Dear "Cephalo-pilled in Portland",

Wow! There's a lot to unpack, here. This is why I always advise my audience to acquire a deep understanding of the culture and language of their cross-species partner, rather than simply relying on translation AIs alone. As useful as they are, xenotranslator AIs still have some trouble with nuance.

Even more important is to acquire a robust understanding of your partner's unique biology and life-cycle, which your message suggests you may have neglected to do.

In short, I have good news, more good news, then some bad news, and some more bad news. Let's get into it, cosmic philo-nauts!

The good news is that you are not, as you may have feared, about to be inundated with an increasing number of Niona in-laws! Once a Niona reaches maturity, he or she breaks away from his or her natal cluster. They remain emotionally attached to their progenitors, but continuing to cohabit with them for more than roughly 14.6 Earth standard years is typically considered to be a sign of a developmental disorder in Niona culture.

The further good news is that your current complement of "octopus" houseguests is temporary, which is especially fortunate since you will probably not be able to convince your girlfriend to stop bringing them home. Her biological drive to do so is extremely powerful, and these "relatives" of hers are very compressible -- if you've seen two, there's probably at least a half dozen more lurking behind the fridge or under the couch. But as I said, they won't be there long.

Now the bad news, philo-nauts: there is no such thing as a lesbian Niona, because Niona always form natal clusters consisting of two females, each with a different customary role. Traditionally, one Niona female, almost always the elder of the two, builds and maintains the cluster nest. Your girlfriend probably sees you in this role, as you are slightly older, and if I had to guess, you are the higher earner between the two of you.

Of course, your personal and private experiences with her might seem to bely my assertion that there are no lesbian Niona, but there again, this is likely a cultural misunderstanding: activities you associate with romantic intimacy are likely seen by her as being just some strange human custom -- one which she is pleased to participate in because it makes you happy, but which has relatively little intrinsic meaning to her. Among themselves, however, Niona females regard their nesting-mates more like sisters, and indeed biological sisters form cluster-nests together quite frequently.

More bad news: remember when I said AI translation sometimes misses important nuances? "Relative", while not entirely inaccurate under the circumstances, is missing some VERY important nuance. "Relative" was probably the AI's choice because the Niona word "n'leshlirb" literally translates to "one with whom the subject of the sentence is family". However, the idea of the word is that "in combination with the n'leshlirb, the subject of the sentence becomes part of a family", or in other words, a n'leshlirb is someone that you create a family with.

This is where an understanding of xenobiology would have been helpful: while female Niona are humanoid in shape, their species exhibits extreme sexual dimorphism. Going back to the roles of the Niona nesting-pairs, the primary biological role of other nesting-mate, in this case your girlfriend, is to attract the sexual interest of the small, octopus-like male Niona, and bring then back to the cluster-nest. Once she has collected between 9 and 21 males, the nesting-mates provide food and housing to them for a courtship period of roughly 5 earth weeks, in what is believed to be a ritual demonstration of their nurturing capability, and hence their ability to care for their offspring.

Assuming the males are sufficiently impressed by their female hosts, a mating with each of the males in turn follows --- Niona produce dozens of eggs at a time, and have an immune response that prevents sperm from any one male from fertilizing more than two or three of them -- and then the entire group of males cooperatively spin a natal cocoon around their mates before departing permanently. (Lest you think these little guys are deadbeat dads, however, research shows that Niona are capable of identifying their offspring by pheromones, and once they leave their natal cluster, Niona frequently seek out and form rich relationships with their male parents! In fact, if you've ever been on an orbital or submarine habitat, and seen a bunch of tentacled aliens slithering into an air duct, chances are it was a group of Niona contractors doing maintenance. Such small Niona engineering firms are often made up of an elder Niona and several of his male offspring -- isn't that wholesome?)

This is all for the benefit of our other readers, of course. Since the recent wave of alien immigration to the homeworld, we've had our hands full here at Xeno-Love HQ, fielding questions from thousands of you lovestruck philo-nauts out there, who've each been smitten by one alluring extraterrestrial species or another, so there's been quite a backlog.

This letter was several weeks old by the time we got to it, which means that by now the hapless "Cephalo-pilled in Portland", assuming she was an agreeable enough host to her and her girlfriend's suitors, will have already been sprayed with sedative ink and lovingly encased with her paramour in a bubble of gas-permeable nutrient-rich gestational jelly by a small army of tiny industrious squid-men, just as the Niona have been doing for the past several million years.

Not to worry, though, philo-nauts -- she'll almost certainly emerge (relatively) unharmed in five to seven months, along with a few dozen cute little caterpillar-like larva about the size of mice. While Niona males and females sharply diverge at maturity, their natal forms are virtually identical, and are very easy to care for by human standards: a 100 gallon terrarium with some lettuce leaves in it is usually sufficient for the first year or so.

Until next time, philo-nauts, may you all find love among the stars -- but do remember to do your research, first!

--Dr. Ing "Xeno-Love" Lorentz, Licensed Exosexual Therapist