Inevitability as a Social Distortion Why Relationship-Centred Education Reproduces the Harm It Seeks to Prevent

Contemporary strategies proposed to reduce misogyny and relationship-based harm increasingly centre on educating children and adolescents about “healthy relationships.” These proposals are framed as preventative and progressive. This paper argues that they fail at a structural level because they operate within an unexamined assumption: that romantic partnership is an inevitable and identity-defining requirement of adult life. When relationships are treated as unavoidable rather than optional, education about them cannot meaningfully address consent, autonomy, or harm. Instead, such frameworks reinforce dependency, normalise self-erasure, and misidentify the source of misogyny. By centring relationships rather than selfhood, current approaches reproduce the very dynamics they seek to challenge. This paper argues that the missing foundation is not improved relationship instruction, but the removal of inevitability itself.