386 - Compersion: Is It Necessary? (with Dr. Marie Thouin and Dr. Sharon Flicker)
Welcome back, Dr. Thouin, and welcome Dr. Flicker!
Our guests for today include Dr. Marie Thouin and Dr. Sharon Flicker.
A guest back on Multiamory back on episode 285 where she shared her dissertation research with us, Dr. Marie Thouin is the founder of Love InSight, a Mindful Dating & Relationship Coaching practice where she helps people of all backgrounds and relationship styles create vibrant & intentional love lives. She is also a leading scholar and researcher on the topic of compersion in consensually non-monogamous relationships. She shares her research on her website, www.whatiscompersion.com.
Dr. Sharon M. Flicker is a clinical psychologist who researches intimate relationships, most recently focusing on consensual non-monogamy and love languages. She is licensed to practice psychology in NY and PA and is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University - Sacramento. Dr. Flicker currently serves as the co-lead of the Inclusive Education initiative of the American Psychological Association’s Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy. You can find her website here and follow her on Twitter at @smflicker1.
Drs. Thouin and Flicker share their research about compersion during this episode, discussing a variety of findings they came across, including:
Is compersion necessary to have good relationships?
What promotes/hinders compersion in CNM relationships?
Can you feel jealous & compersive at the same time?
Is compersion innate or learned?
How do you go about developing compersion?
Additionally, they give their personal insight about why they think compersion is important to study, where to find the compersion scale Dr. Flicker developed, and what’s coming next for both of their research careers.
Make sure you check out the works of Drs. Thouin and Flicker on their websites and social media!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about some brand new compersion research with doctors, Marie Thouin and Sharon M Flicker. First, Marie Thouin is the founder of Love Insight, a mindful dating and relationship coaching practice where she helps people of all backgrounds and relationship styles create vibrant and intentional love lives. She is also a leading scholar and researcher on the topic of compersion in consensually non-monogamous relationships. Dr. Sharon M Flicker is a clinical psychologist who researches intimate relationships, most recently focusing on consensual non-monogamy and love languages.
She's an assistant professor of psychology at California State University, Sacramento, and she serves as the co-lead of the Inclusive Education Initiative of the American Psychological Association's Division 44 committee on consensual non-monogamy. That's a real mouthful, but is a cool thing that we've talked about a little bit before on this show.
Dedeker: The fighting 44th.
Jase: Yes. That we actually have an inclusion committee for non-monogamy in the APA now, which is very cool. Marie and Sharon, thank you so much for joining us.
Sharon: Thank you for having us.
Marie: It's good to be back.
Dedeker: Yes. We initially had Marie on the podcast back in Episode 285. Let's start with you, Marie, can you give a recap to our listeners a little bit about what drew you to compersion research in the first place?
Marie: Yes. When I was last on the podcast, I had almost finished, but I hadn't totally completed my dissertation research and compersion for my PhD. What really drew me to that concept is, first it felt like it meant so much about love, a love that's not possessive, that's not about control, but that is really about wanting the best for somebody else, and deriving joy from that. Me being from a more non-traditional family structure, and also a relationship structure, it felt like the concept that I wanted to center on in terms of building a new paradigm for my life.
There was really no, or very little existing research on that topic, so there was this huge opportunity to go into this territory that could really impact how we see relationship satisfaction in CNM and consensual non-monogamous relationships.
Dedeker: Since then, since you were on the show, you have published your research, is that correct?
Marie: Yes. It's available for free.
Dedeker: and lots.
Marie: Yes. It's super cool because now people can go download it for free, it's not behind a pay wall, it's open access. They can just go through what is compersion.com and download it. It has a lot of practical benefits to anyone who's in a consensually non-monogamous relationship and wants to have some of those insights. It's really easy to assimilate.
Dedeker: Let's switch focus to Sharon. First of all, maybe you can connect the dots for us of how the two of you got connected, and Sharon, if you can also share, maybe it's related, the story of how you also got involved in this particular research.
Sharon: I don't actually remember how Marie and I got connected, except that I knew that she was also doing compersion research. I had been doing compersion research with Dr. Michelle Vaughn separately. When I wanted someone to step in and play a role in one of our projects, I immediately thought of Marie, because she was a clear expert in the area of compersion, really good fit. In terms of how I got involved, I've been teaching psychology for almost 20 years at universities, and I've taught a few Psychology of Relationships course. Of course, there's nothing about Consensual non-monogamy in the psych of relationships textbooks.
Actually, how I originally got started is that one of my students, this is back in 2017, I think, asked me if I would mind if she did a presentation on the research about consensual non-monogamy, just volunteering. I thought, "That's great. That's amazing." Turned out that there wasn't all that much at that time. That's how we got started. I said, "Hey, do you want to start doing some research in this?" We did some research about, one of the first studies was about hierarchy, and how that relates to relationship satisfaction and attachment in polyamorous relationships, and then moved into compersion.
Compersion is super interesting just because it's so different from what monogamous folks think is possible. It's like the opposite of what's expected in our culture, so I thought that was really interesting place to study.
Marie: If I can add something to that last point that Sharon made, I think the other reason why eventually I understood why compersion was so powerful is that, it kind of really has what it takes to dismantle Mononormativity, because the idea that monogamy is the only possible way to have a good relationship is based on the idea that jealousy is inevitable, and it's the only possible reaction to a partner having other partners.
Emily: Also, through your work, Sharon, you developed a scale for measuring compersion. We talked about that just briefly before we started recording the episode, but can you go into that a little bit more because that's really fascinating?
Sharon: Sure. This was a project that Dr. Michelle Vaughn and I took on, and we started with a grounded understanding of people's lived experience of compersions, so doing some qualitative research about what it feels like, what it looks like in their relationships. Skipping to the end, essentially, we came up with an 11-item scale of compersion. There's three subscales, so the data seemed to indicate that there's three subtypes of compersion in our study, the quantitative part, indicated that there's a type of compersion about your partner's relationships with established metamores.
Then there's a type of compersion that's related to new or potential intimate connections for your partner. Then the third piece is a sexual arousal piece, and it's not that everyone explains is all three types of compersion, but that all three types of compersion exists, and they're distinct from each other.
Emily: I love that you made that differentiation because, yes, so many people discuss the fact that when you're in the midst of NRE, a partner may be feeling really intense emotions during that time, and one might assume that compersion is more difficult to have during that time. Then also, yes, I mean, in some sexual situations, some people love watching their partner have sex with someone else, and so, that may include compersion there as well. That's really cool, and I love that you broke it down in that fashion.
Sharon: Yes.
Dedeker: I feel like we might need to back up a little bit and maybe even start with some definitions, and some of this is a little bit jumping ahead. Sharon, you just identified like these three different flavors, and Marie, you've touched on some of the different emotional components of this. Then, again, as spoilers, in the study, it looks like you identified some five common themes that arose when participants talked about their experience of it.
Let's hear from the two of you about how you would define compersion. I think within non-monogamy circles, it usually has this very pat definition of just like, "Oh, it's the opposite of jealousy," or it's just like, "Oh, you like it when your partner is dating other people." But it sounds like you've been able to uncover more of the moving pieces of this. Being on the other side of that, how would you define compersion?
Marie: Well, I can start, I actually came up in my dissertation study with two definitions, because I think it's important to have two. One, that's just a general definition of what is empathic joy, like empathic joy for when we witness or when we are aware of somebody else experiencing gratifying emotions. It can include thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences. Then the second definition, which is relevant to what we're talking about here is in a non-monogamous context, the joy, and the positive emotions that we experience when our partner experiences joy and positive emotions in the context of another relationship.
Jase: Yes. It makes sense to have those two different definitions, because that is something I've found that comes up when we talk about it, is that, generally, compersion is used specifically for that feeling happy about your partner's other relationships, or their sexual encounters or whatever. Then, usually, when we talk about it, to try to make it more understandable, we talk about it in the context of feeling happy when your friend gets a promotion, even if there's like a little bit of jealousy in there of like, "I wish I had a promotion too, but I'm also happy for them." We use that as a bridge to help people understand. That's interesting to have those two definitions of compersion almost to show that, to make it more understandable and relatable.
Marie: The fact is we don't have another word in the English language to refer to the general compersion, the more non-romantic type of compersion. I think it would be totally fine to use that word as well.
Jase: Yes. That's great.
Marie: Is there anything, Sharon, that you would add to that definition?
Sharon: Yes, in the first study, we did some thematic analysis of people's emotions. What compersion feels like emotionally. Obviously, it ran the gamut of positive emotions. Some of them was more like joy, the second one was more of a lower intensity emotion, like contentment, warmth. Then there were things like excitement, both emotional and sexual. Then there were things like pride, love, validation. People used a lot of like, my heart exploding, a lot of words that referred to their heart, a sensation in their heart specifically.
Marie: Yes, I like that. I really like it. I think what's so great about being able to do more qualitative studies is you get all that really nice, juicy language as well that really expands your understanding of what something is. Well, so, let's dive into specifically the study that the two of you and Dr. Michelle Vaughn published together. Can you just set the scene for our listeners of the basics of your method? What was the hypothesis? What was your approach? Who was it that you were talking to? What was the shape of this whole study?
Sharon: Yes, so, we didn't start with any hypotheses. It was a qualitative study. We were just trying to follow our participants' responses, and identify themes in their responses. We recruited from Reddit, specifically, the polyamory subreddit, there were 44 participants, three quarters of them were from the US, and the others were from Europe, Australia, places like that. Folks were, the average age was about 32, and there's a really wide range of engagement in CNM for 1 year to 32 years.
Marie: Oh wow.
Jase: Oh wow.
Sharon: On average, folks were engaged about seven years in CNM, and they all had to have been in a CNM relationship in the last year, as well as had experience with compersion. Actually, I also pointed out, because I remember this, you talking about this in a former episode, which I was really glad to hear, is that, it was somewhat of a bias sample in that the majority were White. The majority were CIS women. The vast majority were bisexual or pansexual identified, and I think college educated so that it was a particular sample probably from recruiting from the polyamory subreddit.
Marie: I was just excited to hear that the average age was 32, because I feel like usually it's like just all the undergrads, and they're like, "Oh yes, average age was 22 or something like that," and not that you can't have any compersion experience at 22, but it's still at least nice to see that you broke out of just harvesting from the undergrad pool.
Sharon: Right.
Marie: Okay. From that sample, then you sat down and did just qualitative interviews with people of just asking about their experiences of compersion. Your study is specifically looking at what helps facilitate this experience, and also, what hinders this experience based on people's reporting. What were the general themes that you found?
Sharon: Okay. I can take the lead on that. Yes, actually, we did surveys rather than interviews. Folks were able to write out their responses, that was good in that a lot of times you could reach folks you can't reach through interviews, but on the other hand, sometimes we couldn't get a full understanding of what they were trying to convey all the time. But the main themes, there were individual or intrapersonal level themes, there were relationship level factors. Then there was metamour specific factors.
The individual factors, I will go through all of them, but a lot of them were like, "I have a strong sense of self-worth at the time. When I have a strong sense of self-worth, I'm more likely to experience compersion. When my mental health is in check, I'm more likely to experience compersion. When I have a full life outside of my partner, social support or maybe other partners."
Then in terms of the relationship, people talked about having good communication with their partner, whether that was about jealousy in particular, whether that was about negotiating time with their partner, or getting their needs met from their partner, or learning the details of the partner's relationship with the metamour was also mentioned many times as important to compersion.
Marie: Was it important as that helped support developing compersion, getting more details about the relationship?
Sharon: Yes. A lot of people wrote that it would be really difficult for them to experience compersion if they didn't know the details. For some folks, just like witnessing the joy of their partners face as they talk about their metamour, or they talked about a hot date they had, or a new person they met that they were excited about that it was difficult-- that it's facilitated compersion by being able to share in that emotion, either because you're seeing it in your partner, or maybe you're mirroring their exact emotions, and that way it was helpful for compersion.
Marie: Okay. That makes sense.
Sharon: Participants also talked a lot about feeling valued by their partner, and securing their relationship, and really feeling like their needs were met. Those folks who talked about what those needs were talked a lot about time and attention. Knowing the next time that they were going to have time to spend with their partner, knowing when that would be feeling attended to by their partner, and important to their partner was important for them to experience compersion.
Then finally, the last factor was how they felt about their metamour. As you might expect, having positive regard for their metamour was important to compersion, knowing, or thinking that their partner was trustworthy, was good for their partner, that they had a healthy relationship with the partner, that was all really important for compersion.
Jase: Yes. Just a few weeks ago, we did a couple episodes about non-monogamy research. One of the things that came up in one of those was specifically showing communication skills, as well as knowing your metamour did help to increase relationship satisfaction in non-monogamous relationships. That's good that that tracks, and that that's consistent.
It's like, "Okay, yes, there's something here." I wanted to go back to something that you said, which was about them being able to relate to the feelings that their partner was having, if they're experiencing something similar in their own life, in their other relationships or something. I wanted to come back to that, because I think that's something that also people get stuck on, is this idea of, well, everything's fine as long as both of us are dating other people roughly the same amount, but if there's an imbalance there, then we have conflict, and then it's harder.
It's interesting that you found that from the other side of saying, "If we're having similar experiences, that makes it a little easier," but it did bring that up of, "Hmm, but that's also such a tough thing to say, oh, well we have to try to stay in sync," because that's a hard thing to, to force. It's a hard thing to make that happen.
Sharon: Yes, this is something that I think isn't talked about as much in conceptual non-monogamous communities, and actually, was brought up by one of the reviewers of my paper, that people don't talk enough about envy. We talk a lot about jealousy, but the idea that my partner has such an easier time meeting other partners, or has such a good quality of relationship with this other partner. I wish that I had that, or the feeling of, "Well, I don't have any other partners, but my partner does." It's not about jealousy in terms of feeling a threat to your relationship. It's about wishing that you had something that your partner had, right?
Marie: Yes, you're right. That's actually a good indication for a future episode for us to talk about that envy piece of it, because it is so easy to go down just that jealousy route, or just thinking about, "Oh, what is it that you're not getting from your partner in particular?" But, yes, you're so right. It's so common. It comes up in our Patreon community all the time, with the clients that I work with all the time, that there is this particular nuance of, "I can feel really supportive of my partner, and feel secure in the relationship, and also just wish I had the same thing that they had."
Sharon: Yes, absolutely. I think is one of my research study ideas for the future that I definitely want to pursue.
Marie: Okay. Well, maybe once that's done, then we'll make an episode about it, and we'll have you back on, and it'll all work like clockwork.
Sharon: Perfect.
Jase: Something I wanted to go back to was, you talked about communication, and how that facilitated and allowed for compersion to occur within relationships when you had a lot of communication about what was going on in a relationship, or what was going on with the metamour, but I am curious just, I would be interested to know what type of polyamory, people who felt that practiced, because if it was more a kitchen table polyamory, or where everyone was more aware of one another, rather than maybe a don't ask, don't tell situation, or even a parallel polyamory situation where part of the point is to not necessarily have as much communication.
I do wonder, and our researcher also had asked that question, is this something that would work? Would compersion be as prevalent among amongst people who practice more parallel polyamory?
Sharon: Well, I don't think that we can tell that from this data. I think this data, there was at least one person who was not interested in knowing their metamour at all, and still reported feelings of compersion, although most people were interested, and it's kind of maybe a little sneak peek of my next study, that the most important factors for compersion, the ones that were most predictive was feeling close to your metamour, and being satisfied, having knowledge about your partner metamour relationship. Those were the strongest predictors of two of the subtypes of compersion, or actually all three subtypes of compersion.
Emily: I would be really interested if this study also included at some point, people just in non-monogamy in general and questioning where compersion happened, and if those findings would be the same, like, "I have a very strong relationship with my metamour, and therefore, I am also able to feel compersion for them and for my partner," things like that versus people who maybe don't know or don't want to know their metamour that well, that's really interesting.
Sharon: Yes. I think that's a great question because, the sample is primarily polyamorous, and there are different types of polyamory, but we didn't actually ask about that question.
Dedeker: Yes, that would be really interesting though. Because I guess from that you can hypothesize or extrapolate that when you don't necessarily have those factors of not feeling super close to my metamour, or I don't necessarily have knowledge about my partner in metamour's relationship. I wonder if it's, I don't have that knowledge by choice because that's how I want it to be, or I don't have that knowledge, not by choice necessarily. I feel like you're really, really doing a fine tooth comb of trying to find the sample size that's like the people who maybe are practicing parallel polyamory, or don't ask, don't tell, but who also have had experiences of compersion, I'm like, "What's going on there?" So many questions.
Sharon: Yes. I think just to add onto that, it's really unclear what comes first. Do feelings of compersion facilitate people feeling close to their metamour, and wanting to know more about it, or are the closeness of the knowledge coming before the compersion? My guess is, I don't know what comes first, but I feel pretty confident that they feed upon each other.
Dedeker: Compersion is a form of empathy. Of course, empathy, needs proximity. It needs feeling included in somebody else's experience, like not necessarily being there while they're having an experience, but I think we need to have a window into someone's experience, and we cannot be feeling like the other person is shutting us out. Sometimes when I talk to people who don't experience compersion, who struggle with it, who experience a lot of jealousy, and who struggle, generally speaking, they feel shut out from their partners' experience.
They feel they can't have a window. They can't feel connected at that level. They feel there's perhaps an element of secrecy, or fear and concealment. I think that's a useful distinction to make, compersion is about feeling included, and the lack of compersion is oftentimes about feeling excluded.
Jase: Yes. That makes a lot of sense. I'm also thinking about that analogy that I gave before about a friend who gets a promotion, that if all I hear is one day, "Oh, my friend got this promotion, and now they're making twice as much money," and I'm like, "Ah, that's going to trigger a lot more envy and less good feelings." Whereas if I knew that this is something they'd been working really hard for, and I'd been in on that journey, I could see feeling a lot more of that, "Oh, that's awesome, you got it." Because I've been included in this journey, even though I wasn't doing it, I don't work with you, I'm not there. But that makes a lot of sense.
I'm always trying to look for those analogies of where's some other area of our life where this seems less of a foreign concept, and then to see how, "Oh, yes. That there's a similarity there that that could track." That's a cool example, and I think is an interesting thing to point out too. Because a lot of people starting out in non-monogamy, there's a lot of fear of the reaction of your partner. You can tend to not include them very much out of not wanting to hurt them or upset them. It's coming from a good place, but maybe you're also blocking the development of that compersion.
Dedeker: Yes. Oh my gosh. I see that all the time in my coaching practice actually, people who, they're like, "Yes, I don't want to tell my partner. I don't want to hurt them." But their partner feels then like they don't have access to what's happening, and they feel more threatened as a result.
Jase: Yes. We love getting to hear about all of this new research that's coming out, and getting to actually talk to you about the process, and getting all these sneak previews is really awesome. Before we go on to the second half of this episode, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some of our sponsors in ways that you can support this show at home. If you find this content valuable and you want more people to be able to access it for free, taking the time to check out our sponsors, and if any seem interesting to you, to go check them out, that directly helps our show, and we really appreciate it.
Dedeker: All right, folks, we are back. We are here with Dr. Marie Thouin and Dr. Sharon Flicker talking about compersion research. Let's talk about the relationship between jealousy and compersion. Now, earlier in the show, I mentioned that often the way it's defined is as the opposite of jealousy, but then, Sharon, you mentioned in passing that you don't agree with that. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
Sharon: Yes, sure. I think the main reason I don't agree with it is the many participants in our study who talked about feeling jealousy and compersion at the same time. People can experience jealousy and compersion at the same time. I would imagine that central to that is the ability to manage their feelings of jealousy. That the feelings of jealousy aren't overwhelming, but there are folks for whom they can translate jealousy into maybe something erotic that could more easily be translated directly into compersion, a type of compersion. I think, Marie, you've had thoughts about this before, do you want to add to that?
Marie: Yes, absolutely. Yes. I think that it's interesting to also witness where the emotions or the experiences of jealousy and compersion are coming from, because often times people might have a mental or attitudinal experience of compersion, they're supportive of their partners that are relationships intellectually, but they might still have something in their gut that says, "No, this is not right. My partner's going to leave me, I'm being abandoned," and it's an art to bridge the two, and to decide, "Okay, what do I do when I have these two concurrent experiences, and maybe two different parts of me are saying different things?"
Dedeker: That just made me think, is compersion-- and not that there's a right or wrong answer here, but is compersion real if it isn't felt innately, like internally? If it's only felt in the brain, or in the psyche of, "Yes, it should feel this way," or, "I do objectively feel happy for my partner," but what equals compersion? Does it have to be really internal and emotional? No.
Emily: That's such a great question. In my dissertation research, what I found is that people had different definitions of compersion. Some of them define compersion as this more cognitive attitudinal orientation toward their partners that are in relationships. They just said like, "Compersion for me is just feeling like this is a good thing that's happening, instead of feeling it's a bad thing." Then other people describe compersion as this embodied feeling, almost an intoxication of like, "Oh my gosh, my heart is exploding." Or, "I feel like it's champagne bubbles all over my face. I just can't wait to hear more. I'm getting high off of this."
Jase: I love that.
Emily: Is there one that's more real than the other? Who's to say? People use the word compersion to describe both experiences. I think it's important to honor the diversity of meanings, that people will attribute to that.
Dedeker: Yes. Emily, I feel that's such a deep question of what counts as a real emotion or not, or real felt experience.
Emily: Everything's real, I guess. Yes.
Dedeker: Or maybe nothing is real.
Emily: Maybe nothing is real, we're just in a simulation. Yes, totally.
Dedeker: Actually, I do think that leads into an interesting question of, do you think that some people come pre-built, more inclined towards the felt experience of compersion? Or do you think some people struggle their way to it, like do they learn it? Or do you think some people it's just, "Oh, it's a lost cause-- well, lost cause is maybe too much of a value judgment, but just like, "Oh no, you're just not built for it. You're never going to feel it." What have you found? Or what do you think about that?
Sharon: Yes, it was really interesting because our participants spontaneously talked about that. Even though it wasn't something that we were probing for, and some participants said, "I've always been this way, regardless of whether I someone or don't someone, I'm always inch away from their happiness," or, "It's just something innate in me." Whereas other people really said, "I worked hard at this. This was an intentional commitment to feel this." I think it's probably a little bit of both, just like any skill, there are some skills that there are some people for whom that skill comes fairly easy, and there's other people who can be just as good eventually, but work at it. Right?
There are probably some ways that people can develop their capacity for compersion, even if they're not feeling it currently, if they want to. I would hate to think there's anyone that's a lost cause though, that would make me very sad.
Dedeker: Right. Well, that opens up, I think even a bigger question. I do want to talk about, yes. Those things that you can do to develop compersion, or maybe create the groundwork for compersion, but before going there, it is the bigger question of, do we have to feel compersion, is that a necessary experience? From the text of your study, I pulled out this quote from one of the participants critiquing the concept of compersion. The quote is, "It's nice when it happens, but I honestly think it's a little harder come by than some poly advocates would have you believe. It's not a sign of enlightenment, it's a sign of having lucked into an arrangement that really works." Let's just start there.
Sharon: Yes. I think that was another thing that many of the participants said over and over again, is that this compersion is not necessary for successful polyamory. It's a bonus, it's lovely when it happens, but it doesn't make or break you as someone who practices polyamory. I think there's ways in which when your partner is compersive, it can facilitate the metamore partner relationship. Having a partner that feels compersion can make things just maybe a little bit easier, but it's certainly not necessary.
Dedeker: I just want to add, we were talking about between the more cognitive and the more embodied compersion. I think everyone would agree that the embodied intoxicating compersion is not necessary to have a great relationship. They are more attitudinal, the more cognitive, the positive orientation towards our partners, that our relationships, and the willingness to not sabotage our partner's relationships, that is a more fundamental condition to having a great relationship satisfaction in a CNM context.
Jase: I just need to take a moment for that to sink in because to go back to Emily's question about, is it real if it's all intellectual rather than being felt? From what you're saying, it's maybe the intellectual one is the more fundamental one than having that strong feeling. The most important thing, like you said is that you at least have enough of this kind of mental, "I've decided that this is right, and I want to support this, and I don't want to sabotage it, and I want my partner to be happy in their other relationships even if I'm not super stoked about it all the time."
I think I also latch onto that just because that's been my experience. I'm envious of people who do feel that champagne bubbles on their face compersion, never heard that expressed before to say, but I love it. I've never felt that about anything, maybe about a friend who finally had a success after a long time like I was mentioning, but in terms of polyamory and non-monogamy, I'm not someone who experiences a ton of compersion, yet at the same time, have more of that, but I really believe in this, and want my partner to have good, happy relationships, and I want my metamore to have good lives, and to have success and things like that even if I'm not over the moon so turned on and excited knowing they're having sex, or something like that, or that they had this fantastic anniversary.
It's like, "Cool. Sure, cool." Like, "Happy for you," but also like, "Whatever." I think that's also why that's important for me to hear of that. Like, "Yes, I'm not doing it wrong," and I try to help encourage other people by telling them that too, because people can get caught up on that idea, if I'm not feeling it, I'm failing somehow.
Dedeker: Totally right. They can use the concept of compersion as a stick to beat themselves with, which is so not helpful.
Jase: Yes.
Sharon: Yes.
Emily: If you do want to go about developing more compersion in your life, what are some ways in which you can do that?
Sharon: I think some of the things that participants said that were particularly helpful was, really, truly listening with their partner's perspective in mind. Rather than trying to hear things through their own worldview, or their own lens, really listen to what their partner's saying, and try to understand it from their partner's point of view fully. That can really facilitate compersion as understanding their perspective as their perspective. Also, other folks mentioned feeling non-attached to particular outcomes can be helpful.
Jase: In what way, what was the context where that came up, the not being attached to certain outcomes? Like outcomes in your partner's relationship, in your own? What specifically?
Sharon: I don't think that person who wrote non-attachment to outcome, the one that I can think of, did it specify? But I think probably both. Do you have a particular way that you think your relationship with your partner should be? If you have a very rigid idea, then, it's going to be harder to go with the flow as your relationship changes, and as their relationships with other people change, just being more open, and that's another one, is just having an open mindset. Some people have said, "I have to do this very intentionally. I set this intention, and then I work through it," but other people just said, "Just being open is enough for me."
Dedeker: That's so interesting. Yes. When I saw that in the study, that also stood out to me, that non-attachment to outcome, and it made me think of, "I've definitely had this loved experience, and I've heard this from a lot of folks that sometimes you can be feeling super supportive, and really compersive as long as your partner's relationship takes a particular shape also." Where it's like, "Oh my God, I just so love that you have this common partner. It's just so wonderful and beautiful," but then over here, or maybe suddenly you're escalating emotionally with another partner, then it's much harder to have compersion, and so I'm not saying that that's a bad thing.
I think that's a very common thing, but I know in my own practice of non-monogamy, that's something that I have learned over the years, that if I have that experience where all my compersion goes away when the format of my partner's relationship changes, often that means that I need to find something else to attach to for security outside of just the outcome of how this is going to go. I think, yes, that seems like that tracks with what seems to be a lot of people's experience there.
Sharon: It's all about releasing control.
Dedeker: Super fun, I love releasing control. I love it.
Jase: Yes. I think something that would be really cool to see coming up in the research, and I'm not aware of any of this, and so, tell me if anyone's working on it, but doing research on any actual compersion interventions of, are there actual, practical tested steps to help foster more of that feeling? Or at least getting to that place of, we always describe it as neutral, but I guess at least that intellectual side of, "Well, I want them to be happy, and I'm not going to sabotage it." Are you aware of anyone doing that research, or do you have any coming up, a compersion intervention to research?
Sharon: I think that it's long term goal would be, you do the basic, what we call basic research, where you just try to find out the factors that might be related to greater compersion, and then you translate that into applied research where you then try and take that research and make a change for someone. That would be that intervention. I think that would be fantastic. That research can be tricky and hard to do, but I think that's always the-- for me, anyways, as a clinician, that's always the end goal.
Jase: Right. Have something that you can apply. Yes. Something practical, that makes sense.
Marie: It's important when we're trying to develop compersion to not be even attached to the outcome of compersion looking a certain way. The factors that me, and Sharon, and Dr. Michelle Vaughn laid out in this research can be just taken as a roadmap to relationship satisfaction and CNM more generally. I think the other thing that promotes compersion paradoxically is to not necessarily shoot for compersion, it's to use those factors that we delineated in our research, the individual factors, the relational factors, the report that we have with our metamores to promote greater relationship satisfaction, and to locate what the bottlenecks in that ecosystem of factors might be, and then to address those places when we can, and oftentimes the compersion might just derive from that, will just emerge from enhancing those contexts rather than trying to force compersion into existence.
Dedeker: Something you mentioned a little bit earlier was about, some of these things lead to just general better relationships. I'm curious to hear from the two of you, do you think that it's still important to study compersion, look at compersion, think about compersion, even for people who are maybe those folks who are like, "Well, I just don't feel it," or, "Well, that's not really the type of non-monogamy that I practice, it's not that important," or maybe, "I'm not non monogamous, so why do I care about any of this?" What do you think there is to glean from this research, if you fall into those camps?
Sharon: Like I said, I don't think that is necessary to experience compersion, and it shouldn't necessarily be a goal unless it is someone's goal. I do think there might be some implications and relevance towards folks who are even monogamous. Sometimes people in monogamous relationships, there may be some issue in their relationship that, "Oh, my partner likes to sit in front of the TV for three hours on Sunday and watch football. That's time that they're not interacting with me.
I don't really like it," but maybe we could learn from compersion and apply some of the things that we have learned about how to facilitate compersion to that type of relationship, and maybe if they have a conversation, and that person feels more included, even, not necessarily sitting there and watching football, but what do they like about football. Why is this important to them to do? I think that we can learn a lot about relationships in general, regardless of whether folks are consensually non-monogamous, or even want to experience compersion.
Emily: Thank you all so much. This has been a really, really interesting conversation and continuation of what we did with Marie back in 2020. I was wondering also what's next in your research, and what did you want to find out next from all of this compersion stuff?
Marie: In my personal research, I want to work on those interventions.
Sharon: Oh, yes.
Jase: Nice.
Marie: But I don't have a huge research agenda for the moment, so I'll let Sharon talk about hers.
Sharon: I think I'm going to finish working on this paper where I've quantitatively tested the hypotheses that we derived from this qualitative study that we're talking about today. That'll be really interesting to see what aligns in a much larger sample, rather than people talking about it, actually assessing using quantitative measures. I do think it'll be interesting to pursue some of that research on NB. Right now, we have a holy grail of trying to get some funding to looking at relationship development over time in monogamous couples who are opening up, and see what that looks like. We'll see if we get the funding for that.
Marie: Yes, fascinating.
Sharon: Thanks.
Jase: Those are all fantastic topics. I also wanted to ask, as we're wrapping up here, about the compersion scale that you mentioned before that you developed specifically for some of this research you've been doing. Is that something that people can see? Is that published yet? Is that something they can go check out? What's the story there?
Sharon: It is published, unfortunately right now it's behind a paywall. Folks can email me at flicker@csus.edu. I'm happy to share it with them. What I also plan to do is to post it on my lab website. It's not posted there yet, but that is a place that I can put it so that people could easily assess it, or access it.
Jase: That's great. Because for any kind of research on interventions, and measuring their success, a scale like that would be a really helpful way to kind of see that before and after, and have some quantitative way to measure that.
Sharon: Absolutely.
Jase: Where can people follow both of you? Where can they find out about this? I know that, Marie, you mentioned what is compersion.com. They can get the full text of this particular paper that you're talking about. Where else can they find each of your work?
Marie: whatiscompersion.com is a website that I've built just as a trove of resources, and papers, and literature about compersion. There's a blog as well that's really readable, and a great addition to the more formal academic literature. They can also find me on Instagram. It's love_insight_dating, and then I post things about both mindful dating, and relationships, and compersion and non-monogamy.
Sharon: That's great.
Dedeker: What about for you, Sharon?
Sharon: Sure. I am on Twitter, and it's @SMflicker1. S-M as in Mary flicker 1. I also have a website. It's not an easy website address, so you can just Google me at at sharonflicker@csusacramento.
Dedeker: Excellent. Again, thank you so much you two, and thank you for sharing your work with us. I'm really interested to see what the audience thinks about all of this. Speaking of that, we're going to be posting a question on our Instagram stories this week. We want to hear from you, what makes it harder for you to feel compersion? Really interested to hear all of your experiences.