"The latter."

"Sex is a cause of connection, bonding, the satisfaction of a partner, and to this end we refine our sexual knowledge when not in heat, that we may bind our partners all the more strongly when our time comes."

"How do you refine your sexual knowledge? Do you just brush up on, like, sex in general? Sex with your specific partner? How do you get better at it without actually doing it?"

"Abstract study of books, video tutorials; among the wealthy, machine-monitored execution of those motions that can be used later."

"A surprising amount crossed over.  In my own opinion."

"Zephyria, do you enjoy the study during the down times? Do you get any pleasure, even if only intellectual stimulation, from refining your sexual art?"

"It's not what I'd call [BIP] terrifyingly advanced mathematics, intellectually speaking.  I get - that ordinary satisfaction which you'd expect to get, from studying something that would be of use to you and your mate, later?  Like - building a castle in virtual reality for him to wander through, though you won't see him get to wander through it until months later, and when you do witness it there shall be many orgasms for both of you."  

"Okay, I promised you this therapy was going to go fast. I'm going to jump ahead to problem solving here and give you something to try. I don't necessarily expect it to work, but I do expect all three of us to learn something from what happens when you try... or when you fail to even try. Here it is."

"Zephyria: I want you to try a practice session on a live model instead of a mechanical surrogate. You're going to practice on your actual husband, even though you're not in heat. You don't need to feel more into it than you normally do at this point in your cycle. You can just feel that standard, ordinary, castle-building satisfaction. You don't need to have any orgasms unless that was also part of the practice. Your task is the same as always: refine your technique."

"Two things will be different for you. First, you will get better training data because you are using your techniques on your actual husband so you get to see what happens. Second, to whatever extent you are experiencing that standard, ordinary, castle-building satisfaction, I would like you to express that satisfaction out loud so he can observe it."

"Jake: Congratulations, you're about to get laid. Woo-hoo! And she's going to be into it... in a way. You're going to have to work with what you've got. It is not going to be the same as when she's in heat."

"Two things will also be different for you. First, you need to give her lots of feedback, out loud so she knows what's working and what isn't."

"Second, you will need to take a pill immediately after sex that will erase your memory of the sex. You may write down in your journal that sex occurred, and write some other code phrase that will convince future-you that this is not a lie, but you may not otherwise describe the sex to yourself in any way. This will preserve the element of novelty and surprise for the later time when she is in heat. She needs the fun of building the castle and surprising you with it."

"This is your homework. What questions do you have before we end our session today?"

"A pill - uh -"

"I don't understand why?"

"Why, what? Why do I think this kind of sex will benefit you? Or why do I want you to forget it?"

"I'm not seeing where the whole thing is going."

"I want to figure out if there's a middle ground for the two of you that can be achieved simply by moving the slider bar of sexual frequency. You want twice a week. She wants one week out of every seven months. Those two points are pretty far apart. Can we move that slider bar around in a way that doesn't violate her bodily autonomy, increase the frequency in a way that truly works for her and her sexuality? That's what I'm checking first."

"Like I said, I don't know if this experiment will 'work' in the sense of now you're both feeling happy with your sex life and ready to go forward like this forever after. But I think we'll learn a lot about what the solution space looks like by trying it once."

"I - I'm sorry to be difficult but I have personal-integrity issues with having my memory occasionally erased!  And I don't think that having sex but not remembering is - would be really - I mean, at that point why not just masturbate and not remember it, if the only trace is left on my body and not my mind?"

"I don't think I have a strong need to see him experiencing my works for the first time while I'm also in heat?  Sex works more than once, it is an event for which a biological organism ought to feel enduring motivation."

"Okay, fantastic, we're learning from this experiment before it even begins! Delete the part about the memory erasure, but keep the rest of the assignment. Any further objections?"

"Certainly not of me.  It is not the first time I expressed a willingness to be there and squishy for him."

"I mean, I expect it not to work and - I admit I haven't actually tried it, it just seems kind of - I mean, no matter how horny I got back in the day, I never went to a prostitute because having her not be into it didn't feel right.  And I mean I know some prostitutes actually are into it, it's just, it's impossible to know, right, because they'll pretend that either way.  I never wanted to be the guy whose girl was, you know, there for him even when she wasn't into it."

"Of course, you're right, at some level. All three of us expect that it's not going to be the same as when she's in heat. It'll be a different kind of satisfaction for her, much more intellectual and muted. But she's promised to speak that true satisfaction out loud, and not pretend the rest of it."

"So expecting it not to 'work' in the sense of 'feeling just like when she's in heat' is absolutely fine. I'm asking you to try it, despite your doubts, and pay attention to what actually happens."

"Next week, same time?"

"I'm not comfortable with this.  Sexually.  Am I supposed to do it even though I'm not comfortable with it."

"Let me explain how an experiment like this works. Anything that happens - literally anything - is good experimental data. So, like, you can go home and then just utterly fail to initiate this kind of sex at all, and then the next time we meet I'll ask you what was going through your head and whether you even remembered the homework and what stopped you from bringing it up. That would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Or maybe you would start, and then you would find that you could not be less interested in what was happening, your body is not responding, you would rather be digging ditches than having sex right now. So you stop. That would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Or maybe you would start, and you would do something you'd call 'sex,' and you'd have some sort of sensory and emotional and cognitive experience of that. Whatever your experience turns out to be, that would be an experimental result, and we would learn from it."

"Anything that happens is okay. All that I'm really asking is that you walk out of the room with the intention of making a run up to the experiment as outlined and seeing what actually happens."

"With that framework in mind, tell me more about your discomfort. What's feeling off?"

"Being with a girl who's not into you is - somewhere between failure as a man, and rape."

"Okay, so, the premise here as I understand it is that she's voluntarily interested in practicing her sexual technique on you so that she can 'bind you to her more tightly' when she's in heat. She's willing, she's an active participant, she has her own agenda, and from the sounds of it she's doing her best to learn how to please you. She's also deriving at least some pleasure from it herself."

"In my professional opinion, this is NOT RAPE."

"A lot of times when cis het men talk about 'failure as a man' when having sex with women, they are very focused on... giving her orgasms? Or something to that effect? Is that what you're worried about?"

Ramona worried briefly if orgasms were even a thing for Zephyria and then remembered that the castle-building exercise was supposed to culminate in "lots of orgasms for both of us" so it was probably all right.

Ramona then worried more that perhaps "orgasm" is not actually a concept that maps neatly between species, and that perhaps in some sense, Zephyria was faking it the whole time, if only because cross-species sex is confusing.

Ramona decided not to bring up that possibility at this moment in therapy.

"I mean, I have gotten far enough in life to know that women don't like being pressured into needing to have orgasms.  But - it's not about how much pleasure she experiences, it's about, her being there for the sex.  Her being a sexual person, who's there with you and not for you.  On a sexual level, I mean; I get that Zephyria would be doing it for me and with me as a person."

"That's a real thing you're worried about. That's the actual truth about your spouse. She is not there for her own electric, passionate, sexual gratification when she's not in heat. Because biologically, that is not a thing for her. It doesn't matter how much of a man you are. You could be the intergalactic champion of manliness and it would not matter at all. It's not about you. It is a fact about her."

"And I want to acknowledge that it's possible that that doesn't work for you, that you aren't going to thrive in a relationship where your partner doesn't have electric, passionate, sexual gratification more than a week or two a year. That would be valid. But it's not a personal affront. It's not something you did wrong, or something that you could overcome if only you were better. It's got nothing to do with you."