Carrie Bradshaw, the doyenne of dating, has spoken: Modern dating is absolutely, painstakingly, heartwrenchingly ruinous. If the latest series of the Sex and the City spin-off, And Just Like That..., is anything to go by, dating will never be the same again.

When Sex and the City exploded onto the small screen in 1998 positing a new, liberated way of living for modern women who wanted to break free of the machinery of domesticity their mothers had been trapped in, it was an instant success. The show's winning formula was foolproof for modern women who had bucked the trend of marrying young and procreating as soon as was humanly possible; here was a generation of women truly living. A generation of women who were trying their hand at living like single men have for generations, with reckless abandon, with frivolity and fun as the beating heart of their lives.

In so many ways, the Sex and the City spin-off has maintained its winning DNA. And Just Like That... focuses on our favourite Manhattanittes in their fifties after death, divorce and heartbreak. They're proof that life goes on, and only gets more fabulous in so many ways. Yet, another facet of And Just Like That... has its finger firmly on the pulse of is the reality of modern dating.

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Sex and the City fans can attest to the fact that so much of the magic of the show lay in the fact that Carrie et al met partners out in the wild; the real, wild old world that so many of us have lost a connection to. In the first episode of the currently-airing third season, we find our titular character trapped in the straightjacket of a long-distance relationship with Aidan (John Corbett). The core tenet of long-distance love is digital communication, which once upon a time would have been unfathomable for Carrie and co.

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Carrie, the once intensely romantic and frothy romantic, would have balked at the possibility of being trapped mining emoji replies for real meaning. She'd have scoffed at the mere thought of dictating digital messages to her phone to send to Aidan. This was a couple that threw themselves fecklessly into the throes of young and unadulterated love, who would have thought that fate would have twisted their arm to abandon their in-person adoration for virtual ellipses and 'read' signs.

It's nothing that And Just Like That... could help. The saddest reality (sadder than Carrie faking an orgasm while having phone sex with Aidan) is that this is the real world for single people today, who dedicate hours of their lives to scrolling, messaging and hoping desperately that at some point the virtual will graduate into the tangible. I hoped that Carrie wouldn't fall victim to the pitfalls of modern dating but then again, this is the world that we—Carrie included—are living in.

This article was first seen on ELLE UK.