"...Yes, I can generally tell which people are men and which people are women. - though, actually, the first reports I heard on Ramona's activities in Velgarth had not been clear on whether she was male or female, so I was - curious and impressed, and motivated to have her as an ally, before I knew either way." 

"Noted.  To answer your previous question up the stack, about why awkward silences are more specific to dates than just generic interpersonal contexts, the chain of empirical regularities plays out like this:  Humans are mainly designed in evolutionary context to have sex and bear children in pairs, and don't have the appendages some aliens do to have reproductive sex with three or more people.  So at least on my origin planet, marriages are often just two people.  Even people just looking to spark enough mutual attraction to support casual sex usually carry out that activity in pairs.  So in romance and sexuality you've got two people who are looking to be happy to be around each other, and carry out activities that support and continue an emotional relationship with each other, and if instead they fall into a long painful awkward silence there's nobody else to pick up the slack and no other activity they can just get on with instead."

"If they were in a startup together, they could just as easily meet with five people instead of two, or when people ran out of things to say they could go back to programming.  That's why 'awkward silence' is more stereotypically a problem to solve in a romantic relationship than in a company, and why the easiest solutions for startups don't import straight over to marriages.  Though, to be clear, forming a large group marriage to found a startup together is a standard solution to some romantic problems if that otherwise works for everyone, including the problem of awkward silences."

Ramona has often encouraged people to cross-pollinate: take the good ideas from parenting and bring them to the context of managing software engineers, or take the good ideas from performance reviews at work and bring them (carefully! oh so delicately!) to the intimate relationship. It seems that dath ilan has elevated this to a science, and now Ramona wants to read their textbooks about group marriage / startup founding.

The Milliways translation effect is helpfully providing some context on what a ""startup"" is, but Leareth is now very curious about the society where that kind of working-on-a-project is available enough to random people that it's a reasonable hobby for romantic partners to pick up in order to solve their interpersonal problems, which seems to be the implication? ...Answering that question is not the highest priority right now. 

"I...suppose I can see that. And even if the comparison is with non-romantic friends who spend time together as a pair, I think people would mostly not become close friends if their conversation preferences were not compatible, but I have definitely heard of people who were very - well, sexually compatible, and thus more motivated to work out their other mismatches." Though it still seems like the framing adds unnecessary complexity - would Thellim give different advice to a quiet but awkward-silence-hating person if they were a man romantically involved with a woman rather than the reverse? 

"Popping up the stack, Leareth, what are your own main questions, that you already know you have, about How To Relationships And But Why?  Optionally alternatively, popping even further up the stack, do you have your own agenda separate from Ramona's about which relationship issues can benefit from a third party's intervention?"

That definitely seems like a useful place to poke at! Leareth appreciates Thellim asking the question, and smiles at her to convey it. 

"Hmm. ...I do think I maybe have a difficulty where - I know some of the patterns of how a romantic relationship between a man and a woman are expected to go in Velgarth - in several different Velgarth cultures - but I am...mostly not drawn to that as a guide to follow, and I am not sure Ramona would appreciate it if I were. To the extent I have any previous experience with romance, it was - in a context where I do not really approve of the ways that men and women were expected to treat each other, and I would almost rather start fresh than take what I learned there into my relationship with Ramona."

(The last time he was regularly involved in romantic relationships, and took notes on it for his records, was in the Imperial court of the Eastern Empire. He doesn't remember that, per se, but has the sense he was "good at" courtship, in the sense of having invested in a skill, and also didn't particularly enjoy having to exercise that skill and was relieved when he could stop. He's not sure if it would be useful to explain the Eastern Empire to Thellim - or Ramona - but it doesn't sound fun.) 

A slight shrug. "I have the sense that, maybe going along with being more advanced in other ways, Ramona's world has - a wider range of expectations for how relationships ought to look and what it means to be a good partner to someone, including ways that would suit us better as people - but I am not from Ramona's world, and I think she would rather not be instructing me on all the relationship-lore her world has developed." 

"Would you say the foremost issue is that, (1), you don't know how to describe who you are to Ramona, (2), you're having trouble figuring out how to interface with Ramona's own expectations about gendertropes, or, (3), since your society lacks any gendertropes that at all appeal to you, you haven't figured out yet who you, yourself, are or want to be?"

"Oh, wow, I am intensely curious about the answer to this question."

After a very rough initial period -- 20% on the prediction market, Ramona's left elbow -- Ramona is feeling pretty good about Thellim.

Huh. That's - actually a pretty interesting thing to notice. 

"I do think it is more or less true that my society does not have - gendertropes - that appeal to me, and that is probably part of why I have mostly not bothered having any romantic relationships in a long time and thus - lack experience. I do think it would be helpful to understand Ramona's expectations better, and - not having shared vocabulary to talk about our expectations is probably part of the problem? ...I did mean to say at some point, I had this thought earlier when Ramona said that it might be a problem in the long run if I were monogamous, and - obviously if something were going to be a problem, I should figure out how not to do it? I think I am not attached to being 'monogamous', but it would probably help to actually understand why Ramona thinks it would limit us so that I know what problem I am solving." 

"I mean, just because a thing might be a problem between us doesn't mean that you should stop doing it! Sometimes people are different and want different things and they don't actually belong together as a result and that is an acceptable way for the universe to be! I think that's kind of what Thellim has been saying."

"But let me explain about 'being monogamous.' On my world, most people think it's best to pair-bond with exactly one other person. Not zero, not two, and definitely not more than two. There are a lot of historical and cultural reasons for this. But at the same time, many people struggle to implement this correctly, and so there's a lot of sadness and drama about it."

"I personally prefer to encounter other forms of relationship-related sadness and drama, so I am not monogamous."

That's concerning, but she will be a good little therapist and let Leareth maybe be audibly concerned about it first?

"I think this is also common in Velgarth, maybe for similar historical and cultural reasons! ...It has seemed to me that many people will say that they think marriages should be faithful and include exactly two people, and then - not abide by this. Which can definitely result in drama that sounds very tedious."  

Another slight shrug. "I think it would not bother me if you wanted to have a relationship with someone else? I - currently find it hard to imagine that I would want to, but I went a very long time not wanting to have a relationship with anyone, so I think mostly it seems important to adjust to one instead of zero relationships before I try to have any more?" 

"Oh! Good! I think I must have misunderstood you before when you said that adding more people to the relationship did not sound like a good idea to you. I don't actually want to do this right now, but if I'm not allowed to it will bother me."

"It seemed like a dubious solution to our - communication friction - and like it would mostly result in having even more to communicate about. ...Also I had somewhat been picturing 'adding more people' in the sense where both of us would have a relationship with the new person, you having a relationship I am not involved in sounds much less complicated than that." 

"It can work either way, but if you're not into it, I won't make you!"

"I am not going to say it is impossible I would be interested! They would have to be a - fairly exceptional person - but apparently there is an entire multiverse, I suppose there are probably others people who are as impressive as you." 

Melt melt melt.

"Ramona, you earlier said that there were forms of sadness and drama that you preferred to other forms. Does that mean you prefer them to not any sadness or drama at all? Can you say more about the circumstances under which you'd prefer your relationships to be bad instead of good?"

If one partner has been pessimizing while the other was optimizing, that sounds like an obvious relationship disaster in the making unless their utility functions are inverted relative to each other.

"I was mostly joking!"

"My point there is that there's always something, and generally feels more tractable to steer towards your favorite kinds of problems rather than eliminate all problems."

"So for example, I'd rather feel stressed out about balancing my calendar than about being lonely."

"Well, to say out loud obvious thoughts you might have already thought of, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page and has common knowledge about that: any time you steer toward your own favorite kinds of problems, consider saying something out loud where Leareth can hear so as to check that they're his favorite kinds of problems too!"

"Um. Legit. Okay."

"Leareth, do you have favorite kinds of problems that you've been steering toward?"

This is not a frame that she's familiar with, but as a proper couples therapist, if people are going to be this way, she'll at least make sure that they're good at it!

"I...would...not have put it that way? ...Though, hmm. I suppose I do have...least un-favorite problems. And I think I have mental habits from the rest of my life up to this point, that I have some reason to think are not what Ramona would prefer - being very paranoid about operational security, for example - but I would not say those are my favorite problems that I want to steer toward on purpose. I would prefer if it were safe to be less than maximally paranoid at all times. And it seems to cause more and different problems in a romantic relationship than it did in running a military organization." 

So Thellim has intimate relationships and entrepreneurship all intertwined.

Leareth thinks in terms of military organizations, apparently?

Is there any such thing as purely thinking about intimate relationships, or is Ramona also intertwining with some other concept without even realizing it, because it seems so natural to her? What's the secret other ingredient? How would she even figure that out?

"Does it appear to either of you that I'm hopelessly intertwining personal relationships with some other unrelated conceptual building block?"

"I'll ask the prediction markets."