut her teeth at lifestyle mags such as Metropolitan Home, Elle Décor, Interior Design, House & Garden, GQ, Good Housekeeping, and others. She lives in Woodstock, NY and these days has to turn down the radio in her car in order to follow directions.
