The myth of happy ever after

Lessons from the nineties that need to be unlearned

Photo by Angèle Kamp on Unsplash

I’m a millennial. I grew up on diet of Disney films and nineties rom coms. What did I want to be when I grew up? Happy.

I was fed the narrative that to reach this elusive state I would need to collect a specific selection of things, in the right order. First came the academic milestones. GCSEs, A-Levels, a degree. All stepping stones towards finding a career that is both nourishing for the soul and financially viable. I distinctly remember the moment I found out graphic design existed. I’d always been creative and loved art and while no one specifically deterred me from pursuing a career as an artist, I got the distinct feeling that would be a big fat cross in the financially viable box.

Once you’ve laid the foundations there, it’s time to find a husband. Thanks to Margaret Thatcher and Section 28, being gay in the nineties and noughties was something you kept a tight lid on. I’m not gay but I often wonder how many people of our generation had the opportunity to question and explore their sexuality taken away from them. Many queer people are still making peace with the aftermath now.

Back then, love was Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson locking lips on a bridge after successfully navigating the dating game. It was Katherine Heigl always being a bridesmaid, until she’s was a bride. At Christmas it was Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz swapping homes and finding transatlantic love - that just worked out. Heteronormative happy ever afters on repeat. Securing the man was the end point. Job done. Happiness box ticked.

I was dating back when internet dating wasn’t something you told people you were doing. Your friend wrote your Guardian Soulmates profile in secret and if you made it to the third date with someone you spent the fourth date coming up with the story of how you met - at a mutual friends house party of course. Perhaps the saving grace back then was that at least people didn’t have thousands of other potential partners burning a hole in their pocket - only one swipe away.

Sourcing methods aside, my twenties were spent thinking that love was a feeling and when you found it - you’d know. It would hit you like a thunderbolt, reverberating through every cell in your body, and that would be that. If you managed to do the hard work to secure ‘the one’, someone you had chemistry with, someone who could give you mind blowing orgasms, someone you could laugh with, someone with a similar professional status. He should be kind but not boring, hot but not too hot, fun but not ‘a lad’, good earning potential, Dad material. You should want to rip his clothes off every time you see him, he should make you feel like you’re the most important person on the planet. The list goes on.

While I was never a box ticker when it came to the traits of potential partners, I did chase ‘the feeling’. Because that was the ultimate key to happiness right? For me, it was almost equal to the financially viable, soul nourishing career but the thunderbolt just won out. Now, I have no doubt that some people meet their partners and they know immediately that the person in front of them is someone special, that they will play a big part in their life going forwards. I’ve felt that myself and it’s a joy. But why did no one make a Disney film about what comes next? Jasmine and Aladdin had years ahead of them riding that magic carpet, any advice on how to avoid kicking each other over the edge because someone left their socks in the middle of the lounge - again?

There are many things I think should be taught in schools that are not, but my number one would be the reality of forming and maintaining long term romantic relationships. How it feels to commit to someone with faults, understanding where these ways of being come from and navigating how to be a team, not despite them but because of them. What it means to grow together and what it takes to choose each other over and over again, every day, every hour. How a life with someone is actually made up of a million small moments, not a handful of grand gestures. How choosing paint colours together will make you want to sell the house you’re decorating. How sex becomes something you schedule. How stopping trying to make someone be the person you want them to be and letting them be their true self will actually bring you closer.

I hope Richard Curtis is reading this.

I have four young nieces and there is nothing I want more than for them to understand, early, the truth about love. That doesn’t mean taking away the feeling of it, by god I want that for them. But helping them to understand that love goes beyond a feeling, that it’s a skill and an act.

While I’m heartened that they will have much more freedom to choose who they love, I still feel like the blueprint for what love is remains heavily influenced by the traditional, heteronormative picture. A woman and a man, a detached house with a sensible set of wheels in the driveway, two children playfully chasing a dog around a neatly manicured lawn. Dad is tending the BBQ in the corner while Mum pulls out the pesky reoccurring weeds from between the petunias. What happens if you can’t afford the house (because you nourished your soul with your career for too long), you never learnt to drive, are allergic to dogs or don’t want children? How far from the norm is it ok to deviate? No one will bat an eyelid if the dog is missing from the picture, maybe even the car. But what if there are no kids? What if you choose to travel the world in a camper van?

As someone who has chosen to break the mould in one of the bigger ways, by not having children, I hope I can show my Evie, Ava, Isla and Emmie that it’s ok deviate from the norm. That collecting the pre-prescribed ‘big 5’ will not necessarily make them happy. That ‘being happy’ is not a goal to aim for. That building a life that will bring you moments of happiness takes work, patience and courage.

So am I happy? Did I become what I wanted to be when I grew up? I feel happiness most days. Not all day, every day because that would be wild. Sometimes I spend the day doing something I care about, with people I love and I’ll feel a deep happiness at the end of the day as the sun dips behind the trees. Other days the only moment of happiness will be sinking my head into the pillow of my own bed after a day I’m glad to see the back of. What I’ve learned along the way is that happiness is not an end state. It’s not binary. And if you have the courage to break the mould, even just a little, you might just feel it more often.