Leareth is so confused. "Are there - recognized categories of relationship where some have high odds of lasting and others do not?" Why would anyone bother to have a relationship they expected had nine-in-ten odds of not working, though... "- Or is the idea that some people prefer to have relationships on the basis that they are not expected to stay together long-term...?" 

"There could be relationships with a 1% chance of lasting, or 30%, or 94%, or even 47%!  Subjective relationship survival probability is a continuous spectrum, driven by all the known facts about the relationship.  It's just, when you're starting from 10%, you want to try big changes that don't cost you a lot when they fail.  Conversely when you're starting from 90%, you probably have some slack to spend on highly motivated attempts to fix whatever remaining small flaws exist in this very valuable relationship."

"And so far as I can tell, Milliways just has prediction markets the same way it has drinks, security, and couples' therapy.  We spin one up, we get one.  If we were allowed to know more than that, Milliways would have told us earlier."

"...I am not sure how I feel about that," Leareth admits. "I might have operational security concerns - how do the contributors to the 'prediction markets' know enough about us to make predictions...?" 

"Yeah, if they're just supposed to go on general knowledge of relationships tend to go, they might not be taking into account some of Leareth's... uniqueness." It's not clear whether Ramona is in favor of all of this uniqueness or not.

"I expect Milliways picks bettors with good priors and who'll abide by the standard oaths for bettors on therapy clients?  Probably in a lower layer of reality that can see our reality but not act on it except by outputting prediction market data."

"...What are the standard oaths for that?" 

Thellim describes the standard oaths!  They're very reassuring!  They imply a culture with VERY HIGH trust levels compared to Velgarth!

Ramona is watching to see how Thellim settles down Leareth about security things because that is in fact a recurring problem!

Leareth now has several additional questions about her world! It seems like it might be useful to understand better and he could learn a great deal from how they do things. It doesn't seem immediately relevant to his relationship with Ramona, though, so he won't ask yet.

He is reassured about the predictions markets of unexplained Milliways origin. 

Then she'll fire one up!

...

"Huh.  New prediction market up at the next layer of reality.  I'm in if you are."

"Yeah, I think I actually am that bored.  Oh hey I think this is an alternate version of me, that's probably why I'm tagged?"

"And... my author is Ramona's author's boyfriend.  Sure.  I'll roll with that."

Prediction market's starting estimate:  20%!

This is mainly based on an outside view of how many previous couples receiving couples' therapy at Milliways have chosen to stay together afterwards.

Sure, she'll put that number up on the main screen in her office.

Twenty percent! Ugh! Ramona hopes this is uninformed bullshit. They're just here to get Leareth some very basic information about relationships and then be on their way! Their case is so easy! Nothing to it!

She's been trying not to judge the way Thellim is doing the therapy, because she did cede the therapist role on purpose, after all, and it's best not to micromanage, but what the actual hell? Is Thellim just trolling them to get them to unite against her?

Leareth is now so curious how many couples have ever received couples' therapy in Milliways! If his and Ramona's circumstances are anywhere near typical, it seems like most of them might have been under particularly complicated and fraught circumstances? 20% still seems a bit surprising, but it’s not like “deciding to be non-romantic allies instead of allies who spend time together in bed” would be a disastrous outcome, if Ramona ends up deciding that’s what she would prefer. (He’s perhaps slightly upset about the possibility anyway, but he’s entirely capable of handling his own hurt feelings.)

He looks expectantly at Thellim, since he still has no idea what the next step in couples’ therapy is meant to be.

"To be clear, that 20% number is primarily a 'base rate' -- it's probably not based on the mysterious bettors knowing very much about you, yet, it'll be a low-liquidity early number centering on how many people who get couples' therapy in Milliways decide to stay together.  It doesn't mean the relationships end badly, either, rearranging your clients so that they all end up with equally good or better mates is a perfectly reasonable way to end a therapy consultation, and Milliways is unusually well-placed for that sort of outcome."

Ramona doesn't believe for a second that Thellim showed them "20%" because that was the base rate for Milliways. Even if that were true -- and it could be true -- that doesn't make it a good intervention. Maybe Thellim is just trying to heat things up in the room by starting out with something jarring and controversial? It's unorthodox, but if that's what Thellim's doing, Ramona doesn't want to mess it up for her.

"All right, so now that you've terrified us, what's next?"

"Next, we smile cheerfully and try out daring relationship-fixing schemes that won't take either of you down with them if they fail!  Only we don't actually do that because it's a pretty low-liquidity market, it'll probably swing up or down once the bettors have more information."

"I've been trying to think about how I'd do a from-scratch explanation of how relationships work for Leareth, and have a rough outline ready to go on that, but first I want to check if either of you have any higher-priority discussions than that one.  In therapy you're not supposed to just immediately dive into in-depth discussions of every interesting topic the way you would in a normal conversation!"

"In fact, we are here precisely because we want to hear you do a from-scratch explanation of how relationships work! That is the purpose of our visit! Let's go ahead and do that."

"I am certainly curious." At this point Leareth is starting to form an expectation that everything coming out of Thellim's mouth will be bizarre and counterintuitive and cause Ramona to make faces, but that doesn't make him less curious, and it's...likely to still be helpful? Probably? 

"Right!  Well, first, the basic concept of a relationship is that it's like any other kind of trade: each of you are providing something that the other person wants from you, and both of you are better off than if neither of you were in a relationship!  I'll pause there and check that I'm referring to concepts that already exist in both of your dimensions."

That is actually a lot less bizarre and counterintuitive than Leareth was expecting!

"I am following so far."