Dorcas: Yeah. I guess just sort of like talking about your own, you've defined sort of like, these are non-traditional relationships. And that's how they have trust and both parties feel secure. And how do you feel like —  when do you feel safe, or like, most empowered or—

Mariam: I feel most empowered when I'm in a very mutually respected relationship. And right now, [I’m] in a relationship with my husband that I've been in for five years, and I am just completely in love with him. Every day I wake up and have a newfound crush on him. He’s just a phenomenal angel walking the earth. And so I feel my safest when I'm with him and that's not to say that I'm incomplete or not whole without him. What I mean is that co-dependency of having somebody who is intrinsically connected to you through your soul — through your heart and through your mind, who is like a mirror of you, but also their own selves — is so empowering. And it's the same way that I link to my identity as well as a Filipino Singaporean. When people say I'm ‘halfie’, I really think that that's a term that's quite clunky because, you know, if you say you're halfie it's like you're part of a whole and you’re incomplete, whereas I see myself as two wholes. So I'm both Filipina and both Singaporean. I carry both cultures with me. In the same way that I'm with my husband, we are two wholes. And we come together and we are two complete people who are in love together, but we are also our own person. So that's where I feel most safest: in that. Not that liminal space, but that 'two wholes' space. Yeah, and that's what makes things super elevated for me.

D: Yeah, I love how you tied your own cultural identity with, like, your view towards relationships.