Hello there and welcome to the fifth installment of Interview With My Significant Other, a new A+ series in which Autostraddle team members interview a signficiant other. Here at Autostraddle in spring of 2022, we’re in a historic era. There has never been a time in history in which more of the Autostraddle team have been in romantic relationships. So, to take advantage of this time, and so that we can all revel in the broad range of ways that queer relationships can look and be, we developed fourteen questions for our team members to answer in conversation with their significant others. We asked them how they met, to tell us their hopes for the future, about finances and sharing labor, and yes, about sex.

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How do you both identify?

Gerrie: I identify as a gay, nonbinary Chinese-Filipino. I was described as a comedian and podcaster in a news article recently. Was that journalist a friend? Yes, but no takesie backsies.

Ashni: Okay. I identify as a South Asian gender-averse…

Gerrie: I like that.

Ashni: Thank you. I just don’t want to be perceived. I’m a South Asian person, I’m second-gen. And I don’t identify as a New Yorker, but at some point I will I’m sure.

Gerrie: Are we going to live here forever?

Ashni: I don’t know, maybe!

Gerrie: Nice.

How’d you meet / get together?

Gerrie: We met on Tinder. I asked you on a date and then said that I didn’t like talking on Tinder, so I gave you my number. I think I also suggested that the date be at a rooftop bar, the one that was close to you. And then you ghosted me! Then we matched again on Hinge? I made a reference to the fact that we’d already matched on a different app. I don’t know what changed, but you said yes that time.

Ashni: I had never online dated before! And when a complete stranger pitched a rooftop bar to me, my brain was like, “well, they could just push you off.” And that’s why I stopped replying to your Tinder messages, which I know that we jokingly say is ghosting, but I don’t know if that counts as ghosting because we never met up IRL. We had never taken the conversation out of the apps! I don’t know… maybe it is ghosting.

Gerrie: We did have a back and forth.

Ashni: We talked a little bit.

Gerrie: Yeah. Okay, semi-ghosting.

Ashni: If it’s truly ghosting, I will accept that. (Someone please settle this for us, is this ghosting??)

Gerrie: We went on a couple more dates. The second one went okay — we got hot chocolate at City Bakery. Did the 36 questions. Third date, not so good. Fourth date, you tried to break up with me.

Ashni: I did. I wasn’t ready for a relationship!

Gerrie: But I lied and said that I also wasn’t looking for a relationship. I was like, “let’s just see where this goes.” And then we kept going on dates until April.

Ashni: I think that was a little sneaky of you.

Gerrie: What?

Ashni: Telling me that you didn’t want to be in a relationship and then secretly –

Gerrie: Well, I was hoping for a relationship, but when you said, “Oh, I’m not looking for a relationship”, in my head, I was like, “Well, a relationship with this person could be nice.”

What are your big 3 astrological signs?

Gerrie: So my sun is a Sagittarius. We’re both Sagittarius suns. And then my Scorpio moon, I looked it up – apparently I’m ultrasensitive. Surprise, I cry a lot. I have a lot of emotions.

Ashni: [laughing] You do cry a lot.

Gerrie: I can cry at a TikTok while pooping! My ascendant is in Virgo. I had to Google that because I still don’t know what ascendant signs mean, but it says “a personality that is purposeful and trustworthy”.

Ashni: I love that you did research.

Gerrie: What is your opinion on that?

Ashni: On the Virgo thing? That you’re trustworthy?

Gerrie: “Purposeful and trustworthy” is what the internet says.

Ashni: Yeah, I think you’re trustworthy. I feel like I wouldn’t date you if you weren’t trustworthy.

Gerrie: Me one question ago: “I lied.”

Ashni: [laughing] You don’t feel like a Sag to me. I know that your birthday is squarely Sag season, but you…

Gerrie: Is it because I don’t constantly feel the need to travel?

Ashni: Well, more than that, you just don’t feel chaotic. I feel like I don’t really get big fire sign energy from you in general.

Gerrie: Oh, is that a compliment?

Ashni: I don’t know! I’m mostly fire signs in my chart, right? I’ve got a Sag and an Aries in my big three. Wait, what are you Googling?

Gerrie: I’m Googling Virgos. Oh, that’s Earth, okay. We got a lot going on here. I would say that maybe I’m not a fire sign in the traditional Sag sense. I think mine is more like a scrambled brain, like a lot of projects at any given time.

Ashni: Especially when we first met, I feel like you had like 12 creative projects going on at once while being in grad school. That was…

Gerrie: Yeah. Half-assing a lot of things. Quarter-assing, really.

Ashni: No, but you were good at all of them!

Gerrie: My grades in grad school will show you that I was not.

Ashni: Okay, well you were great at your creative endeavors.

What do you enjoy most about your relationship?

Gerrie: I enjoy the communication and transparency that we have, and our little co-regulation technique where we put our foreheads together and hum at the same frequency. I think that’s super important. It looks so silly, but, oh my, I think it’s a game changer.

Ashni: It works wonders! If we’re in the middle of an argument and one of us is asking for the forehead thing, we do it and we immediately just figure it out. I think that’s so nice.

Gerrie: I have no problem talking to you about literally anything. I don’t think there’s anything that you don’t know about me. I’m trying to think if there are any secrets that I’ve been keeping from you.

Ashni: Yes. Tell the world your secrets right now!!

Gerrie: I think you know everything.

What hurdles or obstacles have you overcome together in your relationship?

Gerrie: Bed bugs in the New York City housing market.

Ashni: Oh my God. To be fair, we brought the bed bugs.

Gerrie: Okay, let’s be clear — I want to put it out there. We did not bring the bed bugs, the bed bugs were at the hotel.

Ashni: In New Orleans. No, no, Savannah.

Gerrie: We did not bring the bed bugs. The bed bugs were there, okay? And then we made sure that we did not bring the bed bugs with us. (in case it wasn’t clear, Gerrie seems to want y’all to know we did not bring the bed bugs!!)

Ashni: We stripped in the hallway.

Gerrie: Yeah, at my old apartment. It’s a good thing we got back really late. But more seriously, the concept of being friends with your exes. I think we come from different friendship cultures, because among my friends, we’re all very much of the, “Oh, you broke up with this person? Cut them off.” We’ll all cut them off.

Ashni: But you guys don’t date your friends. For me, I’ve only ever dated my friends. I’m not about to give up these multi-year friendships that have lasted, I don’t know, seven to 10 years, just because we dated and it didn’t work out.

Ashni: Any other hurdles or obstacles? Early on in the relationship I think we used to argue a lot about where we would live long term and how many babies we would have.

Gerrie: I mean, we still talk about that now. It’s just not arguing.

Ashni: Well, we don’t argue. I feel like we picked fights just to fight. Does that make any sense? Like, I feel like we fought a lot and I don’t know why.

Gerrie: Yeah, I don’t know why either.

Ashni: We fought about everything. Oh, and then moving in together.

Gerrie: What about that?

Ashni: That was a hurdle. We struggled.

Gerrie: The first year, yeah. Because we just live in a house very differently.

Where do you locate your relationship on the monogamy / polyamory spectrum?

Gerrie: I am monogamous. And we have agreed to monogamy in this relationship. If that changes, I’m sure we can talk about it.

Ashni: Yeah, I feel like we’re monogamous in practice, but I have crushes on people.

Gerrie: I’m sure I have crushes, I just don’t have the brain cells to even entertain what it would be like to date this person. You know?

Ashni: Yeah. We are monogamous now and we’ve negotiated monogamy, but for a period of time I did have two partners – you were one of them. At that point we were not monogamous, but we wound up going the monogamy route because you said that you didn’t really like that I had a second partner.

Gerrie: Yeah. And I think that was early on in our relationship because I felt really uncomfortable and unstable with what we had. But I mean, we can talk about it more like, not in an interview.

Ashni: Separately?

Gerrie: Yeah. But I mean, yeah, we’d have to negotiate the terms, but like, if you wanted to do that now, then we could talk about it.

Ashni: No, for sure. I mean we’ve had multiple years pass.

Gerrie: I don’t know if I could do polyamory with someone else, but I do feel secure enough with you that if you wanted to, then like, okay.

What’s your living situation like? How often do you see each other?

Gerrie: We live together. We see each other every day. We found this apartment last year. Was that last year?

Ashni: Yeah. It’s been over a year.

Gerrie: It was not the first one on the list, but it was the first one that we physically toured in person, because we scheduled 10 apartment tours in one weekend. I remember saying this was the second one on the list, but the first one we actually toured, and that’s why there was so much hesitation around it. We were just like, there’s no way the first apartment we toured is the one we’ll choose.

Ashni: I don’t remember this being the first one. I could have sworn we toured… Do you remember that five bedroom monstrosity that we toured just because? I thought that came first.

Gerrie: Maybe it did. Yeah, okay, it was five bedrooms, but it was listed for super cheap (the StreetEasy listing was wrong). And then we got there, and the realtor told us it was $5000.

Ashni: Yeah, we live together. I like it. I think we do good.

Gerrie: I like it too, yeah.

Ashni: I like that you wake me up in the mornings! And that we Wordle every night. It’s nice doing this together. Life.

How do you all share expenses or work out finances? How do you share or split up labor in the relationship?

Gerrie: You do the cooking and I do the cleaning.

Ashni: I feel like I do a lot of the grocery planning too. But you do a lot of the cleaning planning.

Gerrie: And I do a lot of thinking about what else the house needs.

Ashni: I think you just like to online shop.

Gerrie: And? What about that? Sometimes I like a choice of whatever cleaning spray I use, okay? I let you pick and now we have one that smells like margaritas!

Ashni: And it’s great. Have you used it? You haven’t even used it.

Gerrie: I’ve smelled it. I don’t drink, so it’s not the best smell. Lime is okay. It’s just that lime automatically triggers like shots for– Like it just reminds me of any alcoholic beverage. I drank a lot of tequila in college.

Ashni: Oh, I didn’t know that. All right. Well, noted. I will not purchase this again and if you want, I can just –

Gerrie: Well, let me sniff it some more and we’ll decide.

Ashni: What? Okay.

Gerrie: Oh, are we supposed to talk about why that is?

Ashni: I think you’re a better cleaner than I am.

Gerrie: Yeah, there we go.

Ashni: And I don’t think that you’re a very good cook.

Gerrie: Yeah, that too. Although you do like my red lentil soup.

Ashni: I like your red lentil soup. I also just like it when food is made for me, because that is such a rare occurrence. But you’re a much better cleaner than I am. Mostly because your standards are higher than mine. But I think that our division of labor… we’re like close to equal. I think sometimes you do more.

Gerrie: I’m glad we’re going on the record to say this!

Ashni: We are. But I do more household admin! So like planning activities, vacations, I feel like that always falls to me.

Gerrie: Okay. And I will say it’s because I’m okay just staying here.

Ashni: This is why I don’t feel like you don’t feel like a Sag! Also you were very pro-commitment. I know this is going back to the big three, but you’re very pro-commitment.

Gerrie: Oh yeah, that’s true.

Ashni: I just didn’t get it. But also, like I was in my early twenties, like what did I –

Gerrie: Oh my God, you are one year younger than me. Stop using that as an excuse for everything.

Do you have kids, pets, plants, all three?

Gerrie: Definitely no kids. We have plants. No pets.

Ashni: What about your tiny little shrimp?

Gerrie: I don’t even have to do anything to it, so it doesn’t really qualify.

Ashni: My goal is to have one dog, one baby, in that order.

Gerrie: I’m very excited that we have moved from, “I don’t understand the appeal of dogs. I hate dogs. They’re loud. They’re annoying.” to “I want a dog and I want it first before a baby.”

Ashni: Oh, totally. But I do want a baby.

Gerrie: Well, I don’t want babies. You know a baby stops being a baby at some point?

Ashni: Okay, but I think that you and I would bring an excellent child into this world and somebody who could positively impact–

Gerrie: I mean, it’s more about the idea of bringing life into a dying world.

Ashni: There are other ways to have kids!

Gerrie: Yeah, and that’s something to think about.

Ashni: Okay. Well, I would love to have a child or children. And a dog.

Gerrie: [clearly ready to move on] Mm-hmm.

How would you describe the sex you have together (if you have sex)?

Gerrie: Good.

Ashni: Yeah, I think it’s good. Infrequent, but good. Do you believe in lesbian bed death?

Gerrie: Yeah, I would say so.

Ashni: It feels less spontaneous now.

Gerrie: Yeah, that’s fair.

Ashni: But maybe that’s just because I see you all the time.

Gerrie: We are literally around each other all the time. I mean we wake up together, we both work from home. We eat together – we eat almost every meal together. Sometimes we shower together. It’s just so much together, which is… I’m not complaining at all, I love that. But I’m sure that has definitely impacted our relationship. Or not relationship, our sex life.

Ashni: Totally. I think so too.

Do you think your relationship will more or less continue to exist as it currently is?

Gerrie: I mean, yes and no. I hope it stays on this upwards trajectory because I think things are really good right now.

Ashni: Yeah, I feel like our relationship will stay the way it is. The only thing I can think of changing this dramatically would be if and when we formalize our commitment to each other on paper, which is my roundabout way of saying marriage or whatever.

Gerrie: Marriage or whatever, okay.

Ashni: [laughing] Marriage or whatever.

Gerrie: I like it. Marriage or whatever. “Do you want to go to the wedding or whatever”? Me when I propose: “Do you want to get married or whatever?” I’ll write this down.

Ashni: I like that we’ve established that you are proposing.

Gerrie: Yeah. Don’t act like we haven’t talked about this multiple times.

Ashni: Yeah. Though, I will say, I think even if and when we do do the Big M I think that our relationship will not change because we already live together.

Gerrie: I agree.

Ashni: We already split stuff pretty normally. I think the only thing that would change is maybe we’d get a joint bank account.

Gerrie: Yeah, like the big stuff. We’d need wills.

Ashni: Oh, and then I’d probably have to come visit your parents more often.

Gerrie: [sarcastically] Oh, no.

Ashni: They’re nice!

Gerrie: No, say more.

Ashni: I’m not going to say more! They’re nice. I love them! I think they’re cute.

What would you say are your most fundamental differences?

Gerrie: Our relationship to our own parents and then our relationship to our identities.

Ashni: Oh, yeah, that’s a really good one!

Gerrie: Yeah, I would say that I’m really attached to my culture and ethnic heritage, I think. Ethnicity, race, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t grow up around a lot of queerness. Like, any queer presence in my life was a cis gay man. I spent more brain cells thinking about being Asian, because I was around a lot of Asian people despite growing up in the South.

Ashni: That’s the complete opposite of me. I feel way more connected to my queer identity than my South Asian heritage. Our relationships with our parents are very different. I think that I have a really casual… I guess casual’s not the right word, but I –

Gerrie: Push back?

Ashni: I stand up to my parents a lot. I think it’s just because of the way we were raised. Like maybe you have more filial responsibility. Which is not to say I don’t, because I definitely have moments of being a “good South Asian child”. Anything else you want to add before we go onto the next one?

Gerrie: I would say our capacity to discuss death.

Ashni: In that I don’t discuss it?

Gerrie: Yeah. We got to talk about what happens!

Ashni: Why?

Gerrie: It’s important to be prepared. You have less anxiety if you talk about it. Also, you’re very into food. You live to eat, I eat to live.

Ashni: You’re one step away from becoming a Soylent bro.

Gerrie: I was just about to say that!

Ashni: Really?

Gerrie: I mean, I like to chew my food, so Soylent would not work out for me, but… yesterday’s meal of rice and meatballs. I mean truly, no sauce, just plain white rice and frozen meatballs from Trader Joe’s.

Ashni: Okay. If anyone’s listening, I did not eat that with Gerrie, just to save my reputation as a —

Gerrie: Okay, anyway.

Ashni: But I’m happy that you have that. It’s like the “Happy you have that, glad it’s not me” meme.

(As it turns out, that is not a meme that exists anywhere! But maybe it should.)

Do you all have any shared dreams/goals for the future or each other?

Gerrie: Yeah, a lot more traveling with you. I would like a home that we can call ours. Like, I mean-

Ashni: Oh, you want to be a homeowner?

Gerrie: Yeah, whether that’s an apartment or a house-house.

Ashni: It feels like an impossible dream unless we’ve moved out of New York.

Gerrie: I mean, yeah, but where? The surrounding suburbs are still kind of expensive. I still feel it’s unattainable.

Ashni: It’s sad.

Gerrie: Yeah, I would say that.

What piece of pop culture do you share?

Gerrie: I had to think about this one. Game of Thrones.

Ashni: What??

Gerrie: We watched that together when we first started dating. I made that picnic indoors in my apartment in Washington Heights. It was a blanket on the floor and we got Taco Bell. And then now I think it’s… we watch a lot of TV together. So you know, Futurama, Solar Opposites… Adult animation about sci-fi is a good category.

Ashni: Well, I think adult animation in general because you’ve also got Disenchantment.

Gerrie: That’s your show!

Ashni: I love that show. But we watch it together! Oh, or Abbott Elementary.

Gerrie: That’s a good one. I think the show that makes me think about you is definitely Futurama.

Ashni: Well, we did watch every episode of Futurama during the first three months of the pandemic. I love Futurama. I would also say that Instant Crush really reminds me of you.

Gerrie: Because I put that on the playlist I made for you when we first started dating.

Ashni: The playlist that was basically titled: “I know I said I’m not into a relationship, but I love you.”

Gerrie: So glad you got that message.

Tell us a funny story about your partner!

Gerrie: Okay. So you went to the sample sale at that sample sale place in New York. And you bought these bedsheets. I don’t remember the brand, it was –

Ashni: Boll & Branch. Which by the way, I think the presidents sleep on Boll & Branch!

Gerrie: So we want to sleep on the same sheets as war criminals?

Ashni: Fuck…

Gerrie: I don’t! You bought the sheets at a severely discounted price and you –

Ashni: Yeah, they retail for hundreds of dollars.

Gerrie: And you would not stop talking about them. But then we went into lockdown and you left them, unopened, at a friend’s. You eventually got them after two years. Two apartments later, you got them. We put them on the bed… and they weren’t much better than the Target sheets. And then we stained them shortly after.

Ashni: The Target sheets are really nice. I feel like the Target sheets are just as soft so… unfortunate for me. But also I paid the same amount that I would have for the Target sheets anyway. Not a total loss. All right, my funny story is that… I had to get a biopsy done, a vaginal biopsy done. But for some reason I went to a pediatric gynecologist? I don’t know why.

Gerrie: You picked out this person, so I don’t understand what the confusion is.

Ashni: I don’t know how that happened. Maybe she wasn’t a pediatric gynecologist.

Gerrie: There’s no way.

Ashni: Right? Okay, anyway –

Gerrie: Do they make pediatric gynecologists?

Ashni: Yeah, I feel like they should. You don’t just suddenly start needing a gyno once you’re –

Gerrie: I imagine a pediatrician would be able to handle… I don’t know. If there’s something more concerning then they just send you to the regular gyno.

Ashni: Okay, so maybe this was a regular gyno.

Gerrie: Let’s just hope it was.

Ashni: Right. So we’re at the gyno and Gerrie is there to hold my hand because I’m not very good with incisions or, I don’t know –

Gerrie: Doctors.

Ashni: No, I’m okay with doctors. But if I’m going to get cut, I don’t want to be there alone, so you came with me to hold my hand. And then the nurse walked in and said, “Oh, I see we’ve brought mom.”

Gerrie: We don’t look anything alike.

Ashni: Also, our age difference is one year.

Gerrie: Scarred for life, it’s fine. I think about that every day I put on my skincare routine.