Book Review - What Is Compersion?
Compersion is a new concept - so new that as I’m writing this, my spellcheck keeps telling me I’ve misspelled the word “compression.” Traditionally it’s described as the opposite of jealousy - a feeling of joy or satisfaction at the prospect of your partner’s other relationships.
Given it’s novelty, compersion hasn’t been studied much. Marie Thouin set out to change that with her book “What Is Compersion?” It is largely based on her Ph.D. study, wherein she conducted interviews with 17 nonmonogamous subjects. Additionally, for the book, she conducted interviews with five additional subjects and seven “CNM [consensual nonmonogamy] experts and community leaders.”
Thouin also makes it clear that, while it’s fine for experiencing compersion to be a personal goal that people freely choose, not every CNM relationship needs to include compersion, and using compersion as the ideal can slide into toxic positivity. Pressuring partners to feel compersion during moments of emotional pain is unhelpful, and many relationships may be served better by having “benevolent neutrality” as a more realistic and achievable goal.
The book officially has six sections though I found that practically, there are three main topics, each taking up roughly a third of the text. The first topic was the one suggested by the title - what is compersion? I found this section to be the strongest. Thouin accurately and comprehensively describes compersion, how it feels, and how it works. I found myself nodding along the entire time.
The second section was about how to cultivate compersion, offering practical advice about how to manage your relationships to allow compersion to arise and flourish. I found this section less compelling. The advice mostly came from her study participants and the so-called experts she interviewed, and I’m sure it works for a particular type of person or relationship, but (as I expand on below), the advice was kind of hit-or-miss for me. Lots of it was good, but I have some strong disagreements with some of it, and I feel that important perspectives were left out.
The third section was, as seems perfunctory in all modern books about nonmonogamy, about identity politics. Consensual nonmonogamy is still very left-coded, so it’s nearly impossible to find a book about nonmonogamy that doesn’t also include far-left politics. As I said in my review of Polysecure:
Much of it seems mostly like an excuse to engage in left-wing activism, which is disappointing because up until this section, there was very little politics. Thanks to this section, I’ll have to be cautious about recommending this book to anyone who doesn’t share [the author Jessica] Fern’s views on structural discrimination, feminism, or climate change.
Thouin’s political biases are less evident than Fern’s, but it’s impossible to read the section on “social positionality” without noticing that there are a lot of background assumptions regarding things like race, gender, and other identity categories which reflect one side in the culture war and are alienating to anyone who hasn’t chosen that side (e.g. the vast majority of the country). It’s disappointing because I largely read these books to determine whether to recommend them to others, and the unnecessary injection of politics limits who I can recommend it to. I wish authors would understand just how off-putting this type of language is to anyone who isn’t on the far left of the political spectrum. Currently the most discussed styles of nonmonogamy (though notably not swinging) tend to attract people with very liberal politics, but if we ever want to expand the prevalence and acceptance of CNM, we’re going to have to avoid this kind of strong outgroup signaling.
I should add here my biases - Thouin is an online friend of mine, I like her very much, and she was kind enough to send me an advanced copy of the book (though I failed to get my review published before the publication date). I don’t feel as though I pulled any punches here and did my best to give my honest thoughts, but it’s possible that I tried to interpret things more generously than I would have with a different author I have no connection with.
Thouin’s Theory of Compersion
Thouin somewhat buries the lede, saving her “comprehensive model of compersion” until 200 pages into her book. Here I’m going to start with it:
According to Thouin, compersion is the combination of (a) positive empathy for your partner; and (b) gratitude for your partner’s other relationships. These feelings are created through the steps in the flowchart above.
The crux of the system is two elements:
CNM meaning-making, which refers to the CNM-supportive, and therefore compersion-supportive, narratives a person applies to their extradyadic experiences; and
Lack of threat, which refers to a favorable ratio between individual and relational security and perceived threat from a partner’s relationship with another person.
Thouin proposes that the compersion system has an accelerator (“excitatory system”) and a brake (“inhibitory system”). A person’s attitudes and beliefs about nonmonogamy and relationships form a constant background pressure pushing a person in one way or another. Immediate circumstances of individual relationships or situations cause more acute pressure, demanding a person’s immediate attention and slamming on the accelerator or the brake.
Compersion vs. Jealousy
Before getting to the ins & outs of compersion, Thouin devotes the first chapter of the book to jealousy. She acknowledges that jealousy is a normal and natural feeling, but points out how our responses to it are culturally influenced. Around the world, there are a number of cultures that see sexual jealousy as shameful and ridiculous, and they tend to experience it very differently. Monogamous culture “creates a moral justification for its institutional enforcement.” By viewing jealousy as the only possible response to outside intimacy, monogamous culture assigns shame and disapproval to anyone pursuing CNM.
If compersion became a more commonly known and available response to non- monogamy, compulsory monogamy and the moral arguments that maintain it would have little left to stand on.
Instead, Thouin promotes what she calls “non-mononormative jealousy.” This involves an unfortunate digression into evolutionary psychology (always a mistake), but basically just says that it’s ok to be jealous, but that doesn’t mean you have to control others or demand monogamy from your partner. She even suggests using a bit of jealousy as a “spice” in your relationships to spark strong passions for your partner(s).
She also points out that most of her interviewees “emphasized the importance and the benefits of normalizing jealousy and its expression within CNM relationships, to avoid compounding shame or secrecy around already challenging feelings.” This is an important point because a lot of popular portrayals of nonmonogamy make it seem as though people in CNM relationships don’t experience normal levels of jealousy, which in my experience isn’t true. Rather, as Thouin notes, nonmonogamy forces you to deal “openly and directly” with your jealous feelings.
All participants expressed a sense of personal responsibility and agency vis- a-vis jealousy. For most participants, this meant doing the work of identifying and understanding the source of their jealousy, as well as learning to self- soothe, self- regulate, and replace shame with compassion. At the relational level, it also meant strategizing with their partners to create more attachment security and reassurance, minimize specific triggers, get more of their needs met, and maintain relationship boundaries and agreements that would keep jealousy more manageable. In all cases, participants had developed a sense of proactive engagement, rather than avoidance, in relation to jealousy and its associated feelings.
Thouin proposes adopting jealousy researcher Joli Hamilton’s five-step framework for developing a non-mononormative relationship to jealousy:
Notice - pay attention to uncomfortable thoughts, sensations, or feelings of insecurity;
Name - admit the feeling of jealousy;
Narrate - “[reimagine] jealousy as a source of information without automatically presuming a relationship was in imminent danger;”
Navigate needs - determine what needs aren’t being met and how they can be addressed;
Nurture compersion - consciously cultivate compersion to counterbalance jealous feelings.
This advice seems… fine. I’m not sure how useful it is to do a whole formal five-step process. These do seems like the type of things people do to successfully navigate jealousy, but Step 4 seems to be doing most of the work. Navigating your needs is easier said than done, and is the entire subject of numerous books and essays.
Ok, but What Actually Is Compersion?
As shown in the above diagram, Thouin describes compersion as having two elements: positive empathy and gratitude.
Positive Empathy
Empathy is a familiar concept, but it’s mostly discussed in terms of negative feelings. Compersion involves positive empathy - feeling good when your partner feels good. Positive empathy can lead to “self-expansion”
Self- expansion theory… shows a connection between positive emotions and self–other overlap, suggesting that as people get closer emotionally, they begin to perceive the other as part of the self
This is exactly how I experience loving a person. It’s as if my sense of self expands to include the other person. Their well-being becomes my well-being. One of Thouin’s subjects described compersion as a similar feeling to watching a child open a gift, which I agree is similar. Positive empathy is normal and encouraged in that context, but can also be felt for intimate partners in the same way when they have positive experiences.
In a majority of positive social interactions, the value of positive empathy is not put into question. When someone we care about receives a promotion, falls in love, or achieves a personal goal, most people consider it emotionally appropriate to rejoice with them. However, if this person is our romantic partner, and they experience joy from an intimate relationship with somebody else—the socioemotional convention then quickly shifts from expecting positive empathy to anticipating painful feelings of jealousy, rage, betrayal, sadness, loss, or possessiveness.
Most of Thouin’s subjects saw positive empathy as an expression of love:
intimate compersion may simply be a natural extension of what most people understand as deep, devotional love—but without the expectation of sexual and romantic exclusivity.
I particularly appreciated this inclusion because the desire to cultivate positive empathy in all areas (not just intimate relationships) was a big reason I decided to try polyamory. To me, allowing your partner to see other people if they want to is a necessary component of loving a person. My experience of love is about empowering your partner, not locking them down.
Likewise, Thouin points out that an understanding of compersion can be helpful to all people, even those in monogamous relationships. It “is about cultivating greater alignment with one’s loved ones and being on the same team—which is a way of relating that transcends the distinction between monogamy and non- monogamy.” Being on the same team is something I’ve discussed many times, and in my opinion, is the key to a lasting relationship of any style.
Thouin veers a bit too much into metaphysics for my taste, describing positive empathy as
a departure from a Cartesian worldview that establishes the individual self as a fully separate and self-defining entity, and instead requires a deep experience of interconnectedness that allows for mutually beneficial, rather than zero-sum, outcomes. This is also akin to muditā, or sympathetic joy, in Buddhism.
Every so often, Thouin drifts into Buddhism, spirituality, or woo. I could have done without it, but it’s not too bad. She also discusses “erotic compersion” where the idea of a partner being with other partners is sexually exciting. There is some debate over whether this actually “counts” as compersion since’s it’s so self-directed, but Thouin feels, and I agree, that such lines are unclear at best and there’s no reason to think compersion isn’t real merely because it’s arousing.
Gratitude
The second element of compersion is gratitude. Much like erotic compersion, gratitude is not the kind of thing people generally think of as compersion, but I agree with Thouin that it’s an indispensable element. As the diagram above indicates, gratitude flows from the perception of benefits from a partner’s other relationships. Thouin identified several areas of gratitude that her subjects regularly mentioned:
Richer emotional and sexual life - the experience of nonmonogamy can be excellent and people often feel grateful to their partner(s) for being a part of it. Once of the most powerful emotions I experienced when I first opened my relationship was extreme gratitude for my partner’s willingness to try this lifestyle.
Richer social life - CNM tends to give you a more dynamic social life, including “deep friendships that did not confine people to the rigid normative boxes of either ‘a platonic friend’ or ‘The One.’” People in such relationships tend to appreciate the ability to “approach every relationship with fluidity and a sense of possibility, instead of being restricted to conventional categories and labels.”
Authentic emotional expression - the ability to be honest about your feelings for others and avoid suppressing them.
Freedom from fear, emotional congruence, and pride - feelings of relief or pride at embracing nonmonogamy.
Relief from guilt - specifically, guilt about wanting multiple relationships, but also guilt over not being able or willing to meet all of a partner’s needs.
Personal growth - many people felt that CNM encouraged them to self-actualize.
Enhanced relationship satisfaction.
Thouin argues that such feelings of gratitude toward one’s partner(s) and metamours is a necessary element of compersion. I can’t say she’s wrong. It’s much easier to feel joy about a situation if you feel it’s improving your life.
Attitudinal and Embodied Compersion
According to Thouin, compersion can be experienced in two separate ways: as a belief (attitudinal) or as an emotion (embodied). Attitudinal compersion is a voluntary stance you take where you decide that your partner’s other relationships are valuable to you. Attitudinal compersion is often easier to adopt than the embodied kind, simply because it’s much easier to choose your attitudes and beliefs than your emotions.
Embodied compersion is the one most people think of, where you feel genuine joy or positivity about your partner’s other relationships. According to Thouin,
it seems that embodied compersion is an enjoyable and fortunate experience when it arises, but not a prerequisite to harmonious CNM partnerships. However, partners adopting a compersive attitude is more fundamental. In other words, embracing an “ethic” of compersion, behaviorally and attitudinally, brings congruency and integrity to non- monogamy, without being dependent on the ups and downs of one’s emotions, moods, and changing relational dynamics.
This is also consistent with my experience. Feeling actual joy over your partner’s other relationship is great! But it’s not necessary for successful nonmonogamy. What’s necessary is the belief that your partner’s other relationships are valuable. If you really believe that, sometimes the feelings will follow and sometimes they won’t, but either way you’ll probably be fine.
Thouin proposes a compersion spectrum:
She cautions that people tend not to move along the spectrum linearly or stay in one spot permanently. While it’s common for people to progress in order from jealousy to embodied compersion, plenty of people move around more erratically or start with embodied compersion and develop the attitude later. She also cautions that “the spectrum is not meant to convey a hierarchy of emotions where embodied compersion is inherently ‘better’ or ‘more evolved’ than attitudinal compersion, neutrality, or jealousy.” This seems like kind of a silly thing to say. It’s up to each individual to decide what matters to them, and if someone decides that feeling compersion is more consistent with the person they want to be than feeling jealous, there’s no reason to tell them otherwise. Personally, my life is much better the less jealousy - and more compersion - I feel, so it makes sense to view it as “better” in some sense.
Relatedly, Thouin claims that “it is no more possible to rid oneself of jealousy than it would be to rid oneself of fear or sadness forever,” which… sure, that’s true. You can’t eliminate an emotion that’s a fundamental part of the human experience, and even if you could it would probably be a bad idea. But that doesn’t mean we can’t seek to feel less jealousy, fear, or sadness. If you feel that your feelings of fear or sadness are impacting your life negatively, it’s normal and healthy to try to change the way you react to things to feel less of them. It’s just as healthy to do so with jealousy. That doesn’t mean denying or suppressing your emotions (in fact, more often it requires embracing and fully experiencing them), but it does mean taking steps to proactively improve how you respond to challenges.
Thouin’s insistence that neither is “better” or “more evolved” strikes me as a way to avoid criticism from monogamous people. This is another thing you run into a lot if you read books about CNM. While it’s rare to find people claiming that CNM is “more evolved” than monogamy, there are countless critics who often accuse CNM advocates of claiming that. As a result, most writers feel the need to disclaim this attitude any time they say anything that could be interpreted as a value judgment. I find it aesthetically unappealing, but I suppose it helps deflect some criticism.
Thouin also claims that a person can exist at several places on the spectrum at once, and that it’s quite common for someone to feel jealousy and compersion together.
In all of these examples, the ratio between jealousy and compersion was typically high enough in either direction to yield “mostly compersive” or “mostly jealous” experience. However, in some cases, the tension between jealousy and compersion could heighten to the point where it would cause an inner struggle, or a “comperstruggle.”
Though I find the term “comperstruggle” pretty cringe, I agree that the line between jealousy and compersion is pretty thin and that they can be experienced concurrently.
How to Feel Compersion
The next section of the book is about how to go about fostering compersion in your relationships. This is somewhat in tension with the idea that compersion isn’t “better” and shouldn’t necessarily be a goal for everyone, but Thouin reiterates her view:
I reject the common assumption that everyone should attempt to feel compersion under every circumstance. Instead, what I have found is that not every situation lends itself to compersion. In some circumstances, folks may be better served aiming for benevolent neutrality than compersion. In other cases, unhealthy relational dynamics must be addressed and transformed before compersion can be accessible.
Thouin identified a number of factors that tend to promote compersion and whose absence tends to inhibit it, which I address individually below.
Ideological Commitment to CNM Values
Thouin begins by pointing out that the most important factor in feeling compersion is that you actually want to have an open relationship.
Full- hearted consent to a CNM relationship style was necessary for compersion to take place. One had to genuinely want to be non-monogamous in the first place and have self- driven motivations for doing so—as opposed to feeling pressured or coerced into CNM by a partner.
People who were able to clearly articulate the reason why they chose nonmonogamy had a much easier time feeling compersion. This is consistent with the idea that attitudinal compersion is a necessary element. Common reasons her subjects articulated were “pragmatism, ethics, politics, willingness to defy social conventions, sex positivity, and holding a non-mononormative stance toward jealousy.” One of her subjects specifically named Dan Savage as a common source for developing nonmonogamous attitudes, which… uh… guilty as charged.
Thouin found that a lack of commitment to CNM values manifested in three main ways:
Internalized mononormativity - a sense of entitlement to be jealous or possessive or a partner, disbelieving that a person can love multiple people at once, or just feeling that nonmonogamous relationships don’t work.
Poly Under Duress (which she abbreviates with the unfortunate “PUD”) - a feeling that you didn’t choose nonmonogamy from a place of “full- hearted consent, personal power, agency, and freedom.” Thouin clarified that not every “yes” needs to be a “hell yes,” and it’s fine to try things out of love for your partner, but the choice must be “conscious, clear and uncoerced.”
Couple privilege - while elevating existing or “primary” couples over newer ones, that can lead the newer partners to feel devalued, disposable, or dehumanized. Some of Thouin’s subjects were able to feel compersion within a couple-centric hierarchy, but it required “having a sense of mutual care grounded in the recognition of all partners’ complexity and uniqueness” and a lack of competition between partners.
I agree that this is a huge part of successful CNM relationships. If you’re not philosophically aligned with nonmonogamy, it’s not going to go well. Every conflict or challenge becomes evidence that nonmonogamy is doomed and you never should have opened the relationship.
Inner Security
To feel compersion, it helps to experience “the felt sense of having a strong, loving, and resourced relationship with oneself.” Thouin specifically references Jessica Fern’s idea of a “secure attachment with the self” as a model. She identified four main obstacles to inner security: “(1) dependency/codependency, (2) insecurity and comparison with metamour, (3) sexual shame and sex negativity, and (4) unmet personal needs”
I agree that inner security makes nonmonogamy much, much easier. I often half-joke that I don’t get worried when my partners date other people, because comparison with other people just makes me look better! Some might call that egotism, but “inner security” is a much more flattering description. Thouin’s data bears this out, finding that jealousy is strongly correlated with low self-esteem.
Thouin also referenced self-reliance and “a sense of personal power and agency” as an important element of inner security, and I agree. Almost all ways of practicing CNM require you to be comfortable without much control over your partner’s choices, so it’s important to feel a sense of agency over your own life. Otherwise, things feel chaotic and unmanageable.
Relational Security, Connectedness, and Trust
Here, Thouin once again references Jessica Fern’s work on attachment, and identified secure attachment as conducive to feeling compersion. This makes perfect sense, since an insecure attachment to a partner would naturally exacerbate feelings of jealousy. If you’re anxiously attached, any attention your partner gives to a metamour feels like it’s being taken from you. If you’re avoidant, you’ll worry (reasonably) that your partner is going to have a better experience with a different person who gives them more attention. Rather, Thouin argues, to feel compersion, a person must feel “cherished and abundantly cared for by their partners.” Experiencing a betrayal, having unmet needs, or feeling deprived can lead to jealousy and inhibit compersion.
This makes perfect sense to me. People often stay in bad relationships because they don’t have a visceral understanding of the alternatives. There is a common pattern when people open a relationship where one party takes a new partner, realizes that relationships can be much better, and leaves their original partner. If your relationship isn’t strong to begin with, it’s rational to fear this might happen! Of course you’ll have trouble experiencing compersion when you reasonably expect that your partner might leave you for a metamour.
I agree in particular that unmet relationship needs inhibit compersion. There’s a stereotype that people open their relationships because they have unmet needs, commonly mocked as “relationship broken; add people.” Unsurprisingly, this rarely works. Successful nonmonogamous relationships tend to open up because there is an abundance of love and care which other people are invited to experience.
Thouin also mentions open communication and transparency as a necessary element. It’s difficult to feel compersion for a relationship if you don’t feel like you know anything about it. The unknown is scary. Making it known can often help.
Positive Integration of Partners’ Other Relationships
Thouin recommends that, to foster compersion, you need a positive attitude toward your relationship with metamours. She found that the following factors contribute to such an attitude:
Positive connection with metamours - trust, friendship, a sense of closeness, and the feeling of being on the same team with metamours, not just partners. Having a metamour who is unhappy about your connection makes feeling compersion difficult.
Positive regard toward metamours - high worthiness (“e.g. likeability, trustworthiness, admirability, maturity, positive contribution to the relational ecosystem”) and low perceived threat.
Boundaries with metamours - when metamours understand and respect boundaries made by the established couple “in the spirit of protecting the needs of preexisting relationships.” People need to feel that metamours aren’t trying to steal their partner away or competing for attention.
Flexible sexual orientation - 3 out of 4 of Thouin’s subjects identified as some flavor of bisexual. Thouin found that any nontraditional sexuality helped encourage compersion because it “paves the path to questioning mononormativity.”
Group sex - Thouin’s results found that group sex with metamours helps not only with erotic compersion but also with “emotional intimacy and empathy.” It could also be a “stepping stone” to solo dating.
This all seems accurate, though I bristled a bit at the seeming endorsement of couple privilege in this section after previously discussing it with more nuance. One of Thouin’s subjects went so far as to demand that metamours “respect [her] place in the relationship.” Personally, if an existing couple starts telling me to know my place or dictate what my relationship with their partner has to look like, I’m out. I don’t find that’s an indication of healthy relationship dynamics and it makes me feel manipulated. It’s almost impossible to feel compersion in those situations because it feels like my metamour is trying to control not only their partner, but me as well.
Perception of Benefits from Partners’ Other Relationships
Compersion is helped along by a feeling of gratitude because your partner’s other relationships benefit you individually, your partner, or your relationship. “When the gratitude was greater than any sense of threat, compersion would be the dominant experience.” See the gratitude section above for details.
The converse is where people feel that their metamours are causing them problems. “When someone perceives a particular metamour to be a liability rather than an asset to the relationship ecosystem, it becomes more difficult to show full- hearted support for that metamour relationship.” This is definitely true. It’s easiest for me to feel compersion when I feel like my metamour is improving the situation. If I feel like everything would be better without them, it’s nearly impossible.
Community Belonging
It’s hard to find reliable data, but what there is suggests that about 4-5% of US adults are in CNM relationships. The few relationships that exist tend to be highly stigmatized. According to Thouin, “it was extremely valuable for participants to have strong CNM social networks and role models, as well as literature and media, to support their identity development and validation as CNM.” Having a community “normalized and celebrated” nonmonogamy, and several subjects reported learning compersion “by example” from seeing it in other relationships. Thouin recommends that people hoping to experience compersion connect with in-person or online CNM communities, attend functions, or (if she can be forgiven for a bit of self-promotion) reading books.
Thouin’s warnings about community center on mononormativity and identitarian concerns, but my concern with CNM community is more mundane. Namely - poly communities tend to be high-drama. It is very helpful, at first, to be around other polyamorous people so you don’t feel like such a weirdo. But anyone who has spent substantial time in any kind of official polyamorous community knows that it’s not a healthy place to invest too much of your social or romantic life. Things have a way of blowing up over a bad breakup or a perceived slight.
Questionable Content
In this section on promoting compersion, Thouin makes some claims I don’t agree with. First, Thouin advocates that couples make rules obligating partners to reassure each other on demand. She doesn’t phrase it that way, but that’s the effect of what she’s suggesting. It’s at this point the book starts to lose me. The issues with that should be obvious, especially to anyone familiar with attachment research. Needing excessive reassurance is a classic symptom of anxious attachment, and often drives the other partner to avoidant attachment under the weight of constant demands. The suggestion that partners should, by rule, provide reassurance on demand is the classic bias toward anxious attachment that I noticed in Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. Better for partners to give reassurance freely, but not so much that it starts feeling burdensome or obligatory. If there’s a mismatch, both partners should be willing to compromise if possible.
In addition to favoring rules about reassurance, Thouin advocates for couples to make other rules about “safer sex practices… STI status and disclosure, scope and timing of communication about other relationships and attractions, privacy, schedules, and other topics.” As regular readers know, I’m not a fan of rules. I find that they largely serve to defer necessary conflicts, place one partner’s needs over the other’s, and often don’t even solve the problems they’re meant to address. I find that setting expectations gets you most of the upside of rules and mitigates most of the downside. Thouin, on the other hand, went so far as to claim that making and following rules is a “foundational aspect” and “a necessary component in establishing closeness, cohesion, and a sense of security.” I was honestly shocked at Thouin’s confidence here. I kept waiting for the part where she said something to the effect of “not everyone needs rules” or “watch out, rules can cause serious problems and undermine trust,” but it never came.
Next, Thouin recommends communicating in your partner’s preferred love language. This is, to be generous, not supported by anything resembling science. First off, in the words of a particularly insightful Tik Tok “love languages are pseudo science made by an unqualified, bigoted, pastor in a book categorized as christian self-help to influence women to sleep with their crappy husbands in the name of respecting their ‘physical touch’ love language.” Seriously, look at this bullshit. But regardless of the source, I don’t think the concept is helpful. I believe people have a manner in which they naturally express love, but the idea that a person can only receive love in their preferred language seems wrong to me. If someone actually gets to know their partner and understands how they express love, they will feel loved when that natural expression manifests. Insisting that a person express love in a way that doesn’t come naturally doesn’t show they love you - it only shows they are willing to perform for you. At its heart, it’s an act of service. If that’s not your love language, then you’re just deluding yourself.
Thouin’s next piece of advice is to go “at the pace of the slower person” - as in, open slowly from monogamous to nonmonogamous and take only steps that the less enthusiastic person is fully on board with. I’m also suspicious of this advice because “the slower person” often never moves at all and just says “I’m working on it” forever. Usually, this is not out of any malice or deception, just overwhelming fear and a genuine belief that the fear will fade over time even without doing anything to proactively address it. Thouin cautions, though, that the slower partner must “be sufficiently on board with non- monogamy to allow gradual progress toward a common vision.” I agree that if progress is actually being made, it makes sense to go slowly, but it’s often hard to tell if that’s happening. I worry that attempting to follow this advice will just mean a person ends up stuck with a partner promising that “any day now” they’ll be ready for nonmonogamy, but that day never actually arriving.
My personal experience is that if I’m afraid of something, it’s best to confront it immediately. That doesn’t work for everyone, but I think people tend to err more often on the side of avoiding their fears. If I were giving general advice, I would counsel people to be brave and face their fears rather than avoid and delay. Going at the pace of the slower partner is fine, but the slower partner needs to actually be making demonstrable progress. Otherwise, the partners need to accept that nonmonogamy is not going to work for them and either make peace with that or break up. To her credit, Thouin does recommend “building tolerance” by being exposed to frightening situations such as a partner dating or sleeping with another person. Thouin argues, and I agree, that repeated exposure to such situations builds trust and safety as partners see that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Taken together, these issues suggest to me that Thouin may have gotten a biased sample when she chose her interviewees. These positions she advocates are all attitudes I’ve encountered before, but they are hardly universal, and opinions differ greatly on all of them. For her original research, Thouin interviewed only 17 subjects, so on numbers alone it’s likely that certain minority viewpoints were missed. Additionally, her subjects were found by emailing three ListServs “known… for politically progressive, sex positive, and highly educated individuals.” Thouin acknowledged that it was a biased sample, but deemed it necessary “in order to find a sufficient pool of eligible participants within a reasonable amount of time.” She also felt that there were “no strong reasons” to believe that her sample “would report a vastly different experience of compersion” than a more representative sample. Given the lack of research in this field, I can’t say whether that’s true, but I can say that her subjects don’t seem to reflect my experience of compersion, especially when it comes to how to encourage its development. I doubt I’m alone in that. I wish she had contacted Aella and reviewed her massive survey results which include more diverse attitudes.
Compersion and Identity
The final third of the books is dedicated to “social lenses on compersion.” In my opinion, this was the least interesting section, so I won’t be covering it in as much detail as the previous ones.
It begins with a discussion of how “coming out” as nonmonogamous and nonmonogamous pride interact with compersion. Thouin analogizes it to LGBTQ+ identity and suggests that these factors can play a similar role. CNM pride can contribute to meaning-making, an important element of the compersion process.
Thouin describes nonmonogamy as a “hidden target identity,” meaning that it’s not readily apparent to third parties. This leads to an awkward tradeoff where people can avoid the stigma associated with CNM but it requires them to act ashamed of their identity and pass up opportunities for community and support. This can inhibit compersion because it makes it difficult to form a positive identity and access community - both essential elements of compersion.
Thouin also wades into the debate of whether polyamory is an orientation, which I’ve discussed before. Thouin doesn’t really add much to the debate, but notes that her subjects to saw themselves as innately nonmonogamous felt a greater sense of pride at being able to express it, and thus had an easier time accessing compersion.
Next, Thouin turns to a discussion of “social positionality and compersion.” By social positionality, she means
where someone is located in relation to their various social identities, such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, immigration status, religious affiliation, marital status, geographical location, and more.
She focuses on “age, ability, gender, sexual orientation, race, and socioeconomic status.” Basically, this is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion section. Yawn. Thouin uses loaded terms like “cis- hetero- monogamous- ableist kyriarchy,” blames capitalism for the advent of monogamy, and quotes people saying things like “polyamorous people don’t know that they are oppressed by settler colonialism.” It’s the kind of thing you only see in the Leftiest parts of academia, and tends to alienate anyone who doesn’t share certain subcultures’ unfortunate obsession with race, gender, and privilege.
There was a particular anecdote that illustrates the bias of the approach. One of Thouin’s subject suggested that black communities are bigoted against polyamory, and they will “shit or rap on White culture using some metaphor about poly, like just a hippie thing.” Somehow, this is portrayed as a problem with poly communities and how they alienate people rather than the reasonable interpretation - that polyamory is stigmatized and many people (of many different identities) are prejudiced against it. In Leftist academia, it would be unthinkable for Thouin, a white woman, to criticize black communities, so the only option is to assign blame to the polyamory community for being too white.
Apparently, this research wasn’t part of Thouin’s original study, but for the book she went back and did additional interviews and reviewed additional materials “to gain a better understanding of compersion from the lens of social positionality.” I wish she hadn’t. I think the book would have been better without this section (and without the various references peppered throughout the book to identity politics). Instead, she added nearly 50% to the length of the book and pushes away anyone who doesn’t share her views on DEI.
However, that said, Thouin did have some interesting findings:
People over 65 had the easiest time feeling compersion, as they typically have well-established, secure networks and lots of experience navigating CNM.
In particular, widowed or divorced women over 65 were often not looking for full-time partners and were happy to date married men who didn’t require that much attention.
Disabilities that require care networks can foster compersion, as multiple partners mean more people to share caregiving tasks and meet needs which go beyond what most able-bodied people require.
Contrary to the stereotype of polyamory being for affluent, white, privileged people, Thouin found that having a marginalized identity often primed people to reject the traditional structure of monogamy as an act of resistance or independence from a society seen as oppressive.
While poorer people had more to lose from being openly CNM, they also had more to gain from forming extended networks, cohabitating to share expenses, and providing mutual aid.
Overall Recommendation
I definitely recommend reading this book if you’re curious about compersion or having trouble experiencing it in your relationships. I also recommend attending the book launch party if you’re going to be in or around Oakland on July 23rd. Sadly, I am a dedicated East coaster and will not be able to make it.
The first third describing what compersion is and how it works is right on the money and provides valuable insight into the elements of compersion and how they interact with one another. I recommend reading this portion in its entirety.
The second third has plenty of valuable insights which I did my best to summarize above, but also some advice that I found questionable and, at times, downright incorrect, especially regarding the necessity of rules and agreements. I recommend reading this portion, but with a healthy degree of skepticism.
I think the book would have been better without the final third discussing marginalized identities. I only recommend reading this portion if you have a particular interest in that area.
Overall, I think Thouin’s research and findings are a valuable addition to the literature on nonmonogamy, and I am excited to see what she does next.