OPINION: Recently, in the waiting lounge at an airport, I ran into a dear friend I hadn't seen for a while.

It was a serendipitous reunion and we had lots to catch up on before our different flights were ready for boarding. So, she didn't waste any time getting to the good stuff.

"So, are you still seeing Liam?" my girlfriend asked, remembering a man I had just started dating the last time I saw her.

"Er, yes," I answered.

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"Wow, you must be getting serious then," she replied.

I decided to be honest. "I wouldn't say that," I answered.

"But you've been seeing him for over a year! How can you not be?"

"Because I don't want it to get serious," I said, watching her expression grow incredulous.

But as I felt I had nothing to be ashamed of, I held my ground. "I don't see a future with Liam," I continued. "He's a great guy, but not for me long-term. I've been honest with him and he gets that."

My friend continued to look at me in disbelief. "But why still see him if the relationship doesn't have a future? What's the point?"

I realised she was never going to understand where I was at, because she can only judge my situation by her own belief, and that is the traditional one (her wedding was a three-day formal extravaganza that would have been royal-worthy had a verbose preacher been included).

It's not hard to see why my friend thinks this way. Women have been indoctrinated by centuries of societal conditioning telling us that marriage means security and that legal commitment is the best way to ensure it. But I find such funnel vision limiting, unnecessary and archaic.

When one in three Australian marriages end in divorce, it's naive to believe in the "happily ever after" cliché. Rather than seeing the end of a relationship as a "failure", perhaps it should be appreciated for what it was.

Just because love doesn't endure, doesn't mean it didn't exist. I just wish more starry-eyed idealists would not only acknowledge this to be the case, but embrace it. To stop focusing on the destination and enjoy the journey. As the saying goes, expectation is the mother of all frustration.

I can't count the times I have counselled inconsolable girlfriends going through break-ups who have cited their partner's lack of commitment as the reason.

"He should want to marry me and have kids with me," they lament. "If he really loved me, he would."

What I would really like to say is what's "really", and who says he should? Tradition is not trending today. The pressure from church and family has waned. Commitment is the option and not the rule. People are taking their time because they can. And some are not just content to remain unattached and unencumbered but actively choosing it.

Relationships are being redefined. But my friend at the airport, like so many other women, doesn't want to hear this – or can't.

And so, I tried to explain to her that Liam and I are enjoying our time with each other, content not to take things further. We have a close, passionate and respectful relationship that we are enjoying day by day.

And, for the moment anyway, "not going anywhere" is OK for both of us. Not all good love has to be great.

"But what happens if Liam falls in love with someone else?" she asks as final boarding is called.

"I let him go," I answer.

"But won't you be sad?"

"Yes, maybe. But while I might not be in love with him, I do love him. And as such, I want him to be happy."

"But don't you want to be happy too?" she yelled as she walked down the ramp.

"I'm not unhappy," I replied. But yet again, my friend couldn't hear me.