"Plenty of people have great sex lives without penetrative intercourse, send her to some website for people with vaginismus or something, maybe that'll help."

"All right. Thanks for your time."

"Thanks for explaining and not trying to declare me divorced under Elf law or anything."

"Of course not. This is a hard situation for her but that's not your fault and we don't want to harm your family. I really do appreciate your time and thoughts. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

And she relays this to Isabella.

"Well, that went about as well as could be expected."

"Yeah. I'll talk with her, edit all of the warnings and explanations to be more explicit -"

"I'm not sure how precocious you expect humans to be but do include the ones you imported just in case."

"Will do. ...I'd have quite a talking-to with any Elf who went after a fourteen-year-old -"

"Yes, well, spare yourself by threatening the fourteen-year-olds with dire soulbondy consequences."

"Will do."

So this probably means that if psions can do oaths at all...

They can probably do divorces. I'm trying to decide whether to get Minassë's hopes up.

Would anybody else want one?

Probably. It'll be very socially disruptive, but.

What sort of social fabric is relying on eternal marriages no matter how they were formed or between whom?

More just - say one person wants to stay married and the other doesn't, we have no concept of how to navigate that -

I'd generally err on the side of allowing people an out if they want it but I guess that's not obvious if you're from a background of that never being an option, having to make the best of anything that got to the point of being a marriage...

Virtually all marriages are deliberate decisions. I - don't think that many people'd take the option, and I know people who'd prefer not to have it -

Prefer not to have it because -?

Aesthetic principle? They like being able to commit to someone irrevocably forever?

Suppose there's a logic to that.

It's not something I'd thought about much, but - I think it's really good for my parents, for example -

Oh?