"Her species is even sadder than human women are, about not getting to have a whole man to themselves -"

"I'm royalty.  It'd be different if I was a footloose slut."

"Her species and culture.  She's a princess and she is supposed to have a man all to herself."

"Well, yes!"

"I don't... actually think that I fail to understand that part?"

"Jake, do you take her objections seriously?"

"I understand that they pose a relationship problem."

"Do you... care? She's saying that this is untenable for her, that you taking more partners would hurt at least her pride, and I wonder if that matters to you."

"It's... she's an alien, right.  I'm not going to be able to feel exactly what she's feeling, because she's not human and I'm not Nebulonian.  Her reasons don't make sense to me but they're not supposed to, right?  It'd be like trying to explain to her why the particular sequences of pitches in Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata sound haunting to me, or how the Pachelbel Canon sounds like a celebration."

"I don't want her to hurt, but sometimes it doesn't even sound to me like - hurting, more like pride."

"Having your pride injured hurts!  That's why people will physically injure themselves to avoid injuries to their pride!  I'm pretty sure humans are like that too, I've watched romantic comedies!"

"All right. I've been wondering something since I first met you two, and it's time to ask."

"Why are you together? Why are you fighting so hard to keep this relationship, despite this obvious major difficulty? How invested are you, and why? How much motivation do you have to get more creative, to find another solution, or maybe to make a sacrifice of some kind?"

"Zephyria, you first, please?"

"Royal couplings are - permanent.  Maybe not as a matter of physical reality, but social reality.  I mated with Jake Harrison and now I'm mated to him.  That's how it works on Nebulon."

"I do understand that Jake didn't know that, when he let me have my way with him.  I wasn't in condition to tell him, when he found me.  I'm not - without empathy, for that, I understand that I am in the wrong and that Jake never agreed to this.  It doesn't change how things are for me, now that I've done that wrong."

"And I do understand that - it's the premise of plenty of books, you know, where by books, I mean animes - and it's not like I'd seen past the Masquerade before this, or I'm going to get issued another alien princess if I lose this one.  I won't die without her, she won't die without me.  It doesn't mean that I'm going to give up my first and almost certainly only alien princess, without putting up enough of a fight to see a relationship therapist first.  I think it's fair to say that I genuinely like and enjoy being with Nebulonian princesses more than I've ever liked Earth girls."

Ramona is, for the first time, actually kind of charmed by the couple's haplessness, but decides it is probably not helpful to coo at them and tell them they're cute, so she keeps her smile professional.

"All right, sounds like you're motivated! Zephyria, you're stuck with Jake. Jake, you've got yourself quite a catch, and you don't want to lose her."

"So far you've each generated one idea. There's a symmetry here: your idea works for you but not for your partner. Neither one is going to work, at least not out of the box."

"Time to generate some new ideas. Ones that actually work for both of you. What've you got? No idea too wacky."

"And before you look at me blankly and tell me that's why you came to see me: that is not actually how this works. Hiring me does not mean that I magically solve your problems. I will not hold back any great ideas that I have, but you two are the experts on your own lives and it is likely that you are better positioned than I am to come up with something. My job is to help you communicate effectively and take both parties into account."

"The last time I tried coming up with clever ideas, I physically injured Zephyria's pride."

"His idea was to clone me.  Even if I could afford to make six more clones of myself so you could have sex every month, do you have any idea what that would do to the delicate lineage-web of the Nebulonian monarchy, not to mention how I would feel about being one of seven equal women in your harem -"

"Really, it's ideas like that which make you understand how my species bred itself out of being quite as creative as some others."

"I admit, I was thinking about cloning! That way you wouldn't have to share with anyone... else. Only with other copies of yourself. I don't suppose it helps if the other clones are sterile?"

"They'd commit suicide on you within a few days.  Do you humans have any problems that you don't try to solve by cloning people?" 

"Zephyria, has anything like this ever happened to any other Nebulonian? Surely you're not the first Nebulonian princess to mate in erotically-fogged haste and repent at leisure?"

"Excuse you, just because I understand I've wronged Jake doesn't mean I repent of anything.  He's hot and I'm a princess."

"As for your proper question, the official histories would have it that Nebulonian princesses don't often flee their home planet in search of a real man.  I'm more skeptical of this official history than I was a couple of months ago, but that doesn't change that I haven't seen past the censorship.  If we were on Nebulon, I'd have enough relationship leverage to force a Nebulonian man to do things my way, and make it up to him however I pleased."

"How did you come to be off-planet just as you were coming into heat? Is there a story behind that?"

"After the end of my last heat, I'd decided that I was tired of masturbating my only life away and that I was never realistically going to find a Nebulonian worthy of myself, so I left my planet in search of a mate, one I'd hoped to find before I went into heat.  There was then a series of entirely understandable miscalculations on which I really see no need to dwell, and the calendar error wasn't even my fault it was in somebody else's code, all of which culminated in my spaceship crashlanding near Jake after I got too distracted to pilot."

Ramona has at this point generated at least one or two possible technological solutions for this couple, but is still holding out hope that they're going to come up with something on their own if she opens up the conversation enough.

After all, she's not just here to solve this problem, she's here to help them be stronger as a couple - and that includes building their curiosity about each other and helping them withstand the tension of not-knowing-yet.

So she stays curious, and asks Zephyria more about herself. Has Jake gotten any of this backstory before, she wonders? She'll keep an eye on his face while Zephyria talks.

"How was it that the entire planet of Nebulon offered no one at all you were interested in?"