"This isn't especially comfortable for me to contemplate especially when I have not in fact had sex for a few weeks now.  Can't you be the one to describe to Zephyria what it's like to be a human male depressed about lack of sex?  I don't even understand why we're doing this, she says she understands I'm hurting, she's just not okay with me solving my problem by having sex with somebody else."

"I actually can't explain what it's like to be you, because I don't know. I'm not going to tell you you're unique, or even unusual. I suspect a lot of male humans have a similar experience to yours. However, there is a big variety of experiences - there is not a single standard. And from what you're describing to me, you are unusually strongly affected by relatively short gaps between sexual encounters, especially for someone who is no longer in adolescence."

"There's also a lot of variation in how that deprivation shows up - what facets of your life it affects - how strongly. How you think about it. What you tell yourself it means. How you cope with it. And once we factor all of that in, you are actually unique. Nobody else experiences this quite the way you do."

"I started by asking Zephyria if she already understands what how not having sex affects you, and she said she didn't actually understand."

"The only person who can explain it to her is you."

"Are you willing to do that?"

"I don't understand what the point is of having Zephyria understand the exact details of how I'm hurting when, I mean, she's an alien she's never really going to get it and she already says she's willing to believe that I'm hurting."

Ramona is very surprised by Jake's unwillingness to engage with this question. Most human clients in this much pain are bubbling over with the desire to explain their pain to someone who's sincerely interested, and really wants to know.

And also - it feels unlikely this couple is going to end up happily non-monogamous - Zephyria seems pretty adamant that it's not going to work for her. But if they were going to end up with that solution, the path would almost certainly flow through Zephyria understanding Jake. If Zephyria gets what's at stake for him, she'll be far more motivated to work with him on solutions that are hard for her to swallow.

So Jake's kind of shooting himself in the foot here, Ramona thinks.

All that being said, he clearly doesn't want to talk about this. So maybe there's something stopping him. Maybe his pain is so intense, and his distress tolerance so limited, that he actually can't really open up the box and show everyone what's inside. He's given as clear a "no" to talking about it as he can.

Clearly Ramona is going to have to find another way.

Ramona finds herself still wanting to work with Jake, see if she can get him to open up, maybe by leading the way a little bit more, making suggestions about how it might feel to be him.

But that's no good, that's not actually forging intimacy, that's not Jake showing himself to Zephyria, that's Ramona doing too much of the work.

So if Jake's not going to do it, and Ramona's not going to do it, that only leaves one person.

Ramona's next idea is to ask Zephyria what she sees from the outside, how Jake's different in one state versus the other, but that's not going to work either. This relationship is so bimodal - it's either FUCK-FUCK-FUCK or it's grim-dark-depression and practicing-mechanical-sex-moves-alone-in-your-room. Zephyria doesn't actually know baseline Jake and can't compare these different states meaningfully.

What even is this relationship.

Ramona really needs to come back to that. Why is this couple attempting to make it work? What's at stake? What does Zephyria see in Jake? It's undoubtedly something great, but Ramona just doesn't know what it is yet.

But now is not the time. She needs to finish the task she's in the middle of. Somehow.

"Zephyria, what is your take on Jake's pain? Is it evident to you that he's hurting? What do you make of that? What do you wish for, for him?"

"Not so much a solution to the problem - though of course that's interesting too. But something more like, does it bother you that he's in pain?"

"It bothers me a great deal.  A woman who can't solve all her man's problems, especially as they relate to her, isn't much of a woman.  A woman who has her man's problems relating to her solved by some other woman is even less of a woman.  I'm not really used to - the great lack of good options, that Earthlings have, other than piling more women into the relationship.  You have drugs for decreasing a male sex drive but they have side effects, and Jake has expressed unwillingness to take those even if they didn't have side effects.  I'm at least a little skeptical about how real his apparent lack of options actually is."

"I get that he's in pain.  My kind of male can outright die if he goes into heat without any mate."

"I - suppose I should say out loud that I in fact like him, too, and don't want him to be in pain for that reason, too, and not just my pride as a princess."

"To summarize so far:"

"Jake. You get very depressed unless you have sex with an enthusiastic female partner every few days. It's not enough for the physical coupling to feel good to your body; it's not enough for you to reach orgasm. The thing you want lives outside yourself, and inside your partner: you want your partner to want you, and feel sexual pleasure, and show her desire and pleasure to you."

"Zephyria. You care about that, and don't want Jake to be in pain, and want to solve his sexual problems, but you are inherently, biologically unable to do so."

"Jake has a proposed solution to this dilemma. Sexual relationship broken: Add More Women."

"Zephyria, you've telegraphed that you're not interested in this idea, but let's take some time to explore it and see what happens."

"What's there to explore?"

"Jake, can you describe a little bit more? What did you have in mind? How would it work, according to you?"

"It's - not incredibly complicated?  Six months and one week out of the year, I've got some bit on the side ethical-nonmonogamy-style, and the remaining three weeks are for saving up erotic energy, spending a week with Zephyria, and recovering afterwards."

"Gosh. You make it sound so straightforward. Do you have any practical experience with non-monogamy?"

"Not the ethical kind.  - I kid, I kid.  Yeah, there've been times when my life when I was with two or three girls each of whom wanted to have sex once a week.  Only ever been serious with one girl at a time, that's the part I'd worry about navigating with Zephyria."

"Tell me more about 'being serious.' What's different in a serious relationship vs. a 'bit on the side' relationship?"

"I mean, there was the one girl who I got an apartment with, and where we messed with each other's lives maybe too much, and then there was the girl I screwed on Friday evenings and the girl I screwed Sunday mornings and we all knew that it wasn't going to be until death did we part."

"Okay. So in a 'serious' relationship you might live together, and you expect to stay together for a long time, and you have influence on each other's lives. But in a 'side' relationship, you spend a few hours a week together and most of the relationship is just sex, and you don't expect it to last? Do I have that right?"

Ramona is talking to Jake but she's sneaking a look at Zephyria's face to see if she can read any nonverbal cues, despite the cultural divide. Can she?

Zephyria looks, or is choosing to look, politely interested and not particularly surprised.  Maybe even slightly admiring?

"I mean, it's not like we didn't care about each other, or never went on more complicated dates ever, it's... more like we knew we weren't responsible to each other."

"Say more about 'responsible.' What does that mean?"

"So with the ones I wasn't responsible for... she could be... failing out of college, say, I don't know, though she wasn't in college by then and neither was I.  And it wouldn't be my job to fix it, just to give her a hug about it.  If it had happened with the girl in my apartment, I'd have felt like, it was my job to do something about that.  If I'd needed to get surgery she'd have picked me up from the hospital.  Lives entangled."

There are two ways to go from here. Ramona wants to check with Zephyria and see if she's learned any new information here that might soften her about non-monogamy. But having snuck that look before, she doesn't actually expect that anything has changed for Zephyria.

The other thing to do is to see if Jake understands Zephyria's objections to non-monogamy.

And nested under that are two more options: a) have Zephyria explain her objections to Jake, or b) try to have Jake explain them back to Zephyria.

Ramona decides to go with 2b: ask Jake to explain Zephyria's objections. It's pretty clear they've already tried 2a and it hasn't worked. The circular form of the question might move things forward more effectively.

"Jake, I know Zephyria has told you that she's against your idea. Can you explain to me what her objections are?"