He lets me be my own person. This is a destination orchestra. When somebody is a stand partner, it's the closest thing you can have to a marriage without sex. I've been incredibly lucky, but there have been situations in the orchestra where I've seen people sitting next to each other for years and never speaking. With 105 people, you run the whole social gamut.
Nobody wants to ruffle any feathers before they know that they're welcome forever.
But my personality is to kind of lie low. I think things will change when I become more comfortable with the goings-on of the orchestra. It's a little scary. Fun and scary. I never say anything about somebody's playing, even if you see something really, really bad.