My first ever paid article for a national newspaper was an opinion piece (surely not, I hear you cry) on why I never wanted to get married. I was given the princely sum of £30, which I immediately spent on a handbag from TopShop, because being single meant my disposable income was mine to spend as I pleased. Seven years later, I still have that handbag. I also have a husband.

The whole getting married thing happened to me entirely by accident. I have never understood women for whom a wedding was a stand-alone ambition, nurtured from childhood, like wanting to be an astronaut or to own a pair of Louboutins. Being, as I am, something of a perfectionist, I couldn’t fathom the notion of harbouring a dream so utterly contingent on the emotions of someone else.

By the time I reached the age of 28, so thoroughly sick was I of people enquiring as to my relationship and fertility status that I churlishly vowed to remain forever defiantly single, thus thwarting society’s expectations and giving me the power to metaphorically slap all the people who were apparently so obsessed with my sex life in their narrow minded faces.

Being straight but not wanting to pursue the traditional linear narrative (ie love, marriage, horse and carriage containing baby) was so alien to a lot of people they treated me like a leper and I in turn was quite content not having to endure their company. It was, in that respect, a lifestyle choice that worked for everyone.

Heteronomic assumption is something the LGBTQ community have had to endure for centuries, but I (to a far lesser and less hurtful and dangerous extent) also found subconscious conjectures about what my relationship and sex life ‘should’ be, and the way they manifested in how people spoke to and treated me, irritating.

‘Our attitude to relationships is confusing’

Unfortunately, in 2013 my now-husband entered my life and insisted on being so ridiculously matched to me in every way that he scuppered all my best-laid plans. When I changed my status on Facebook to ‘in a relationship’ it got four times more likes than when I announced I’d won Cosmopolitan’s Ultimate Woman of the Year six months previously.

When we got engaged in late 2015, I received 62 almost-immediate texts of enthusiastic congratulation. When I was awarded my MBE for services to young people I received five.

Our attitude to relationships and procreation is confusing, from an outside perspective. On the one hand we tell girls that they can be whatever they want to be, to subvert the expectations our inherently misogynistic culture has placed on them and to never feel pressured into sex.

On the other we assume they want to get married and have babies until told otherwise, heap abundant praise and gifts upon them for the entirely luck-based endeavour of falling in love and treat getting pregnant like it’s the epitome of all human achievement.

I’m not for one moment saying there can’t be achievements in our personal lives which aren’t worthy of note and the sending of a card dipped in glitter. Being happily married for 50 years, for example. Finding the strength to leave an abusive relationship. Bringing up an incredible child. All of these deserve a chuffing street parade.

But being in the first flushes of infatuation or having unprotected sex are about the least impressive things humans can do, which along with other unimpressive things like having the sort of genes which mean you are thin with a symmetrical face, are paradoxically what women are given the most attention for.

‘Falling in love is not an achievement’

Pop anthropology would have you believe that this is the natural way of things: that women are designed to stay at home and nurture and, therefore, to make progress towards this goal is something which we as observers are powerless not to respond to with enthusiastic admiration. I would remind you, however, that most pop anthropology theories are written by men.

It takes a lot of energy to reverse what years of patriarchal social conditioning and Disney have taught a generation of young women, but we can start in the classroom.

Today, when I was telling Year 9 an anecdote involving my recent wedding and they began to clap, I reminded them that falling in love is not an achievement, and that whilst I appreciated their applause they should save it for when I had done something really special.

The applause they gave at the end of my two hour assembly on mental health was twice as loud. 

Natasha Devon is the former government mental health champion for schools and founder of the Body Gossip Education Programme and the Self-Esteem Team. She tweets as @NatashaDevonMBE

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