“So, when are you getting married?”

It’s the well-meaning question that almost every single one of us has been asked at least once in our lives, regardless of whether or not we’re in a relationship. As we near the age that society expects us to start that business of “settling down”, though, our friends and family members tend to get a wee bit more vocal on the subject. “When are you getting married?” becomes “why aren’t you getting married?” Granny starts to ladle on the guilt, insisting that she just wants to live long enough to see you married off. And mum? Don’t even get us started on her.

To be honest, it’s not hard to see why everyone is so aerated about it: we are primed, for our entire lives, to see marriage as a goal we should all achieve. It’s in the ‘happy-ever-after’ of the old-school Disney Princess movies, the £10 billion UK wedding industry, the financial benefits that come from saying ‘I do’, the endless studies that claim married life is good for your health, and the thousands of congratulatory messages underneath every single engagement ring post on Facebook.

But what if marriage isn’t part of your plans? What if, when someone teasingly asks you if you and your long-term partner are planning to tie the knot, you’re not filled with that insatiable lust for the big white dress that everyone tells you you ought to feel? What if you’re unsure about the idea of matrimony, for your own deeply personal reasons?

Well, then you’re wrong. And, as Bridget Jones herself puts it, you will “finally die fat and alone and be found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians.”

Which is why it’s always so refreshing when someone like Geri Halliwell – aka everyone’s favourite Spice Girl – reminds us that marriage isn’t exactly the perfect state of being that everyone claims it to be.

Geri Halliwell reveals struggle to maintain her identity as a married woman