Is this the right place? She'll assume so. In she goes behind him.

It definitely looks like an office where therapy happens, yes, modulo the exploding stars in the background.

"Hello!  I'm Thellim, and I'm apparently the Milliways couples' therapist now."  Thellim has never done any couples' therapy before, but has read about it in books and is pretty confident of her ability to disentangle realistic couples' therapy tropes from fake tropes that are just there to ensure the characters' relationships never actually resolve.  "What brings you to my office today?"

Leareth does not actually have the slightest idea what...happens...in couples' therapy, apart from the not-entirely-unconfusing contents of several half-finished conversations with Ramona. (He may have a Mindhealer on staff, but this doesn't exactly mean that Nayoki specializes in the 'untangling interpersonal problems' side of things.) 

He doesn't want to put words in Ramona's mouth, either, but he glances at her and clears his throat. "I think we are interested in learning more about 'couples therapy' and whether it is the right tool to approach some - difficulties that we have uncovered." 

"The main problem from my perspective is that Leareth does not actually seem to have any idea whatsoever how relationships work? And it's awkward if I am the one to explain it to him, because I have mixed incentives. So I was hoping we could get a qualified couples therapist to do the explaining parts, and then I could just be a girlfriend instead of a girlfriend/counselor combo."

"That's incredibly reasonable!  Usually the fundamental question of couples' therapy is 'Under what circumstance could some other person solve our problems when we, sensible people with more information, have failed to do that ourselves?' but if you'd just like to pay somebody else to do the hard parts that makes a lot of sense too!  What sort of informational asymmetry are you starting out with, here?  It sounds like maybe the man is from a dimension too primitive to have invented professional specialization and also relationships, and the woman is from a dimension more advanced than that?"

(Thellim hasn't yet remedied her ignorance of her planet's history -- it would help if somebody could tell her why dath ilan's history might have been screened -- but it stands to reason that 'couples therapist' would be one of the very first professions to come into existence once professional specialization started at all, since it requires no material infrastructure and relatively little math.  You'd definitely expect to see it before, say, ironworking.)

Leareth had thought he wasn't going into this with any specific expectations of what 'couples therapy' entailed, but he apparently absolutely was not expecting that, whatever that was. He's not sure whether to be offended or not. (It seems like it wouldn't actually help to be offended so he settles on not.) 

"I -" Where do you even start. "I think that the difficulty is not with my entire dimension, there are plenty of people I know who have relationships that seem to be perfectly functional. It is probably more that I have not had reason to focus on romantic relationships for - a very long time," does he want to get into the details of his immortality mechanism and missing memories right now, no, not especially, "and I am not actually sure which parts of the standard relationship format are important to each of us."

(He thinks it's entirely reasonable on Ramona's part not to want to explain everything, but this is admittedly mostly based on the belief that it's reasonable for anyone not to do things they find unpleasant in some way, he hasn't entirely followed what actually bothers her about it.) 

"Agreed that I don't think it's everyone in Velgarth, it's mainly Leareth."

Well, and actually, quite a few other specific individuals she could name, but that would be a major distraction from what they're here to do. Regular people in Velgarth seem fine? Probably?

"That last thing he said is kind of case in point. He's not sure which parts of the standard relationship format matter to me because: 1) He can't name the parts of the standard relationship format; 2) he hasn't asked me what's important to me; 3) possibly he hasn't actually tried to model me, he just kind of goes around doing... whatever seems to him like it would help, but then doesn't inform me of any of that or check to see how I'm actually doing?"

It's sort of hard to explain without sounding like she's blaming him. Maybe that's because she's kind of blaming him a little bit. He's so... odd. But adorable? But odd.

So far this sounds like the sort of problem that ought to fold as soon as anyone makes a serious effort about it for fifteen minutes, but obviously these people have long since thought of that and determined that their best course of action was to employ a therapist anyways!  "Well, I'm sure not going to claim to understand what any of that's about, on as little information as I have!  If I asked literally all of my questions I'd waste a huge amount of your valuable time, so I won't ask you what your home dimensions are like, or who you are as people, or what matters to you in life.  Instead, I'll ask what the two of you are getting out of each other?  Or if that's not the historical cause of your relationship, what brought you together as a matter of historical causality, instead of mutual gains from relating relative to your next-best alternatives for mating?"

Leareth is finding the last sentence somewhat hard to parse, but he can definitely answer 'what are the two of you getting out of each other' at least from his side of things. 

"Ramona solved some of the most intractable problems in my life - in my entire world - and did so without paying any of the costs I had been resigned to in my own plans. I am not sure how to convey how deeply grateful I am, and how badly I want her as an ally. ...I said something like that to her, and she asked me to clarify whether I was expressing romantic interest, and I - thought about it and decided I would in fact be interested if she considered my interest welcome. So." A slight shrug. "Here we are." 

Leareth is admittedly not actually sure what it means or cashes out to, for him, to be romantically interested in someone. He is mostly pretty sure that he feels some kind of very strong, very positive way about Ramona - he wants something very very badly - and his instinctive answer to her clarifying question was...definitely not a no? 

Awwww. It's so sweet! Ramona's heart is melting all over again. He really is such a good guy, and the way she helped was really pretty straightforward?

"I was glad to help! It really wasn't a big deal! It's what I do every day! When he looked straight into my eyes and told me how much he wanted to spend more time together, achieving great things... well, I do really like to be appreciated. And he's not unimpressive himself! I would say he has accomplished much more than I have, and I'm attracted to competence."

(Leareth thinks it's clearly not true that he's accomplished much more than Ramona did! It's maybe fair to say that he's put more time and effort into solving Velgarth's problems - nearly two thousand years of it -  or, at one remove, into acquiring the skills he thought he would need to start solving those problems, but it's the results that matter, and he had self-evidently not actually solved everything. Or very many things at all, really, or at least that's how it's felt recently. Maybe Ramona was in some sense more lucky than competent in an absolute sense, in that the particular skills she brought to the situation were extremely well targeted in a way that would never have occurred to Leareth even in ten thousand years, but the outcome is the same.

He's tried to say this to Ramona and it felt like either he failed to communicate it at all or it wasn't actually a distinction she cared about it; he doesn't expect anything to go differently if he just says it again, so he stays quiet.) 

So if she's parsing this right -- they've both done things that would make them incredibly wealthy elites of the man's world, maybe based on 'Ramona' optimizing it with her world's superior degree of professional specialization and knowledge.  And then they decided to have a relationship based on their past history with each other, even though either of them could've utilized their wealth and prestige to get almost any other mate they wanted on the whole planet.  That is romantic!

Thellim almost opens her mouth to say all this out loud, but then reconsiders whether it's the most important thing she could say next.  Besides, if they're having relationship troubles, probably the last thing they want to hear is that somebody else thinks their relationship is cute.

"It sounds like the two of you are together based on your past history and having been through a lot together.  That's very respectable!  But it means that you might not be starting out with a strong model of what benefit you're both deriving from the other in an ongoing relationship -- what you each want from each other, and what you each have available to give in return."

"What did the prediction markets say about your chances of staying together after the first date?  And what facts did the primary market movers cite as decisive, if you paid for them to list that, which at your inferred wealth level I'm sure you did?"

"Prediction markets? I've heard of those, but we don't have one for our relationship."

Leareth is fairly sure that the therapist isn't speaking a language he knows - this place comes with an impressively thorough translation effect - and he's hearing something about...gambling to create a kind of Foresight, with bookies placing bets based on their odds. It's a brilliant idea; it's not entirely new to him, but he feels slightly off-balance that he apparently never, in centuries, thought of using the concept in such a broad-scoped way before. Though really the problem is that Velgarth isn't exactly a place where he can convert even arbitrary amounts of personal and organizational wealth into that. (Also it would require the people making bets to have a lot of personal information about him, surely, which Leareth isn't incredibly comfortable with.) 

"- Apparently Ramona's world does have that concept," he says after a moment. "Mine does not. - we have not had an enormous amount of time to go over all of the similarities and differences between our planets." 

(Because they've been spending a lot of time in bed.)

(Well. Moderately awkward time in bed, though yes, quite a lot of it in terms of the fraction of time they've had mutually-agreed-upon romantic interest.) 

(Ramona's world is more advanced than Leareth's on multiple tech trees, as it turns out.)

What kind of planet has heard of prediction markets, has the concept without --

Okay, Thellim is considerably raising the estimated degree to which she doesn't know anything about these two dimensions and that's maybe important to the relationship.

"Well, if you've never run a prediction market on your relationship then we should probably spin up one of those before doing anything else," Thellim says, starting from the part she is sure about.  "Right now I don't know if we're starting from a relationship with a base 10% ten-year survival chance or 90%, and those different states of knowledge call for different policy proposals."

Also Thellim has no idea how one goes about doing couples' therapy, if you can't see how market odds shift with each revealed fact of history, or get conditional forecasts on different policy proposals.

"Okay... but... like, who do you imagine is going to bet in these markets, exactly?"

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." 

"That is not at all how most people on my planet think of it, but it suits me just fine, so yes, please go ahead!"

"Just like any other job, as you stay in a relationship, you build human capital that makes you more effective at providing what your job context demands from you!  In a normal job this would give you more leverage to demand a higher salary from your employer in exchange for you spending your opportunity costs on staying employed for longer.  But in a relationship, usually, it's a more symmetrical arrangement than that; the other person is getting better at providing what you want, too!  This is the underlying reason why people stick around getting affection and love from particular other people, rather than just finding a whole new boyfriend or girlfriend every time they need a hug!  Still with me?"

....

Ramona will look at Leareth to see what his response is before she jumps in.

That....is also not normally how jobs work? Maybe it's how jobs work in wealthier and more technologically advanced worlds (or in non-secret organizations that come with less in the way of security compulsions) - it doesn't exactly sound bad - but it's not particularly a familiar model Leareth can take and map over to relationships. 

Someone should definitely tell Vanyel to use his leverage to demand a higher salary, though.

"...Is that mostly a more precise way of saying that relationships - if they are going well - usually become closer over time, because it helps to know each other well?" he says, carefully. 

"What would 'closer' mean, if not knowing each other better, being better able to provide what the other person needs and take advantage of what they can provide us, and the bonding emotions that humanity evolved to implement and boost that process?"

Awww. That's kind of nice, actually!

"I agree with that!"

"But I guess I also want to mention, while we're on the topic of why people stay together rather than switching relationships all the time... many people do switch relationships all the time, in my experience. And many who don't switch, stay together because of all of the sunk costs in the relationship. It would be too expensive to get separate dwellings again, for example, or it would be hard on the kids for their parents to separate. And I aspire to better than that, for myself. I want to stay in a relationship because I like the relationship."

"That's exactly right!  And so, one of the primary functions of relationship therapy is to help people realize when at least one person is just sticking around the other person because of switching costs, or sheer ugh fields around the prospect of breaking up, or because they've just never sat down and planned out how they'd exit the relationship if they had to and realized it wouldn't really be that bad."

Is...that...a problem people commonly have? Leareth would have thought the more usual problem - certainly the one he's more familiar with in Velgarth - is more in the realm of 'not being able to afford separate dwellings' like Ramona mentioned, and...whatever Thellim is doing here...doesn't really seem like it would help? 

"Well, fortunately it is not as though either of us is is facing resource shortages in general such that we cannot afford to leave a relationship. I do think it makes sense to aim for a relationship only if it is actively better for both of us than not."

He hesitates for a moment. "...Just to be clear, I would not actually be seeking a different romantic partner, if this relationship does not work. I was perfectly content without any romantic relationships for a long time, but Ramona is - special." He should really be able to think of a more specific word for it than that. "It seemed unusually worth trying." 

"Oh, are you demisexual or demiromantic?  There's some people who find they can only be sexually or romantically attracted to few people, sometimes only one person they can realistically be with.  Then their partner has a lot of negotiating leverage over them, and is also condemning them to a dreadful fate if they ever actually leave; both of which can lead to standard, well-known relationship issues."

That is making a reasonable amount of sense up until WHAT. 

"....I think it would be reasonable to say that I am only romantically attracted to very few people, but I am not sure how the - second claim - follows? I very much do not want Ramona to feel that she would be condemning me to a dreadful fate if she decides not to pursue a relationship!" Apparently he feels surprisingly strongly about this! "I do not think it is true, and it seems - deeply unfair to her as a framing." 

Awwwww, Ramona is melting a little bit. Leareth is defending her honor! She grabs Leareth's hand and squeezes it.

Ramona does have questions about what sort of place Thellim comes from. It's not unheard of on Earth for people to be trapped financially in a relationship, but being trapped demisexually?

"Well, if you say your baseline hedonic state would be fine after losing Ramona, I definitely don't know enough about your history to contradict that, but it does seem worth running a prediction market on it..."  Thellim's voice has slowed for a moment, as she taps a few keychords into her keyboard.  "Huh.  Prediction markets say that you'd probably be fine in terms of mental integrity for a while, but you should try creating an immortal catgirl at some point.  We probably shouldn't dive into that right now, it sounds distracting."

"We've sort of stepped into this part prematurely, but one of the key variables in relationships is how much each side is getting from the other.  One of the big things that potentially goes wrong in relationships is the same as what goes wrong in any other kind of trade: one side or both sides start to feel like they're getting a bad deal.  Sometimes that means you shouldn't be trading at all; but more commonly, if the relationship otherwise has a lot going for it, what you need is a good old-fashioned repricing!  Or even, just to explicitly negotiate, rather than leaving everything down to unspoken individual decisionmaking and relying on good will and large surpluses to make everything work anyways."

"I can talk about the principles underlying that, if they're not already familiar.  For example, as with any other supply-demand equilibrium, the price of what you have to offer doesn't just depend on how much effort you put into it, or how valuable it is to the other person, but also how hard it would be for them to find the same goods elsewhere!  Oxygen is very valuable, relative to its counterfactual absence, but in most places oxygen is so easy to get that you can't get a lot of relationship credit for providing oxygen to your partner."

"Another function of relationship therapists is to oversee negotiations like that, and provide a third-party judgment from somebody who's trying to be impartial about how much pricing power each party reasonably seems to have.  That way, even if you don't get everything you wanted from negotiations, you know it's not just your partner being unreasonable and that a third-party judge helped set a valuation."

"I'll stop here and check if I'm still using concepts familiar to everyone's home dimensions."

(Leareth had THOUGHT he understood how the prediction markets worked, but is suddenly a lot more confused if 'create an immortal catgirl' is a kind of output they can produce! That's not a probability! ...Thellim is also absolutely right that it sounds distracting and now is not the time to get into it.)

Standard action-conditional market, different predicted happinesses if Leareth does or doesn't create an immortal catgirl.  Actually MOST people would be happier if they created an immortal catgirl, but Mornelithe is aware that most people who aren't him don't have that option.

When Ramona had the idea to take the "girlfriend" role and cede the "therapist/relationship expert" role to a third party, she did not anticipate this outcome.

She's trying to imagine giving this speech in particular to her human clients on Earth, who often come in already believing they're getting the short end of the stick in the relationship. She'd explain that they just need to negotiate harder to get their partner to give more because the relationship needs a good old-fashioned repricing and probably most of the clients would break up! Or maybe their outrage buffers would overflow and they'd direct the outrage at Ramona and leave together, united in their eye-rolls at how ridiculous therapy is!

"So... you're saying that your job is to tell us who's getting a better deal, and suggest ways for the lower-performing partner to increase their contribution?" Ramona's voice is incredulous.

"Only if you have that particular problem!  Do you?"

No! Ramona starts to say, but then stops for a moment to check.

Do they have this problem? Ramona has been feeling like Leareth has excellent intentions, but directs his energies less helpfully than he might.

Fuck if maybe Thellim has a point here.

Leareth...kind of feels like their problem is at some level upstream of 'realizing who is getting a better deal' and renegotiating contributions to the relationship, though it's...maybe actually related enough that the question is useful? 

It feels very difficult to put into words, but honestly at least some of their problems happened because something was hard to put into words and so he...didn't...and he doesn't think it's unreasonable of Ramona to be frustrated about that. (Some of the problems were because he wasn't sure something was safe to communicate to her, which he thinks is distinct, but he really doesn't think he can blame everything on operational security concerns.) 

And, well, here they are with a couple's therapist, who can be a third-party judge on whether he's making any sense (even if he's perhaps starting to get the sense that Ramona does not entirely appreciate or agree with Thellim's judgement.) 

"I think I am missing context on ways that people - contribute to - romantic relationships, separate from what it means to be a competent ally working on projects together - well, there is sex, obviously, but I am getting the sense that a romantic relationship is supposed to mean more than being allies who also have sex. I am just missing details on what. Especially since Ramona hardly needs me to provide for our household or defend her from other men, which I think are among the common relationship expectations for ordinary people in Velgarth. Maybe I should be able to figure out the right questions to ask, to clarify, but clearly I have not managed to do that." 

"Defend Ramona from other men?  I don't know how relevant that is but it sounds confusing enough that I'm going to ask for context on why these other men are attacking Ramona."

"As far as I am aware Ramona has not had any problems with that, which is why I think defending her is not a -" how would he put it in the framework Thellim is using, "- a high value contribution to the relationship."

And since Thellim seems to be genuinely confused about this, "...In many countries of Velgarth men have more rights than women, and tend to have more resources - not to mention that men are usually physically stronger than women, and traditionally men learn combat skills and women usually do not - and some unethical men use this to coerce sexual favors from women, so one role a husband might be expected to serve is in protecting his wife from other men's unwanted attention."

Wait, has he ever actually checked... "Ramona, have you felt threatened by anyone during your time in Velgarth? I realize I have been assuming you are obviously competent to take care of yourself and get what you want, and - I am probably assuming that because I respect and admire you, but I actually have no idea if you feel equipped to defend yourself..." 

"Thank you for asking! Velgarth is somewhat terrifying, actually! There's a whole magical playing field I can't even perceive, and I would not feel so safe on Velgarth if I did not have you and other allies to protect me!"

"I mostly stay out of areas where men might be tempted to assault me, so that's never happened, but it could. I think by now everyone knows better than to bother Leareth's girlfriend with the purple hair."

"Would it be fair to say that Ramona has not finished fixing Leareth's planet and this is a key underpinning of your ongoing relationship?"

That is a pretty good question, actually?

"Leareth, do you see improving Velgarth as, like, the thing we do together as a couple? As a hobby?"

That is a surprisingly good question, actually! 

"I...am not sure I would have called it a key underpinning of our relationship, but - yes, probably? It has been my main project for a very long time, and - much of why I admire and respect you so much is because you succeeded, in a short period of time, where I had failed for -" centuries, millennia, but he hasn't actually told Thellim about his immortality, "- a very long time."

Short pause.

"...I would not be upset if you preferred to have different hobbies, to be clear?" 

"Should I maybe... make a list of potential other hobbies that I would enjoy, and you can tell me if any of them are the slightest bit appealing?"

Ramona wonders if Leareth could maybe get into baking? She is having trouble imagining getting Velgarth sufficiently advanced that there will be a thriving escape room industry in the next ten years.

....Leareth glances at Thellim. "I - sure, that could be useful, but I am not sure if there is an earlier thread that we should finish addressing first?" 

"Just to be very clear, here, I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with fixing planets!  I'd fixed three before I got into Milliways!  That's a perfectly reasonable foundation on which to build a relationship!  You just want to make sure you also have things to do when you're tired and winding down at night; and that you know you'll have other things to do together when you're done fixing the planet, so that neither of you is tempted to dawdle or hold off about finishing that."

Thellim doesn't want to dump on Velgarth in the process of doing relationship therapy!

Leareth is finding it kind of hard to imagine being tempted to delay or hold off on fixing everything in Velgarth because - what - it would mean there was less to do? Having nothing at all to do for a while sounds like it could be wonderful, actually. Not that he's spent much time before now imagining it, since it really hadn't seemed helpful...

He glances curiously at Ramona. 

"We can always go and fix other planets if we finish this one, I guess! Though I find it's helpful to pace myself and have multiple hobbies. You can make yourself nuts thinking about all the people you haven't helped yet. Rest and relaxation and connection and joy are important too."

She says the last sentence with a bit of an edge in her voice, because she's not entirely sure Leareth actually believes that.

And then she realizes she's doing that thing where the client appeals to the therapist for backup in winning a long-standing fight, and wonders if she should try to root out that tendency, because she doesn't really endorse it, but the words are already said.

...Important, yes. A priority, not...necessarily...? Though, you know, it makes sense to reassess his priorities now that some of his other highest priorities are at least partly dealt with...

"Leareth, the prediction market says you've got a slightly better chance of staying with Ramona if you occasionally speak some of your thoughts out loud in her direction."

Ask him how he knows this.

Thaaaaat is probably reasonable. 

"I think I - do know how not to make myself 'nuts' by dwelling on all the people I have not helped yet," that has been kind of an important skill for...basically everything he's wanted to do in the last two thousand years..., "but I have in fact not been prioritizing - rest and relaxation and connection and joy, particularly the latter two, for myself? And - it does, I think, make sense to reconsider that, given how the situation has changed. Thanks to Ramona." 

Awwwwwww!

Ramona keeps saying "awwwwwww" about lots of things that Leareth says to her and she's a little self-conscious about what a twitterpated idiot she's being about this but he's just so sweet and people don't have to not be twitterpated idiots when the situation calls for twitterpation.

"Often couples have different levels of needs for rest and relaxation.  And in that case, the most obvious thing to do is..."

"Time dilation!  The two members of the couple just run at different speeds, so that one of them can work in a Time Pod while the other stays out, or one of them can go into stasis while the other works!  Is that one of the available magical solutions where you're from?"

Ramona's usual approach is quite different, but this is a valid question! Thellim is better at this than Ramona was initially giving her credit for!

On Earth, with human clients and no magic, Ramona's approach is to help people develop skills of perspective taking and teamwork, so that they can help each other achieve their somewhat disparate goals -- she helps them complement each other, rather than squabbling about their differences.

But if you have enough magic to paper over the differences, heck, that'd work too.

She turns to Leareth. "I don't have access to magic like that. Do you?"

"Not on Velgarth!" They haven't finished exploring what new kinds of magic Milliways offers. "I - suspect if I had had access to that in Velgarth before, I would not actually have used it for rest and relaxation." 

"Well, no, the idea is that you work until your work-bar fills up, and then come out of time dilation to where Ramona is waiting to fuck you or play magical computer games or whatever other hobbies you've found."

"But if that magic's not reliably available on the planet you work on, you might need to... well, actually, we might need to table that for now and put it on a list of things for you to consciously have conversations about and work out solutions for.  Unless this seems like the problem between you, we shouldn't dive deep into it immediately, and should go on covering breadth-first more of the basic ideas in relationships."

"I'll just quickly mention that besides magic, other clever solutions include personality adjustment, inviting additional people into the relationship for load balancing, and asymmetrically effortful mutual hobbies.  If you don't find any clever solutions, you might end up just compromising about it.  The important thing is that you know you're doing that, and have some idea of who's giving up more and will require repayment elsewhere in the relationship, rather than them feeling quietly sad about having lost the negotiation."

"...I really do not think that inviting additional people into the relationship would help." (Leareth had been noticing this thought, and wouldn't normally have jumped in to say it, but has just been explicitly instructed that saying more of his thoughts would probably be good.) 

Skill issue, but fine, if you don't have the skills you don't have the skills.

"I... should probably mention that Leareth being monogamous is not currently a problem, but it might limit us in the long run."

Ramona sounds sheepish and apologetic about this. Some people are just monogamous! And that's okay! But she does worry about it.

"Ambiguity.  Do you mean he's monogamous in the sense that--"

"Or no, actually, this seems about as good a time as any to introduce our next topic in the fundamentals of relationshipping, namely:  Gendertropes."

"There's several classical kinds of relationship that are known to almost never work.  Maybe a relationship like that has worked at least sometimes over the course of all human history, but it's not the way to bet.  Other times, there's relationships that statistical surveys show to sometimes work, but only if the people within them do particular things to adapt."

"For example, let's say you've got a couple where one partner wants kids who'll have two parents, the other partner doesn't want kids, and at least one partner doesn't want to invite anyone else into the relationship, even asexually for parenting purposes."

"That relationship is unlikely to work, at least on my home planet.  It's not just common sense, sometimes somebody tries it anyways and, yep, it sure doesn't work, and then we collect statistics and do causal analysis showing that this was an unusually bad idea, even after controlling for the fact that the people who did it were the sort of people who'll try things that are known to be bad ideas."

"A civilization collects knowledge over time about relationship typologies that never work, or only sometimes work -- or, rarely, work unusually well -- based on ways of classifying the people in that relationship as individuals, such as 'does want kids' or 'does not want kids'.  Advanced societies organize this knowledge based on what we call 'gendertropes'."

"The analogy I want to use is that gendertropes are like a standardlibrary, but I don't know if Leareth's world has programming languages... they're like a preamble that anyone can include at the start of their autobiography, that will make some chapters shorter, because the preamble already explained what you'd otherwise have to explain yourself."

"Let's say you've got a desire disparity, a very standard sort of problem that arises in a relationship where one partner wants to have sex twice a week, and one partner wants to have sex every day.  The question you want to ask is not 'What sort of thing happens on average, what sort of solution usually works, in a relationship where one person wants sex twice a week and one person wants sex once a day?'  Instead you want to ask:  'What sort of people are we, as individuals and in our expression of our own sexualities, who have found ourselves this scenario?'"

"If you've got a 15-year-old male with a high sex drive who's into older women, in a relationship with a 45-year-old woman who thinks he's cute but doesn't have that much time for him, the standard first-thought solution is for him to form a harem with three women like that.  On the other hand maybe you've got a 30-year-old woman with the 'desperate demislut' gendertrope, where she's got a very high sex drive and constant horny thoughts, but her mind is extremely picky about which men she can express her sexuality with; and she's found herself just one man, who unfortunately isn't as horny.  Then it makes more sense for him to consider implanted testosterone pellets."

"The first culture I found myself in, after I got isekaied from a plane crash, was one where everyone just had one concept of what it was like to be a man, or what it was like to be a woman.  They didn't even have the concept of it being different on average when a 15-year-old man dated a 45-year-old woman than when a 45-year-old man dates a 15-year-old woman, because they hadn't formed the idea that on average 15-year-old men are different in their expressions of sexuality and relationships from 45-year-old men.  They had the differences, to be clear, what they didn't have was the concept.  They just had one ideal for what men were supposed to be like, and one ideal for what women were supposed to be like, and they believed every male and female was supposed to live up to that.  I explained the idea of gendertropes to them, though, and that fixed most of their problems."

"All of your examples are about men and women and how much sex they want to have with each other. Is that everything you can do with gender, in your world?"

This ontology does not seem nearly flexible enough so far.

"Some men have sex with men, some women have sex with women, and some people are lucky enough to be able to fuck anything but my civilization never did develop a pill for inducing that mental property.  I myself have the Meddling Asexual gendertrope in that regard.  Neither I nor any of my alts have ever shown any visible sexual attraction to what you would otherwise think were some pretty attractive men, especially once they got themselves and their clothes cleaned up; but I do feel an impulse to feed them if they look hungry, or manage their sexual relationships with other people."

"But I suspect what you're really asking about is, for example, whether two people who both have trouble initiating conversations, but at least one of whom hates awkward silences, should try to go on dates, and the answer there is likewise 'usually no'."

"That does seem more - generally applicable - than a system that is only about whether someone wants children," which had been Leareth's initial impression, very confusingly since neither him nor Ramona had brought that up, "or what frequency of sex they prefer, but - having trouble initiating conversations or disliking silence are both just...personality traits? I am not sure what they have to do with someone's gender. ...At least, in Velgarth I have not really observed either of those traits to be more common in one gender." 

"Well, the first civilization I found myself inside -- that wasn't my native one -- thought that it was the man's responsibility to make intelligent conversation, and the woman's responsibility to look interested and giggle.  Every man.  Every woman.  Also they were giant bug aliens with weird suboptimal equilibria where nobody had an individual incentive to express the thought 'what if we did something else which is not that' even though it was valid, but that's a long story."

"In general, there are personality tropes and interpersonal relationship tropes; people sometimes fall into regular-ish categories of being people, and people with regular-ish traits sometimes interact with one another in regular-ish ways.  'Gendertropes' are a proper subset of personality tropes that are being primarily expressed relative to the proper subset of interpersonal relationships that are sexual or romantic relationships."

"To put it another way, if it makes sense to say that somebody is a 'man' or a 'woman' and not just that they have personalities, or that they're 'married' and not just hanging out with one another, it makes sense to subtype and subdivide them further for extra predictive points."

Ramona still can't tell if Thellim would be Problematic on Earth with respect to various kinds of queerness? This ontology seems like it would have room for everything, but then Thellim also keeps strongly implying binaries where Ramona doesn't think in binaries.

But having that conversation across an interdimensional inferential gap sounds exhausting. Ramona usually gets paid to do that. She'll probably let it go for now as it doesn't seem super relevant to why she and Leareth are here.

Leareth is still confused, and having kind of a hard time pinning down what he's confused about. 

"I - recognize that many, perhaps most, people are more physically attracted to the physical signs of one gender," which Leareth separately does not really get, but mostly because he's not really attracted to either by default, "but it - does not seem obvious to me that someone who finds it hard to initiate conversations, and would prefer that other people do it, would be differently bothered when that mismatch is in a romantic context as opposed to with their friends, who could be of either gender?" 

He frowns. "...I think for myself, none of the traits Ramona has that I find admirable are - particularly about the fact that she is woman? I am fairly sure I find them equally admirable - and attractive - if Ramona happened to be a man." 

It's incredibly valid for Leareth to be genderblind about his partners! (Ramona is using a more Earth notion of gender here, she still doesn't understand Thellim's definition at all.) Ramona would fight tooth and nail to protect Leareth's right to experience attraction in whatever way makes sense in his brain!

Ramona tells herself this in a VERY LOUD mental voice to drown out the little sad voice that wanted Leareth to think Ramona was sexy in a feminine way.

None of this shows on her face.

"Just to check, can you easily tell which people are men and which people are women even if they don't have specially coded clothes or hair... actually, maybe your world has dress codes or hair codes and you've never had a chance to try, but I'll still ask if you think you could."

"...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."

"Well, I sure feel like I now have enough information about their situation to start predicting some things."

"I don't think I'm seeing whatever you think you're seeing."

"Yeah, because your own backstory doesn't involve you reading any significant amount of dath ilani fiction.  A little surprised Thellim hasn't seen it already, but she's supposedly less intelligent than me so I guess that tracks."

Keltham's fingers are rapidly chording a number of different bids on submarkets that did not, previously, exist.

"Huh.  Well, now I feel stupider than whoever is the smartest person betting in this prediction market."

"Setting aside gendertropes, the latest update points out that the general trope here is that Leareth is some sort of ancient wizard and/or military commander who never had any time for romance before, and Ramona is the woman from the more scientifically sophisticated dimension who solved a number of his planet's problems using her superior knowledge, but not all of them, thus freeing him up to figure out Relationships and even his own gendertropes for the first time under conditions of great pressure where he needs to get them all right on the first try in order to preserve his irreplaceable relationship with Ramona."

"Ramona, did you not previously notice that you were the protagonist of a completely stereotypical romance novel premise?"

Um.

What?

Did Thellim just recap their entire weird relationship and then call it stereotypical?

Aaaaaaaah where are the prediction market bettors getting their information. Leareth hasn't said ANYTHING about his immortality method - that's the main unexplained part, the rest you could probably get from material he's actually said out loud to Thellim, but where does someone get "ancient wizard" without knowing facts about him that he's incredibly uncomfortable about mysterious people knowing! 

Leareth is trying to stay calm by reminding himself that the prediction market bettors are, one, bound by thorough confidentiality oaths and, two, are on a different level of reality or something and probably not in a position to go tell the less-pacified Velgarth gods, but he is still KIND OF UPSET about this. 

"Uh, no. No, I did not notice that. That is not a trope on my world -- it sounds pretty outlandish, actually -- and I don't think it would have been possible for me to notice?"

"Ahem. How does the story typically end?"

"Obviously your world has had some standard romance novel tropes deleted from it to preserve the conceit that you haven't noticed you're in a romance novel."

"And there aren't typical ends to a story like that.  How could there be?  If the story end was predictable, who'd bother writing it?  So the prediction markets are now more uncertain about a lot of things, except for the part where your very clever and reader-sympathetic idea to outsource your relationship problems to a third-party therapist is going to run into some sort of obstacle that forces you to discover and solve most of your key romantic problems by yourselves.  That's not to say we're being useless here, just, the set of problems we solve are only going to be relatively straightforward problems that your generalized readers would otherwise find boring to read about."

"Some sort of obstacle? So you're saying that you refuse to help us? For... plot reasons?"

"No, I'd guess it's going to be external to me.  I can't think of any thinly justified reasons I'd refuse to help you."

This seems like an even more crazymaking way of thinking than trying to predict godplots.

"...Is this theory supposed to have implications for how we should be approaching the couples therapy? Should we be - trying to approach solving our problems in ways that would be particularly interesting to read about, so that it is less likely to fail for 'plot reasons'?" 

"Probably ultimately yes, but I would try the reasonable strategies first."

Thiiiis is not a school of therapy Ramona is aware of on Earth. Is this designed for people who enjoy overcomplicating things and/or believe they are the protagonist of everything that happens, or assume that everything they do has a large audience with high expectations? What kind of a world develops therapies like that?

This is not standard therapy from Thellim's world!  She is making up everything as she goes along, with heuristics partially derived from her experiences the last several times she got isekaied in various ways!

"Okay! Let's try the reasonable strategies first! I have lost track a little bit... what exactly are the reasonable strategies you recommend, given that we find ourselves in the standard ancient-wizard-tackles-relationships-for-the-first-time plot?"

"Now that you're aware of the situation you're in, my guesses aren't necessarily better than yours!"

"But if I was narrowing things down from my end, the first thing I'd ask is whether this is the sort of ancient-wizard-tackling-relationships-for-the-first-time who enormously undercommunicates everything and keeps all his thoughts hidden out of time-worn hard-learned habit, or a different kind of ancient-wizard-tackling-relationships-for-the-first-time."

Is...that...sufficiently a common point in stories in Thellim's world to count as a "trope." 

"...I suspect I do have that habit. It might not be the only habit I have that - causes problems for Ramona - but, yes, that seems like a good summary of part of the problem."

Also he's not yet entirely sold on changing the habit. It's hard-learned for reasons that he's not convinced are different now? 

"Well, in terms of practice, the obvious thing to try is writing down notes to yourself about which thoughts you're having, and then asking yourself, for each of those thoughts, if there's any good reason not to explain it out loud to Ramona."

"But of course if your character is playing straight the trope of the ancient-wizard-tackling-relationships-for-the-first-time-who-undercommunicates, you may first need to have a long conversation with yourself, or with Ramona, about to what extent you believe that it's now safe for you to talk about more things with her.  Ramona may need to go on some sort of subquest about that, about proving it to you or figuring out the right experiment to run; she's probably the main character given that more information is being concealed from her."

"I'm the main character? Of our relationship?"

Ramona is maybe offended?

"Of the story plot about your relationship.  Relationships don't have main characters, plots do."

Okay. Ramona is mollified. Confused. But mollified.

...Leareth is perhaps a little more impressed with Thellim's theory, now that it's produced at least one accurate prediction that he was surprised Thellim was able to guess. 

"Well, that part is also true. It - does seem somewhat unfair to Ramona to make it her sidequest to solve?" 

"I don't mind doing side quests! I think that's pretty normal in relationships, and reluctance to participate in side quests can be a barrier to increasing intimacy! I was mostly miffed before because I have definitely seen couples where one person thinks it's all about them, and that they're the main character, and I don't want this relationship to work like that."

"What kind of a side quest would help Leareth know that I'm trustworthy?"

She thinks for a minute.

"Seems like trust mostly builds over time. You can destroy it very quickly, but you can't build it quickly."

"Then we should ask how to make that timeskip -- which the two of you will actually need to live through, from your own in-story perspectives -- bearable and even pleasant for both of you!"

"But it really does make sense to see if there's cheaper cheatier answers than that, before assuming a problem can only be solved by time.  Like if telepathy is a thing on your world, for example, or if there's one particular enemy of Leareth that the two of you can together hunt down and persuade of some true fact that makes them stop being your enemy."

"...I mean, I do have Thoughtsensing? Though I am not sure how much the reluctance to change this habit is about not trusting Ramona specifically. I think that even if I trusted Ramona absolutely and had no concern at all that she would try to harm my interests, I would still feel a need to be paranoid in general, because there are still hostile actors in my world, and it feels difficult to change a habit of paranoia only for Ramona and not have it affect how I approach everything else? And I do worry about Ramona's safety. It would not be the first time that my enemies," the gods, "had placed the people close to me in danger. ...I suppose this is in theory solvable if we could convince all of my enemies to stop that, but in practice that would be very complicated and it would be hard to - be sufficiently sure." 

"Maybe we should go on a nice long vacation to a dimension where your enemies aren't present!"

Leareth's immediate reaction is 'that would be lovely if I could afford the time away from Velgarth', which - is it still true that he can't? There are probably a lot of things he thought he couldn't afford and should be re-evaluating now. 

"...If we could somehow do that without time passing in Velgarth, I think I would feel straightforwardly excited about it. I am not sure how much it actually makes sense to worry about problems exploding without my presence if time were passing, or to worry about - forgetting how to be careful enough when I have to go back - those might also be mental habits that are out of date." 

(Unfortunately, everyone here is new to Milliways; and if time dilation or suspension is a thing in this version of Milliways, nobody here knows that!)

"...as much as clever solutions are better, in relationships it's also a good idea to ask how much of your problem you can solve without magic, especially magic that's expensive or has a long latency period.  It's just a good mental habit to get into."

"Uh wait, hold on, you should solve your problems without magic? Magic is woven into Leareth's world! That's like saying that you should solve problems without... thinking about them! Don't get in the habit of relying on intelligence!"

"Valid, if you're usually using telepathy all the time you shouldn't switch it off."

"To be fair, I do not actually know a way with magic to go on a vacation somewhere else while pausing time in Velgarth. It does seem worth looking for non-magical ways to solve problems that would be a decades-long research project otherwise." 

"Leareth, do you think you're currently already telling Ramona all the things that are safe to tell her, or falling back onto old habits of saying as little as possible?"

"I am not sure off the top of my head which things I am not currently telling Ramona would actually be completely safe to tell her if I stopped to think about it. It - does seem probably worth taking the time to think about. ...There are a lot of things. I am also not sure in all cases which things are the most relevant to tell Ramona." 

"What I'm really trying to get at, here, is if you are constantly hesitating and saying very little to Ramona, or if you are already talking to her a lot about most things on your mind that aren't classified."

Huh.  He doesn't have this problem.  Mornelithe wonders what this iteration of Kiyamvir Ma'ar is doing differently, and if there's any simple formula he can derive to fix him.

"Well, he's not exactly a chatterbox. When I ask him how his day was, he says 'I've had worse.' He doesn't exactly open up about how his foreign policy negotiations are going, and I don't know if that's because it's a state secret or if he just thinks I wouldn't be interested."

"I guess I should state for the record, I'm interested! But I also don't want to mess up your foreign policy negotiations!"

"The last time he actually got going a little was right after we had our big breakthrough together and solved that major problem. He was, in retrospect... giddy? that day. I didn't realize at the time, but that was the garrulous end of the spectrum for him! I didn't understand a lot of what he was saying, but the corner of his mouth would curl up a little bit and he'd say 'Printing at scale!' or 'Skyscraper!' and laugh a little bit."

"There's probably some deep reserve in this ancient-wizard-just-starting-at-relationships that can't be overcome just by ordinary exercises for talking to your partner -- to the extent that trope-based reasoning works here at all, at least, though in my experience that usually works to some degree.  But this does sound like there's potentially a lot of room for just talking with Ramona more, and updating her more on how your day went, and generally trying to imitate the greater amount that Ramona talks to Leareth.  If I'm right that Ramona is in fact being more forthcoming, usually."

"I would conjecture that this is the sort of thing that Ramona had in mind under the category of 'how to basic relationships' -- if you're not talking to each other much or often, if you're not sharing large amounts of your mental worlds though not all of them, that's a weak pillar in the foundation.  I would wildly guess just from observation so far that this is the central visible problem in your current relationship; and even if there's some later plot development on which hinges fixing the whole problem, which itself may or may not be true, your relationship has to last until then."

"Leareth, I'd put to you that you may be thinking in terms of what is safe to tell Ramona.  I'd float the suggestion -- possibly for rejection as obviously stupid, just putting the thought out there -- maybe you should actually be thinking in terms of Ramona being a very useful tool for your altruistic ends, and not just your selfish wants; and you may need to sharply change and adapt to your changed circumstances, by talking much more to her, in order to reach the necessary level for preserving the future good things your world can get from Ramona."

Well, it's not false that Ramona is enormously valuable to Velgarth! Leareth was already aware of that and is pretty sure it's much of why he finds Ramona attractive!

He - had not in fact been very worried that Velgarth would lose that if his and Ramona's relationship doesn't work out? That seems like a negative take on Ramona's character, when it feels obvious to him that Ramona wanted to help and her wanting-to-help was not at all contingent on an immortal wizard wanting to date her? 

...How does Ramona seem to be reacting to the framing? Leareth glances over at her. 

Ramona does not look alarmed or offended!

Ramona's usual take is that relationships are strongest when people have many interwoven motivations for wanting to stay together and promote each other's happiness. And while it would be nice if Leareth just wanted her, for himself, in the same way that a hungry person wants to eat some chocolate cake, she knows him well enough by now to know that lust and greed are not really Leareth's vibes. And if not that, then wanting her for her utility just makes sense to Ramona?

(Maybe there's some lust in there somewhere, though? Maybe?)

How much of this Leareth can derive from a sidelong glance at Ramona's face is another question.

"All right then!  Now unless there's some important reason not to, I'd like both of you to write down anchor-notes on what you were actually thinking, just now; and once you're both done, explain it out loud to each other!  If I'm correct that this was not the sort of silent glance exchange where both of you actually did deduce everything the other one was thinking."

(This is a kind of function call you can readily make to people's standard existing mental skills, where Thellim comes from.)

...That was helpful to have pointed out, actually. Leareth can write some notes about what he was thinking and then, once they seem to both be done doing that, explain. 

"I was thinking that I already know Ramona is hugely valuable to Velgarth - I hope Ramona is aware that I think so! - and that this is probably a big part of why I find her attractive? I - had not really been thinking of it as something where I needed to talk to her in a certain way in order for Velgarth and its people to benefit from her skills. She did that on her own, I think she is - just the sort of person who will take opportunities to help people if she sees them, and solve people's problems because she prefers them solved. I want our relationship to work because I value that in itself, but - I had been thinking of it as separable from my altruistic goals and Velgarth's future." 

Though Leareth is abruptly aware that this is absolutely an understanding of Ramona he had inside his head and has probably not communicated in so many words, and it's going to be awkward if she disagrees. 

"Hmm, I'll say what I had written down, but I also want to respond to that. It is really nice to hear you say out loud that I am hugely valuable to Velgarth! I continue to be surprised by how much leverage I seem to have here! I do not usually expect to be able to have planet-scale effects with my routine everyday skillset!"

"And you're right that I didn't help as a way of ensnaring you, or something... it was just a problem, right in front of me, that I knew how to solve, and why wouldn't I do that? I am still a little bit confused about the causal sequence of events that brought me to Velgarth in the first place, but I do suspect that my openness and interest in a little bit of adventure probably played into it somehow. And then once I got here, I just saw the opportunity to help and I took it, and I'd likely do that again."

"Right now I am confused about how long to stay, whether it's a temporary adventure or a permanent one, and I'm still working that out. And I'll be honest, a big part of that calculus is whether this relationship works out, because I'm the sort of creature who wants, ultimately, to be in a great relationship. I'm picky, and I wasn't having a lot of luck back home, and so I won't give up this opportunity lightly. And if it turns out that we're not a good fit after all, I probably will leave, even if there are more problems to be solved on Velgarth. I'll try not to leave you in the lurch if you're counting on me for something that's in progress, but my sense is that there are problems everywhere, so I might as well live somewhere where there are problems and good boyfriends."

Ramona clears her throat and looks down at her paper.

"Oh yeah, this, I should say this part too."

"It is fine with me if you want me for alruistic Velgarth-boosting reasons, I'm happy to help. But I'm glad to hear you want me for myself, too. I find myself wishing for a bit more evidence of you wanting me for myself."

Should she say the chocolate cake thing? Maybe not? Ugh, but Thellim is trying to get them to speak their thoughts.

"I wish you wanted me like a hungry person wants chocolate cake," she mutters very fast and a little under her breath.