[WaxedChewbacca]

> last 2 years open relationship

I'd like to make a counter suggestion that your relationship ended two years ago, but you have not really ended it nor started a new one. There's a very good reason we have a tradition of choosing exactly one person to grow old with. Are you able to explain it in your own words? If not, I suggest you have an immature understanding of love. Please officially end both the relationship that died and the affair that you're having. Then go ask some old happy people for advice on relationships.

[forgotmypw17]

I suggest that you have a very sheltered understanding of relationships and their variety. The tradition you cite is not universal.

[randomtwiddler]

The lack of universality is a problem. People experimenting with unknown formulas get unknown results including deep seeded unhappiness.

Fidelity to a single partner of the opposite sex will produce the best results. Children are more important, and more fulfilling, than anything one might accomplish in a career.

[WaxedChewbacca]

If it's the case that I just have a stone-age opinion because I was raised in rural Georgia by evangelicals or something, why not demonstrate understanding of my point, and then go on to explain why it's obsolete?

> There's a very good reason we have a tradition of choosing exactly one person to grow old with. Are you able to explain it in your own words?

[stevekemp]

We have had many traditions when it come to relationships - for example the tradition that all couples were a pair of one male, and one female, and they always ended in marriage.

Sure it might be easier to explain your relationship if you're an "average married couple", but there have always been alternatives - even in the past mistresses were common-place, and so were affairs.

I'm married, but I live in a separate house to my wife, for example. That works wonderfully for us, but is obviously not a traditional arrangement - and why should it be?