484 - Compersion is a Spectrum with Dr. Marie Thouin
Welcome back, Dr. Marie Thouin!
Marie Thouin is back today to discuss compersion and her new book with us. Dr. Marie Thouin is a Mindful Dating & Relationship Coach who supports people of all backgrounds and relational orientations to create intentional and vibrant love lives. She is a leading expert on the topic of compersion and the author of the groundbreaking book, "What is Compersion? Understanding Positive Empathy in Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships.” Marie has published seminal research studies, the first-ever encyclopedia entry on compersion, and is the creator of www.WhatIsCompersion.com, a popular website that features her research, blogs, and other resources on compersion. She has been featured in several magazines and podcasts, including ELLE, the Savage Lovecast, and Multiamory.
The questions Marie tackles today are:
You were responsible for getting the first ever official encyclopedic entry for compersion, but can you also share if there are any competing definitions or controversy over your official definition?
Has anyone ever tried to convince you that compersion isn’t real?
A common misconception about compersion is that it’s the opposite of jealousy, but many people can attest that it is possible for someone to feel compersion and jealousy at the same time. You reference this idea of “non-mononormative jealousy” that leaves more room for the experience of compersion compared to “mononormative jealousy.” Can you explain this distinction?
One of our favorite reminders to give on this show is, “Don’t weaponize this shit.” It seems that, unfortunately, sometimes good concepts or tools can be used as a bludgeon in relationships. How have you seen people weaponize compersion?
You propose a “dual control model of compersion,” inspired by the dual control model of sexual response. In short, the idea that there are behaviors, mindsets, contexts, and environments that may push on the “gas pedal” towards sexual arousal, as well as those that may push on the “brake pedal” away from sexual arousal. In your estimation, does compersion work the same way? What factors step on the compersion gas pedal vs. the compersion brake pedal?
Does “erotic compersion” count as compersion?
You completed research on social positionality and how that may affect one’s experience compersion - can you share some of the highlights you found in your research? You found that some marginalized groups may actually be predisposed to experiencing compersion. This seems counterintuitive - can you elaborate? How does gender socialization play into ability to access compersion?
Has your research changed anything about how you show up in your own personal relationships?
What are you hoping to see next in this field? What are your burning questions that still remain?
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 all about compersion with our guest, Dr. Marie Thouin. Marie has been on this show a couple of times before to talk about her research on compersion and now she has published her first full book on the topic. We are going to learn more about the current research into compersion, how it actually shows up in practice, and what we might learn from that research to help improve our own lives. Dr. Marie Thouin is a mindful dating and relationship coach and the leading expert on the topic of compersion and she's the author of the new groundbreaking book, What is Compersion? Understanding Positive Empathy in Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships.
If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can also check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. I think they would look great together on your bookshelf. Also, check out the first few episodes of our podcast where we also go over some of our most widely used and widely referenced episodes. Marie, thank you so much for joining us.
Marie: Thank you for having me again. It's such a pleasure to be here again.
Dedeker: We seem to have you on every two years or so. We had you on first in 2020 and then in 2022, so I like this biennial state of the union about compersion that we get on this regular basis.
Emily: All the even years.
Dedeker: Yes.
Marie: Yes, I love that.
Dedeker: We highly recommend that listeners go back and listen to episode 285, titled Compersion Research with Marie Thouin and episode 386 titled Compersion. Is It Necessary? With Dr. Marie Thouin and Dr. Sharon Flicker. I want to start by laying the groundwork. You were responsible for getting the first ever official encyclopedic entry for compersion, which is a huge and very exciting milestone. I want to know if you can lay out what your definition is. Also, I want to know, are there any competing definitions or has there been any controversy over your official definition?
Marie: Great question. Yes, last year in 2023 was the first time that any encyclopedia published a definition of compersion and that was the Springer Nature Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior and Psychology and I co-authored it with doctor Sharon Flicker who was with me on the show in 2022. We discussed that definition a lot, because previously, we found a lot of definitions online which were all pretty much in the lines of it's feeling happy when your partners are happy with someone else. It's all about happy, happy, happy. In my research, what I discovered, one of the, I think, most helpful discoveries was that compersion is not only an emotion, it can also be attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors.
We broke down the definition into three. The first one was the broad range of positive emotions that one might feel in regards to their partner's other intimate relationships, the second one was the broad range of positive thoughts, positive behaviors, and positive attitudes that someone might feel in relation to their partner's other relationships, and then we added a third definition to cover kind of the general terrain. It was the broad range of positive emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors that we might feel in relationship to our loved ones' gratifying experience in any context.
Because we realized that a lot of people were starting to use the word compersion in broader context than just consensual non-monogamy. We broke down that definition to cover these bases that we were observing in our research. There hasn't been a ton of controversy, no one really has written to us and said like, "This is wrong," but I will say I did discuss it with a few other colleagues who were not a fan of the three-pronged definition and wanted us to stick more to the traditional definition for simplicity's sake.
Dedeker: Really? I see. I see.
Jase: That's really interesting that you went with the three-pronged definition for it, and at least personally, I really like that because I think my concern when people discuss compersion is that it is such a useful concept to apply in lots of other areas of life besides just this one about intimate, usually sexual relationships that a partner is having with somebody else, because it's still a concept that we don't have a word for, and it is really useful for that. I'm personally excited to hear that you also included that as part of your definition so that we can have a sense of I'm talking about compersion either specifically in this context or I can use it in a more broader context.
Marie: Well, I'm glad I got the Jase endorsement on that one.
Emily: Has anyone out there ever said to you or tried to convince you that compersion isn't actually a real thing or it isn't actually attainable? I feel like perhaps sort of a layperson or somebody who isn't as entrenched in non-monogamy as perhaps the four of us are or a lot of your colleagues, someone like that might come and say, "You know what? I don't really believe in compersion."
Marie: If I rewind to the beginning of me conducting research on compersion at my university, I encountered a lot of skepticism. There were a lot of professors who told me I would have a hard time finding participants for my research because they didn't think that barely anyone would feel such a thing or experience such a thing. While I was skeptical of their skepticism because I knew that wasn't true, and once I put out a call for participants, I needed 20 and I got about 65 people wanting to participate.
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Marie: After that, it was easy for me to say to those people who were skeptical like, "Look, this is a thing. There's a lot of people who are experiencing it, who want to talk about it." That was the point of my research, was to document it and just put this argument to rest that it doesn't exist.
Dedeker: You didn't have any advisors or anybody who were skeptical enough to try to dissuade you entirely from doing the research? Because I could see that being something, right? Like, they're so convinced that you're not going to have a big enough sample size that they try to convince you that this isn't even really something worth looking at, right?
Marie: Right. I was lucky. I was fortunate that I was in a department where my advisor, Jorge Ferrer, who wrote the book Love and Freedom, was my advisor and he was very supportive. Then from there, I was able to find other committee members who were also on board and supportive. I think I really lucked out with my university and the people I encountered.
Emily: Excellent.
Jase: A common definition that was used early on about compersion is describing it as the opposite of jealousy, but that has not really tracked with our experiences of it, and it doesn't seem to track with your research either. Many people will say, "I can feel compersion and also jealousy at the same time rather than it being an opposite." In your book, you talk about the idea of non-mononormative jealousy. Can you tell us what does that mean and what is non-mononormative jealousy by contrast?
Marie: Yes, thank you for that. Yes, totally right. Jealousy and compersion can and often do coexist. I even coined a term with my colleague Joli Hamilton, who's a jealousy researcher, to describe that state of tension that people often will be in when they really want to be compersive and they have a compersive side of them but they also have a jealous side of them and these parts are fighting it off. We coined the word comperstruggle to talk about that heat of tension in between.
A non-mononormative approach to jealousy, to me, is very important to experiencing compersion, because while mononormativity is the assumption that monogamy is the only real way to love. It's the only morally sound and healthy way to have romantic relationships. When you step out of mononormativity, you start seeing the world and emotions that you might experience in relationships a little bit differently. In mononormativity, jealousy would be an indicator that something is wrong in the relationship, that maybe your partner did something that was wrong.
Maybe they looked at someone else with googly eyes, and oh my gosh, now they are the villain. You're not supposed to have desire for someone else. In a non-mononormative situation, like in consensual non-monogamy or CNM, you might interpret jealousy or jealous feelings differently. When they come up, typically people who are non-monogamous will start interrogating those feelings and trying to identify what is the message there, what's the intelligence behind those feelings? What do those feelings need from me?
Do they need reassurance from myself, from my partner? Do I need to work out their meanings and can I also have a certain tolerance, a certain habituation, a certain understanding that maybe I'm going to feel jealousy sometimes and compersion sometimes or both at the same times and that's okay. It doesn't actually mean necessarily that something is wrong with my relationship. I think that's important to have that approach to jealousy in order to allow compersion to flourish either with the jealousy or also outside of it.
Emily: Is it, do you think, possible for somebody who is mononormative to experience compersion or to even have an understanding of what that is? I think all these concepts can still be really beneficial for somebody who maybe is on the relationship escalator or who is in more of a heteronormative, mononormative type of relationship and yet what you laid out felt to me almost a little bit more like, "Oh, the people who are really only going to get this are those who are not normative or who are having relationships that are more non-monogamous or polyamorous."
Marie: Well, in my research, I focused on non-monogamy. That's what that research and my book really cover, but I would say that in monogamous or mononormative relationships, compersion is still very relevant. I would love to do more research on it in the future, but what I will say is that I think it has to do with our definitions of love and what we think love is in any given relationship. For example, a monogamous couple where one person really love football and the other person doesn't.
Sometimes it can create a little bit of jealousy, or let's say one person is envious of how much time and energy the other person puts into their job or business. The idea is not to necessarily just get over it and not have a conversation about it, but to be able to be on the other person's team and really figure out what that means and really be a champion and rooting for their happiness and for their success. To me that's really relevant in all kinds of relationships from friendships, family relationships, et cetera.
Dedeker: The other question I want to ask though is, why is that so hard sometimes? I think that we've spent a lot of time talking about how when it comes to someone having multiple partners, there can be a lot that can get in the way of compersion. If the relationship doesn't feel secure. If you feel like somebody is getting something that you're not getting, or if you don't really want to be non-monogamous.
There's a lot of things that can get in the way of feeling compersive, but I'm also thinking about these situations that don't have anything to do with multiple partners, how sometimes, I don't know, there can still be a sense of threat if you feel like a partner is giving a lot of time and attention to something else or if they get, I don't know, a work promotion that some people may not automatically knee jerk feel incredibly happy for their partner's success. I was wondering about, if we zoom out a little bit, what's been your understanding of what gets in the way of this in general?
Marie: I often say don't use compersion as a stick, use it as a flashlight. What I mean by that is don't use it as a stick to beat yourself with or beat your partners with as like, "Oh, you don't have compersion," or, "I don't have compersion. I'm a bad person," or, "You are a bad person," but when we use it as a flashlight to illuminate what is going on for us and for our relationships, it can be super helpful. The lack of compersion also, or the absence of compersion as this tool to really reflect about, are my needs not being met in this relationship or are my personal needs not being met?
Let's say that I'm envious or jealous of my partner who got a promotion, for example. It can illuminate the place in me that feels like I want to invest more in my career, or maybe I am putting a lot of self-worth weight on my career and is that what I want to do? Maybe I'm resentful to my partner because of something else and now I'm not happy for them because something else happened two weeks ago, and now I don't feel compersion. There is a lot to look at. I think it can be a fascinating lens to look at our relationships from.
Dedeker: Yes, I think that Emily and I have had this conversation a lot because we both have a history of, at least I think from our perspective, having partners who just don't have as much hustle and drive as the both of us do. I mean I'll include the three of us in that actually, because I think that's something that unites all three of us, is a lot of this over functioning and giving it 125% all the time.
I know for myself, if I've had partners who maybe arguably actually have a pretty good work-life balance or actually really good at resting, relaxing, switching off from work, I know for myself I've often struggled to feel happy for that person. When I think about that flashlight metaphor, it's true. There's often a lot of different things that can be going on in that situation, but I think for me it very much highlights my own difficulty in letting myself freaking chill out for once, I suppose.
Marie: Well, that makes four of us.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Marie: I have definitely experienced that also with a partner who has things like paid time off or vacations. Things that I chose not to have because I love being an entrepreneur, but then I still get envious or jealous when I see those things in my face and I have to really recommit to my path.
Emily: That's a great way of looking at it. Just recommitting. Again, yes, shining a light on the things that maybe we're not doing and instead of looking at it as resentment or this person should be doing more of what I deem as acceptable looking inward and saying, "Well, maybe I should be the one to change my habits a little bit."
Jase: Before we go on, I want to give a quick shout out to our amazing community members in our Discord and our Facebook group. These are all people who are part of our private discussion group tier on Patreon. These communities are such cool places where people are actually there to support each other and listen and have constructive conversations, which feels like it's a rarer and rarer thing to find on the internet these days. It's just been an incredibly inspiring community to be able to be part of.
Our Discord server is really cool because there are channels for all sorts of different topics. Everything from Work talk to crafts, to parenting, to being polyamorous when you're over 40. All sorts of different topics as well as some channels where you can talk about games and just have fun with fellow Multiamory listeners. Most importantly, it helps us support this show and keep this going and make it available for free for everybody out there every week in the world.
This is also made possible by our sponsors on this show. If you take a moment, check them out. If they seem interesting to you, use our promo codes or use our links. Those are in our episode description as well. That will directly help support this show and keep it going as well. Thank you so much. One of our favorite adages on this show or little sayings, in fact, we even had a song made about exactly this, which is don't weaponize this shit. Anytime we're talking about a tool or some kind of communication hack or something like that, we'll often put in this reminder of don't weaponize this shit. Don't use this against someone.
The point is this is to be used for good. This is to be used to help your communication, not to show the other person how they're doing it wrong. I feel like compersion is ripe for that, for getting used against someone, especially if we equate feeling compersion with being a good non-monogamous partner. Therefore, if you're not doing or saying those things, you're bad. Did you find that in your research and what did you learn about that?
Marie: That's an interesting one because I did not exactly learn that in my research. At the beginning, when I interviewed people as part of my PhD, I mostly heard the glorified stories of compersion. I think that can be a pitfall of academic research because people are self-selecting. They want to give non-monogamy a good name and they are not necessarily showing the darkest parts of it. I learned about how compersion would get weaponized through my coaching practice, because people would come in maybe with their partner, maybe without telling me that there was a big problem because their partner would not feel compersion for them.
Dedeker: It's like we've got to bring it to Dr. Marie, the compersion doctor-
Marie: Exactly.
Dedeker: -to fix them.
Jase: Fix our compersion.
Marie: Exactly.
Dedeker: Oh, no, then they're weaponizing you too.
Marie: I had to tell some people like, "Listen, compersion should not be the goal here. You have to fix your relationship first. You have to have equal or healthy power dynamics. You have to respect each other. You have to not be poly under duress. You can't be coercing each other into stuff. Let's talk about that before we talk about compersion."
Dedeker: That seems like a good segue to talk about this dual control model of compersion that you propose. It's inspired by or seems to very closely mirror the dual control model of sexual or arousal response. In short, at least my understanding of the dual control model around sexual response is the idea that there's behaviors, there's mindsets, there's contexts, there's environments that can help to push on the gas pedal towards sexual response or sexual arousal. Then there's also things that push on the brake pedal away from sexual arousal. In your estimation, compersion may work in a very similar way. What can you tell us about the factors that may step on those gas pedals for people versus stepping on the brake pedal?
Marie: Thank you so much for asking. I was so excited when I realized that this could be conceptualized as a dual control model because I think it just makes a lot of sense. It's not like people either are compersive or not. It's more about the context and what is happening in their individual, relational, and social context. I'll just run you through those factors.
In the individual category, there's the ideological commitment to CNM values. That means just being in full consent with yourself about being in non-monogamy to begin with. Not being there because you really can't say no to your partner because you're too afraid to lose them or being poly under duress, like having a clear agentic why. The second factor would be self-relationship or security within self. That covers things like self-worth, self-love, feeling solid within yourself. Like, okay, if your partner was to go away, you would be sad, but you wouldn't die from it. Your life wouldn't be over as a person.
Also, are your personal needs met? Meaning, are you eating, are you sleeping? How are your hormones? There's a lot that goes into this kind of self-care or having your own needs met category that will definitely play on that accelerator and brake. Even from day to day, people tell me like, "Well, one day if I feel like I'm feeling great and I'm ready to take over the world, and I had a promotion at work, I'm going to be very compersive, but if I'm not, if I had a big repair on my car and I feel broke, and I feel tired and sleep-deprived, I'm not going to feel compersion." The same, maybe everything else being equal.
Dedeker: Can I just jump in just to say, I so appreciate that distinction because I know I've experienced this. I've had many clients who've experienced this. Maybe they have a partner who's going away on a beach vacation with another partner and they're trying to negotiate, "Do you want me to send you some pictures or give you updates on how it's going or whatever?"
The partner that's being asked that is like, "I don't know, because there are some days where I may have the capacity to absolutely love all your beach vacation photos. Then there are some days where that's going to be the last thing that I want to look at," but then people feel the need to be so clear and definite about it. I appreciate talking about the fact that there is a piece of this that's a little bit, could be day-to-day.
Marie: The relational factors, to move on to the other ones, are first, the health of the relationship and feeling security within your relationship with your partner. That means how bonded are you? How secure do you feel with them? Is there an abundance or a sense of saturation of love and affection and resourcing that allows you to then feel more generous when it comes to them giving their time and resources to someone else? Next is your rapport with your metamours. Recent research has actually shown that this might be the most impactful factor of all the factors.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Marie: It is like, how do you feel about them? Do you like them? Do you trust them? Do you think they're cool, or do you think they're a little bit too cool and that's threatening?
Jase: Cool, but not too cool. They've got to be just cool enough.
Marie: Exactly. There's a sweet spot. I like them, but they don't make me feel bad about myself. That can be a sweet spot for a compersion. Like, "Okay, great. I really want my partner to be with this metamour. That gives me joy, or at least I have attitudinal compersion for that, but that other person, no, no, don't be with them because I'm not supportive of that."
Dedeker: Interesting. I think I've had experiences sometimes in the past, or maybe I would call it a pre-compersion or a pre-compersive attitude towards somebody. Sometimes I've had friends or acquaintances where what may go through my head is like, "Oh, this person was so cool. Wow, if my partner dated them, that would be so cool." Not that I'm trying to play like, Barbies with anybody or anything like that.
This only really actually played out for me in reality once years and years ago, where I had a partner who came to me and said, "Hey, actually, there's this friend of yours, this mutual friend of ours that I was actually thinking of asking out on a date, but I don't know if that'd be weird for you or what." I was like, "Oh my gosh, she's awesome. Please, that's so great." I don't know, I guess I never really thought to label that as a pre-compersive experience with someone who wasn't even a metamour, but I already had that rapport with.
Marie: Yes, anticipatory compersion. I love that. Moving on to the third one in the relational category, it is the perception of benefits received from your partner's other relationships. Basically, in other word, feeling grateful that your partner is dating that person. Why would you be grateful versus not grateful? It depends on the context, but many people talked about things like, "Well, it makes me feel less guilty that I'm dating other people, so that is kind of a relief," or, "I have the relief of not feeling like I have to fulfill all of my partner's needs because someone else is also caring for them or taking them camping or taking them dancing or doing the things that I don't necessarily want to do and I'm not competing for that spot, so that's a plus."
Maybe it's allowing me and my partner to feel more emotionally in integrity because we feel like our integrity is to be non-monogamous and this provides us with more alignment and a sense of authenticity. Maybe there's personal growth for me or for my partner that I also get to benefit from. There can be a lot of things that are positives or are adding to the relational ecosystem versus feeling like this relationship is taking away from the relationship ecosystem.
Jase: I'm just finding myself thinking about the definition and how these things might apply in other situations than just a partner's other intimate relationships. I can see a lot of similarities, at least I could imagine them. Like if your partner or a friend gets a promotion and you think what they do is cool and you think that they like what they do and it means they're going to have more money and they're going to feel good, so great, this is good for me, versus they got a promotion at maybe a job that I don't think they should be doing or I don't like that they're doing or that's going to take them away from me more or something that I perceive more of a negative perception of benefits in that.
I'd say also relationship health too of, could this be a threat to my relationship if now they're more interested in this other success that they've had than they are in me? I'm just trying to imagine how these might map to that. I know that's not what your research was focused on, but I'm just thinking about how this could apply.
Marie: Yes, absolutely. I think it's totally applicable. What you said brought the question up of is compersion always this selfless thing or can it be also utilitarian?
Emily: It feels like it's collaborative almost. That's the word that went through my head, that it's not just altruistic, which I think a lot of people automatically go there, that, oh, it's about others and giving and understanding that other people can have amazing things that are happening in their life. While that is all well and good, a lot of what you just laid out feels like there has to be more than just selflessness involved. It has to be an ecosystem in order to thrive within a relationship or especially within multiple relationships.
Marie: Oh my gosh, you nailed it and I love that word and that context, that collaborative. I feel like that totally bridges the gap between what we would think of as this altruistic thing and this utilitarian aspect that is just human. Thank you for that. Actually, talking about this ecosystem, that leads me to the last factor, which is the social factor, and that is the community aspect. I think that is oftentimes not talked about in a lot of poly or CNM representation, or at least not specifically talked enough about, because if people have a very supportive CNM community, they have great role models, they have great media to listen to, like your podcast and books to read, like our books, people will feel more supported.
They will have people and resources to turn to that will validate their choice as a non-monogamous person. They will not feel so alone, and they will have more tools to navigate these terrains. I think that's really also supportive of compersion. Another aspect of that is people learn by example. If they have community and they see compersion modeled in others, then they're more likely to experience it, because we do learn by watching others.
Dedeker: It strikes me that I think it's important for us to have compersion modeled in its reality, because I think that, yes, like you were saying, especially in the first wave of research, where it's like all these people self select, the people who maybe already have compersion in abundance and have it on lock and they're ready to share that with the world, that of course we have that model.
I also, I don't know, I think there is something important for there being more stories and more validation of these messier, more complicated, more nuanced sides to compersion. That it can come and go, it can be context dependent. It's not necessarily a fixed state. I do think talking about this, and of course, doing this research that gets so much more specific about it, ironically, I think opens up more channels to compersion, even if it doesn't look all this one particular way.
Marie: Absolutely. In this kind of last wave of research that I've done, I think my narrative about it has become a lot more nuanced and more mature and more allowing for those complex, messy situations. I think one tool or one concept that's been super helpful to conceptualize all this is the distinction between embodied compersion and attitudinal compersion, which I talk about at length in my book. It's the idea that even if you're not feeling compersion in your body or emotionally even, you can still have an ethic of compersion.
That really counts. You can still orient yourself towards compersion in your relationships behaviorally and attitudinally. That doesn't mean you're going to be happy, happy, happy all the time, because that's another pitfall, is that toxic positivity or Pollyanna version of compersion, but you can still really ask the questions collaboratively, like Emily was saying, what does it mean for us to all thrive together and to be on the same team?
Emily: It makes me feel like it's a fake it till you make it situation initially, or just even if you put it out there attitudinally and you have here written down, it starts at jealousy and then goes to neutrality, and then it's your attitude, and then eventually maybe you get to that embodied point in which compersion is just part of who you are now and it's much easier for you.
Dedeker: I don't think it's a leveling up system, necessarily, because I feel like I've seen that can be a cycle for some people. People can dip in and out between feeling jealous, feeling neutral, feeling that sudden rush of embodied compersion then it goes away, but they still feel attitudinal, and then something gets triggered, then we're back to jealousy. It seems like it's all in the mix there.
Marie: You're totally right. I maybe will come up eventually with a different schema. In my book, I talk about the spectrum of compersion, where it's this linear representation of jealousy, benevolent neutrality, attitudinal compersion, and embodied compersion, but it really is not a hierarchy of morality or a hierarchy of time passing and you getting to more and more embodied compersion necessarily, although it can be like a lot of people told me, when I started my non monogamous journey, I was mostly in the jealousy zone. Now, a few years down the line, I'm mostly in the compersion zone, but people do jump around. There is a fluidity to that.
Again, that context and that accelerator versus brake model really reminds us that, "I can be very compersive about this situation today and very not compersive about this other situation tomorrow, and I haven't changed. It's the context that has changed."
Jase: I'm curious about that a little bit more. You mentioned that one of your findings was that the rapport with metamours, how you feel about them, seems like it may be the strongest predictor of the six factors. I feel like from my own experience and just talking to other people, I feel like the feeling of agency, that ideological piece, also seems pretty big. The people who go into this of, "Yes, I believe in the principles of consensual non-monogamy," can maybe get to the attitudinal compersion, even if they're not emotionally feeling it, but just this values-wise, I really agree with this and so I want this to work, and I don't want to stop my partner from having these other relationships.
Whereas people that are a little more on the fence or, "I'm trying this out. I'll see. Maybe it's fine." Maybe it's not under duress, exactly, but they're not so sold on the ideological, "Yes, I believe in this," that I've seen people really struggle in that situation. I was just curious of the other six, if you noticed any of these being particularly strong or any that are less likely to change. That one feels like it would change less on a day-to-day basis than some of the others. Just curious if you noticed any trends with any of that in your research.
Marie: That's such a good point. The people who are really in a state of attitudinal compersion and have decided like, "Yes, I want to be non-monogamous. I'm doing this, aligning with my values," et cetera, but have a hard time actually feeling at ease emotionally, end up in my office, probably in Dedeker's office too, of like, "Okay, I'm on board, but, oh, God, this is hard. What do I do with my nervous system? What do I do with my heart? This feels really difficult." There's a lot of those people around. You're right, I think that is not something that can change maybe as rapidly as some of the other things.
I think the sense of security within self, especially when it comes to having your own needs met. I might feel crappy after a meal because I ate something that doesn't really work with my digestive system, and now my emotions are not what I want them to be. I'm just very, very negative. Things can be so fluid in that arena, or maybe one day I wake up and I don't feel beautiful, I don't feel cool, I feel like a failure. Things can change-
Jase: Yes, definitely.
Marie: -quite a bit. With that goes our emotions. I think it's important to, again, use all of this fluctuation to eliminate, like, who am I and how do I roll, but also not being a victim of our emotions, so to speak, and still being able to show up in a supportive way with our partners. That's, I think, how I would reconcile this whole everything is so fluid and everything can change all the time. That can feel a little bit disempowering, but the gift with this attitudinal compersion is that we can work on that. We can work on cultivating that without having to feel like, "Oh, I'm the bad person because I'm not feeling that specific emotion."
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Emily: I want to talk a little bit about what you call erotic compersion. Hearing that, that sounds like a gateway into compersion for some people where perhaps you listen to a partner talking about a sexual experience they had with someone else, and then it turns you on and you're like, "Oh, yes, that sounds really sexy." I can understand why that was so amazing for you. I want to talk about that. Also, does it really count as compersion if it, again, is a little bit more internal and it's doing something for you, maybe not necessarily that you're saying, "Oh, great job, partner, that you had such a wonderful experience," but rather, "I am having this experience of kind of getting off on your getting off."
Marie: Right. I have a whole section of that in my book that's titled, those erotic compersion count as compersion. I go into this rabbit hole comparing actually compersion and non-monogamy, or actually specific experiences of erotic compersion in consensually non-monogamous relationships with cuckolding. That came to my attention again because of my coaching practice where some people who were into cuckolding would come to me and talk to me about compersion and say, "This is the same thing. I get really turned on when my wife has sex with someone else and I get to watch."
It brought up that question of, "Are we talking about the same thing?" For them, they were talking about it in ways that they saw themselves represented by the term compersion. I went down the rabbit hole of literature on cuckolding and my answer to that is it depends on the situation and it depends on whether the pleasure or the positive empathy is other focused, to a large extent, or is it really self-focused?
Because for some people, the turn on is really other focused. It really requires that their partner be totally on board and has great time and be in their full agency. That to me would qualify as compersion or more closely fit the definitions of compersion we've talked about. There are instances where the pleasure is really self-focused to the extent that they would really push their partner to go be with someone else sexually, just so that they can watch and just complain if their partner is not willing to do that, which is ironically kind of anti compersion. It's not about their pleasure, it's about your pleasure and that's another way that I think some people would weaponize the term.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Marie: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. I never thought about exactly that comparison, but that makes a lot of sense.
Marie: Well, I'm trying to think about it in a non-sexual, non-cuckolding context. What would be the closest proxy? I guess it's maybe if Jase, if I just can't stand to have you in the house anymore, you just get under my skin and so I'm really pushing you, please go spend the night at somebody else's house, even if you don't want to. Then when you're gone, maybe it doesn't matter to me whether you're having a good time or a bad time, it's just that you're gone and then I'm so happy that you have this other relationship that takes you away.
Maybe that doesn't quite compute or doesn't quite fall under the definition of compersion if it's really that I really don't care whether you're having a good time or you're having a good relationship, or if this is something you even want to do. It's just about my joy at having you out of the house, which is not true, by the way, in case you're worried about that.
Jase: Oh, well, thank you.
Marie: Great example. Yes. I don't think that could qualify as compersion
Dedeker: Okay. Interesting, but that is so fascinating that that particular example, the cuckolding example, how I could see it could go either way. I really want to make sure that we have time to talk about the research that you completed about social positionality and how that can affect one's experience of compersion. Mega fascinating section of your book. I want to ask you to just share some highlights that you found in your research, even though you could probably share so many fascinating things.
Marie: Yes, thank you. Gosh, it's been a really interesting year of researching those things. What I focused on were factors of age, disability status, race, socioeconomic status, gender, and sexual orientation in relationship with Compersion. When I first started this research, and I know it doesn't cover all identities because I could spend the next 10 years doing this, but I kind of assumed that people with marginalized identities would have a harder time in general experiencing compersion. I think that was the assumption that I went in with. I was quite surprised that sometimes there's very counterintuitive things at play. I will give you a few examples.
One that was super fascinating was with age, and I interviewed a lot of people, but also Kathy Labriola, who is an expert on aging and polyamory. What I discovered is that in general, it seems like people in upper age groups, like 65 and over, have more propensity to experience compersion than folks in younger age brackets. Again, I didn't do a large sample study, so I don't have very quantitative conclusions, but from the qualitative study that I did. That would be because of a couple of factors. One, people in those age bracket oftentimes have more experience with non-monogamy. They've kind of worked out the kinks and they also have worked out the specific issues with their metamours.
Oftentimes they would be in very stable relationship ecosystems, maybe they were very jealous or triggered 10 years ago or 20 years ago, but this person, their metamour, for example, just kind of outlived those insecurities and they
Jase: What a way to say that they outlived those insecurities. I love that.
Emily: Just waited long enough.
Marie: It's like, "Okay, well, I was not able to scare them away, so might as well include them as part of the family now." Right, let's get over our comparison and competition and move on.
Jase: It's funny because I remember early on in the days of this podcast, that was something that I would talk about a lot when it came to not other partners or metamours, but just other people in your life, like family members, taking your non-monogamous relationship seriously is sometimes the only thing you can do is just stay together long enough or keep doing this yourself long enough that eventually you outlive all their skepticism or their concerns or things like that.
Marie: Yes, exactly. Actually I have a funny story to share. One person who was in their mid 70s was telling me, "Well, compersion can also happen after death."
Jase: Oh.
Dedeker: Goodness.
Marie: Yes. He said he went for a funeral. One of his friends in the poly community had died and they were standing around the body, the casket, and they were saying good things, the kind of good things that people say about people who died. Like, "Oh, he had a great character, he was such a hard worker," blah, blah, blah. Then he says that the women who had been his lovers start talking about how he could give really good head. Oh, yes, he could really give head and the widow starts smiling and laughing and they were actually complimenting him for his sexual abilities-
Jase: Wow.
Marie: -and experiencing this compersion.
Emily: That is a cool story.
Jase: That's amazing.
Dedeker: My heart. Well, I hope that when I die, people will stand around talking about how I could give really good head at the very least, if there's anything I hope to leave this world with.
Marie: On the tombstone.
Emily: She gave good head.
Jase: Don't we all? Yes.
Marie: Another really cool highlight was that people in upper age ranges as well as people sometimes with financial difficulties, you would imagine that this would diminish compersion even based on my model. I talk about financial autonomy as being so important for feeling compersive, but I learned that people sometimes who have financial difficulties have more to gain by being in polyamorous families than people who can be completely independent. There's, again, this impact of community and mutual sharing that sometimes when you need it, because you have a marginalized identity or hardship, you can actually be super grateful that your metamours are there to kind of help pay the rent or help with childcare or help with elder care, et cetera. That was a really big finding.
Jase: Yes. Wow. That's fascinating. Just how much these things in some ways track with our intuition and in other ways can go completely against what we might guess going in. I hope that that would be hopeful for listeners to realize, yes, okay, it's not just that I'm stuck with this being hard or difficult based on whatever factor of my life, but that maybe there's room within any of these for different outcomes.
Marie: Exactly. Exactly. Again, it's so contextual. Another example that I'll give you came from a thought partnership with Lavitaloca Sawyers that you've had on the podcast also recently, who's a really great black poly activist and educator. I interviewed her specifically about compersion and race. I knew she would have a lot to say. The thing that she shared with me is that, well, when you have a marginalized identity, including a marginalized racial identity, you've been told by society that you are worthless as a human being. From that stance, you might come to non-monogamy with more insecurities, especially if your metamours are people who have more racial privileged.
Your metamour is white and you're Black. There's a lot of different variations of that. Just for simplicity's sake, you might feel insecure based on that. She also shared that for some people, they go the other way. They say that I'm not going to believe those messages that internalized oppression that I've received from the moment I was born in this society.
I'm actually going to prove them wrong. I'm going to exercise this positive defiance that she calls compersion as an act of resistance and actually live from a place of abundance and say, "You know what? I'm going to go into this paradigm of sharing and really come from a place of wanting the best for others, not from a place of scarcity, from a place of abundance." That can be a practice to heal that internalized oppression.
Not to say that these things are easy to do, because there's also the flip side of if you have a marginalized identity, whether it's from race, disability status, socioeconomic status, sometimes you don't have access to the kind of poly community that would really help you get to those easeful emotional states, or sometimes there's just more barriers to entry or more risk if you were to be outed as non-monogamous, maybe you can't afford to be outed because if you lose your job, you just can't pay the rent. Things like that. There's two sides to the story.
The main things that would mitigate whether a person would catalyze some of these marginalized identity toward more compersion or less compersion, would be the factor of whether they have access to a supportive community and also their willingness to defy social conventions. That would show up also very much in the sexual orientation category, where people who had already come out as queer, for example, had already defied heteronormativity. When you defy one social convention, it becomes a little bit easier to defy others, psychologically at least, not necessarily financially or otherwise, but psychologically you might already feel like you don't belong to the mainstream culture. There's already an ease to questioning monogamy as a system of oppression.
Jase: That makes a lot of sense. I would love to turn things toward some practical takeaways and things that people can apply in their lives as we're getting toward the end of this episode. We just wanted to ask, for you personally, is there anything from your research that has changed how you show up in your personal relationships or things you've found to be particularly helpful for clients?
Marie: Yes, in my personal relationships, I think it's really encouraged me to live with more integrity. When I experience my petty envies and jealousies and I go with that in my head, or I don't treat someone well because of it and I know it's my shit, I am just ultra-aware that there are options. I sometimes think about my research participants and what they've done to overcome their own stuff, their own competitiveness and so on.
It's just really encouraging me to be more compersive in all my relationships, even if it's attitudinal compersion. In terms of my clients, definitely, because no one has all the experiences. I can't have all of the experiences that all my clients are having. The more research I do, the more points of references I have. When people come in with certain dynamics or situations or bottlenecks in their relationships, then I just am much better informed.
Jase: Absolutely. I found that to be so true for us as well with hearing from our listeners and any time that we've worked individually with people or met people at events, is just having all these years of collecting different variations of stories and seeing what's positive and negative, it just helps give a little more context for it. I feel we get so much of that in our society for more normative relationships because we have all these examples from TV and film and books of good and bad and we get to have a feeling of picking and choosing what we like and what we resonate with.
I think just building up the amount of information we have and the number of stories we get to hear about. I hope that for people listening, just getting to hear this range of compersive experiences and attitudes and things, even that might help some people to feel a little more freed up. There might be more room within the compersion space to find where it works for them.
Marie: Totally.
Emily: Are you hoping to see anything else in this field or what are you hoping to see next, and do you still have burning questions about compersion or do you feel like I figured it all out? This is basically as far as I can go.
Marie: Oh my gosh, there is so much room for research in this field. I feel like I really only scratched the surface. Just the whole social lenses on compersion and social positionality, that was really just me scratching the surface. I think there's so much room for further research in that department. Also, the question of, is compersion altruistic or utilitarian and how do we reconcile those things? The different factors and how much they weigh. Really testing that compersion model that I came up with with bigger samples of people, that would be really great. Yes, it's pretty infinite.
Of course, as we talked about, just studying compersion in non-romantic situations I think would be super intriguing and valuable, because really, I came into this work, yes, because I was questioning mononormativity, but because also I was just a student of love and I wanted to know what it means to really love one another and how do we not get caught up in our competition of one another? That is not just non-monogamous discourse. That is something that we can apply everywhere and should apply everywhere.
Dedeker: A student of love. I like that as a phrase. It's so poetic. Oh. Marie, as always, it's been a pleasure. Hopefully we can have you-- I'm sure we will have you on again in the future as this research continues to unfold and develop. How can our listeners find out more about you and your work?
Marie: Folks can go to whatiscompersion.com. It's the easiest way to find me. There you can book a free 30 minute introductory session if you're interested in working with me as a coach. You can also download a compersion worksheet, which is a tool that I developed from my research to help you self-assess what are the strengths and the bottlenecks in your compersion ecosystem. That is super helpful to bring into coaching or therapy or your own self work to know what might need more attention in my whole relationship ecosystem. Folks can also follow me on Instagram @loveinsightdating and Facebook and LinkedIn and all the places.