Compersion Isn't Mandatory
In this episode, Libby talks about compersion, what it is, where it comes from, and makes the case that we don't have to feel it to be good polyamorous people, and what to do when we don't.
Transcript
What should you do if you notice that you aren't feeling as elated as you hoped about your partner being with other partners, what if you're supportive and you do everything you can not to get in the way of their other relationships, but you just can't bring yourself to be all that excited about it. What does that mean? I have encountered this question more than a few times, both in my own personal life and with my clients and on the internet. So I thought I'd take today's episode to address this question. My short answer conversion. Isn't mandatory.
Every participant gets a workbook that we go through together, and the workshop includes writing prompts and small group exercises. At the end of it, you'll have a map of how you work, which you can then share with your current or potential partners. One of my friends calls this kind of thing, like a care and feeding document, and I've also heard it called a personal user manual, but I like the image of a map because this is about exploration. There's a link in the description to sign up, or you can find more details about it on my Facebook page. I'm also really hoping to see some of you at poly living in February in Philadelphia, I'll be presenting a class on embodied consent, which is one of my favorite topics. I'm also excited to be presenting at winter poly Wonderland. Also in February. This is a retreat-style event at a lovely wooded property in West Virginia. I'm really looking forward to enjoying some time in nature and connecting with everyone there. So I hope you'll join me. I'm also excited to share with you that I just launched my website. And so you can find that at libbysimdback.com and I hope you'll check it out over time. I'll be adding more content to the site. So keep your eyes on it it, but please use it to send me a message. If you'd like to be in touch. That's all the announcements for now. So now let's dive into the conversation.
If you aren't polyamorous, or if you're new to polyamory, you may not have heard the word compersion before or according to the internet. The word conversion was coined by the Kerista commune sometime in the 1970s or early eighties, Kerista was an intentional community in San Francisco. And one feature of their community was that many members engaged in swinging or what they call poly intimacy, which now we tend to call polyamory. Compersion describes specifically taking non-sexual pleasure in your partner's joy that they experience with another person. This feeling is distinctly different from something like voyeurism, which is taking sexual pleasure and observing someone often engage in some kind of sexual activity. Although it, it doesn't have to be, it's also distinct from cut holding, which God, why does this have to be such a gendered heteronormative term? I did some research and I couldn't find a non-gender term for cook holding, which is pretty annoying.
Although I was able to find sort of the reversed version of this, which is KA queening. Anyway, maybe we can come up with one later on together. Anyhow, cook holding or KA queening is more about enjoying masochistically, the humiliation you feel when your partners with someone else, rather than your partner's joy in being with someone else. So that's also different. And then there's also a phenomenon that I also don't think is conversion, which is the idea of sharing your partner with someone else. Now, this can show up specifically in a DS situation where the dominant is exercising, their total control and ownership of their partner and loaning them out like a toy. And again, this is not exactly taking pleasure in your partner's sexual enjoyment so much is enjoying the control and sometimes the humiliation of your partner. And gosh, you guys, I love this stuff I really do.
And this kind of thing can also show up though, in a less, non DS dynamic, where ownership and control are still sort of at play in the relationship, like say if a couple's married or otherwise primary to each other, and they're very hierarchical in their non-monogamy language can show up here like I am letting my partner be with someone else or I'm sharing a partner with others. And again, this can all be super hot and fun, but when you feel pleasure around sharing something that you see as yours, that's not exactly compersion. So back to what compersion is. So apparently the, the term came up in Cara because some of the women there were talking about the joy that they took in their partners, having other lovers and were like, there, there should be a word for this. So they made one up.
And funnily enough, according to my research, the Christians made this word up using Awei board. I mean, it doesn't really get more common than that, does it I guess it's good that they came up with a word that we can pronounce. Anyway. Compersion is sometimes held up as this sort of utopian magical emotion that you'll feel if you're enlightened and secure enough to not be jealous or controlling of your partner. Like if you've truly unpacked your, a toxic monogamy and ideas of ownership and your ideas that all of your partners, happiness and pleasure should come from you. If you've let go of all your insecurities, then you will unlock endless conversion, never feel any jealousy or bad feelings. I think I get why this very specific concept is so important to polyamorous because some evolutionary psychologists and I tend to really low the evolutionary psychology for the record have said that sexual jealousy is sort of baked into human behavior, which supports the idea that monogamy is our natural state.
If you can agree that something like compersion is possible though, then that all the idea that monogamy is natural and that we're supposed to be jealous of each other all into question. So I think that's why it's important to acknowledge this, this alternative exists. That's positive to seeing your partner with someone else, but I, I actually don't like the word conversion as a specific term for the opposite of sexual and romantic jealousy, which is how it's often described. I don't even think conversion is actually the opposite of jealousy though. I do think the presence of jealousy can make conversion harder to experience. I also think that you can experience both at the same time. There is a word I, I like better than conversion, but it's not an English word. The word I found it's called Mudita. And it comes from poly and Sanskrit. Mudita is simply experiencing the joy that others have or taking pleasure from delighting in other people's wellbeing.
And the opposite of this word isn't jealousy. It's actually yet another non-English word. The opposite is Schadenfreude or experiencing joy in the other people's pain and misfortune, which goes without saying is a super feeling and something that probably most of us have had at one time or another. Anyway, the concept of experiencing such abundance of joy, that you can take pleasure in it, even if it isn't yours is something that shows up in Buddhism. I liked this quote that came from my research, which unfortunately I don't have a citation for, but here's the quote, the more deeply one drinks of this, the more securely one becomes in one's own abundant happiness. The more bountiful it becomes to relish the joy of other people. I think feeling this way is more familiar to people and way less special to polyamory or tied to an absence of jealousy.
We can all delight in other people's good fortune. Most of us probably do it all the time. When someone in our life gets a new job or buys a new home or welcomes a child into their lives, we feel that joy with them. It's why we can get excited about a beloveds hobby or a fandom or whatever, even when we're not that into it. Their delight is contagious. We share joyful emotions all the time, and most of us are actually wired to do that. Neurologists have discovered that our brains have these things called mirror neurons, and they cause us to mimic each other's are down to micro facial expressions, which might be one reason why we're able to sort of catch other people's emotions. And to that quote that I shared earlier, the more abundance we can see in the world and experience and the more secure we feel that abundance and that, that abundance can come to us.
The more we can take pleasure in other people's joy. So I guess there is something to be said for the idea that mudita and jealousy are not always compatible because jealousy is sometimes rooted in the fear that there is a finite amount of joy or love. And so we might struggle to enjoy someone else's happiness, because we are fearful that that might mean there is less happiness. We're all to go around, but in the context of romantic and sexual relationships, jealousy is also rooted in the idea, very popular in our modern culture, that our partners sexual and romantic happiness should only be coming from us. And that our value as a partner is only in how much of that we are able to provide to them. And so if someone else is providing them with happiness and sexual fulfillment, then our value to our partner decreases.
There's totally something to this fear, but only if you see your value to your partner as being a measure of how many needs of theirs you're able to fulfill. Like if we aren't the only acts point of happiness and sexual gratification for our partner, then we have diminished importance to them if they are getting some of that elsewhere. And because of that, we have less control over them. And a lot of people find tremendous security in control. And if you look at jealousy as something that comes out of insecurity and fear of losing something that you have feeling like you have less control can lead to less security, which can then lead to jealousy. What can also happen though, is when your partner has multiple sources of happiness, is that you feel less pressure and more freedom and more spaciousness and more autonomy and less obligation and more being loved for your whole personhood.
Also counterintuitively there's the opportunity for more security. You know, that saying that if you really love something, you let it go. Well, if your partner keeps coming to you, even though you've let go of control of them, even if you're not the only source of their happiness and sexual fulfillment, if they have other options, but they still choose you, then you know that they truly delight in the unique you that you are rather than in the control you have over the access to the things that they need. They're not dependent on you for what they need, but they choose to be connected. And that freedom, that spaciousness is an important component to finding that joy in our partner's joy. And I wanna be clear, even though I'm a little critical of conversion as its own stand own concept. And I don't think it is something that you have to feel.
It's also a beautiful part of polyamory when it does happen. It makes these whole relationships with multiple people thing, not feel like such a zero-sum game by demonstrating that love can sometimes multiply and reverberate. And our accessing that comes not only from having abundance or believing in abundance for ourselves, but also in that ability to let go of control and accept that we will be loved and wanted if we allow for more spaciousness in our relationship and more freedom and more autonomy, but to get there, it helps. If you believe that you are enough as you are, and that you matter just as you are to the people around you. And if you don't feel like you are enough, or you don't feel like that you matter, or if you're not experiencing abundance right now, or you're just having a hard time, we're feeling insecure, accessing that feeling might be pretty hard.
And it's reasonable that some of us might struggle with feeling like we're enough, or like we have enough. We come from a culture that pushes a scarcity mindset. And also while love is an infinite resource, there are many other is tied up in relationships that are not infinite resources like time, attention, energy, money, emotional bandwidth will power and cognitive room to name a few. These are all finite resources and those may not be being allocated so that everyone is getting enough. And it may be that even if the abundance of those things is there for you, even if it isn't a zero sum game between you and your partners, other partners, you might just not be there in terms of believing it and really feeling it because of your cultural conditioning. And this is all why I never dismiss jealousy as like some kind of personal problem or an insecurity or a weakness.
I think it's super not cool to shame people for feeling jealousy. Jealousy is a warning system that you might be in danger of not having enough resources. I treat it like an alarm. Sometimes it's a false alarm, like the cat running around in your house, setting off the motion sensors. And there's no real threat, but maybe you need to like calibrate what your alarm system is checking for. But sometimes jealousy is a signal that you're not getting your needs met and your relationship, or you're feeling that scarcity, the insecurity you're feeling is something valid and real that you're missing out on. And maybe that someone else is getting, so it's important not to just dismiss jealousy, but really listen to it and see what it's trying to tell you. And no matter what's underneath jealousy, the feelings that come up around it are very, very real.
And I think we all experience jealousy. Now, I have known a few people who say they don't get jealous and the people who get jealous should never do polyamory. And I just, I just cry bullshit on that. Michael Hague of probably poly did a great podcast about jealousy, where he shared research, that shows that babies feel jealousy. And when babies get jealous, they engage in similar behaviors to the ones that they do when they have an inconsistent or inattentive caregiver, they protest, they cry or they withdraw and act like they don't care. Although they also do this other thing sometimes where they sort of amp up the charm and try to be extra cute to get attention. But if jealousy show is up in babies, then that's sort of a signal that they're wired into us. I think jealousy and the behaviors that come out of it are part of our survival system.
And it makes sense if it's tied to a concern about access to resources, I also have a theory and, and this really is just a hot take up for further refine that people who say they don't get jealous, they mean that they don't get sexually jealous or maybe they don't get some other kind of jealous. They don't get romantically jealous, and maybe that's because they have unpacked their cultural programming around ownership and all of that kind of stuff. But it also might be possible that doing that is easier for them than for other people, because of some other things. What I've seen is that there's a lot of variance in the things that are tender for people and different places where some of us feel especially vulnerable. For example, speaking for myself, I don't get a lot of sexual jealousy with my partners, but I wonder if that's because my feelings about sex are just sort of different than a lot of people's.
In recent years, I've seen that I am somewhere on the asexual spectrum. I don't wanna go too deeply into what that means here, although I will on a subsequent podcast. And honestly, asexuality means different things to different people, but for me, I do have sex and I enjoy sex and I have sexual relationships with some of my partners. I'm actually totally fascinated by sex. And I love reading about it and talking about it and helping people brainstorm ways to do it better. But I see it as mostly like a fun activity to do together deeply pleasurable at times, sometimes just silly, sometimes just fun, sometimes playful, but it's also something that like, I don't feel that I desperately need. I also don't have a lot of my own self-worth tied up in doing it or having access to it. What I get out of relat instead is so much more than sex.
And while not all of my partners feel the same way, sex is mostly non-essential to my romantic relationships. It's not particularly special to me in and of itself. I don't generally engage in purely sexual relationships. Not because the sex is so precious and sacred, although for sure it can be, but because it's just not that interesting to me to spend time with people where that's the only thing we do and all this is to say it just doesn't make me feel insecure, to think about my partners, having sex with other people and even them having more fun, doing it with someone else than with me. I think sexual compatibility is, a thing. And there are so many vectors of sexual compatibility. I know some folks who have one partner for instance, that they have a really rocking DS domination submission dynamic with, and another partner where that's not part of their relationship.
And everybody's cool with it. And gosh, if I had a partner for whom that really floated their boat, that wasn't something I was into. I'd be so, so happy for them to find it with someone else. But in my experience, the way that I feel about sex, isn't the way that everybody feels about it. Some people attach a lot of meaning to be sexually desirable, to having access to sexual partners, to having a certain amount of sex. Some people get a lot of personal validation from sex. Some people have aspects of their ego tied up in it. And some people just really, really, really like doing it and also find the number of people that they are willing to do it with, who are willing to do it with them is a finite or even scarce resource and a whole bunch of other stuff. I mean, some folks have trauma around sex.
And so being sexual, if someone is incredibly tender and vulnerable and it might be this safe space for them that they've created. And so imagining their partner with someone else might make them feel like another person is invading that safe space. Or in my earlier example with the DS, some people feel that a DS relationship is something really and special to them and they might want it to be equally vulnerable and special to their partner. And so it might be hard for them to imagine that same dynamic happening with someone else, or if there's something like that that say maybe you are into and your partner's also into, but they don't wanna do it with you. They decide they wanna do it with someone else that might cause a lot of disappointment and confusion, and you might end up feeling rejected. And there are all kinds of reasons that aren't tied to control or a scarcity mindset or Monon normativity or toxic masculinity that can cause someone to have some intense feelings about sex and about their partner having sex with others, or they might be dealing with those things too, but actively working on unpacking them, but just aren't there yet.
So here's what I have to tell you in this episode, which is why I want on it to make it, having these things coming up for you, struggling with jealousy, or just finding yourself unable to access that ecstatic joy at your partner, having other partners and having an awesome time with them, doesn't make you bad at polyamory. It doesn't make you bad at all. Of course, if you're trying to avoid facing the reality that your partner's dating other people, that's probably not great. If you're feeling pressured or pushed into being non-monogamous by a partner and it's outright causing you pain and agony, I'd really consider standing up for yourself and not pushing yourself and giving a hard time in beating yourself up because no one should be compelled to engage in something that doesn't feel right to them. But do you know? What's totally okay.
It's totally okay. To not wanna hear every juicy detail about your partner's dates. If your partner has someone over in your shared home and you don't relish hearing their loud sex down the hall, you have total per mission to not want to encounter that. For me, I feel weird about it because I feel like it's something private that I'm not invited to be a part of. And I feel like I'm kind of invading the experience unintentionally or they're invading my experience unintentionally. And we just didn't agree to that. So I don't feel like anyone had has to experience that and they don't have to feel bad about not wanting it, whatever it is for you. It's okay. If it's not your thing, you, you don't have to love every second of everything that your partner enjoys with another partner, any more than you have to enjoy every band they like, or every bizarre hobby they have. It's totally cool. If you get it into it with them or let their enthusiasm affect you, but it's really okay if you either don't care or don't love it. You know, it doesn't mean that you're weak minded. It doesn't mean that you're controlling. You just might not be into it. And it's okay to say, Hey, you do you, that's fine. I'm gonna be over here.
And also if what's going on for you is jealousy or just plain disappointment or other feelings like that. That's okay too, hearing your partner's sex noises with someone else might just be weird and awkward, or it might cause you some pain for reasons I stated earlier, or you might feel twang by other things like seeing your partner post a picture of them and their other partner on social media or your partner sharing something else that's special between the two of you with their other partner. In my case, I think I talked about this on the normalizing non-monogamy interview. What got me feeling jealous was my metamour getting one of my partners, a similar gift to one that I had gotten him. I mean, jealousy just happens for the randomest of reasons. Sometimes the important thing is that instead of running from that feeling or denying it or feeling shame about it or letting it control your relationship, that you investigate it and listen to it and unpack whatever might be going on for you.
It's important to ask yourself, does this feel icky because I still have things I wanna work out or work on, or is this particular thing just not that exciting to me, or am I hiding from some pain that needs addressing? Are there needs that I'm not acknowledging that aren't getting met and would it be better for me to address those needs in myself or do I need to address them with my partner? Sometimes these feelings come up and there's nothing to fix, but sometimes there is. And the only way you can find out is to listen to them. Now, I also wanna take a moment to address you. If you're on the other side of this and your partner, isn't feeling conversion, and you're disappointed about that. I really get it. You might really, really, really wish that the thing that is bringing you so much joy is also bringing your partner joy it, and it is super great.
When that happens. It's a promise that polyamory whole, that love isn't a zero sum game that your sexual excitement with one partner can naturally carry over to your other partners. And that when your bucket of love is full, you have moral love for everyone. And everyone's just happy and everyone's delighting and everybody else is joy. And it's just all flowing really nicely. But if your partner just isn't thrilled about your other partner, they don't have to be, you are allowed to feel disappointed about that. But what you're not allowed to do is shame them for that or put pressure on them to feel differently. This is why I talked about emotional boundaries a few weeks ago and how important they are. Sometimes your partner is just gonna have a hard time with something, or isn't gonna dig something. And as long as they're not using those feelings to control you or your other relationships, they're, they're allowed to have a hard time.
It's unreasonable to ask your partner to be cheerful and happy about every single thing you do. It's controlling to demand that they fix their feelings or let you fix their feelings. If you just happen to not like them, it is so important instead for you to let them be wherever they are. Now, that doesn't mean you don't do anything. There are things you can do. You can hope that they move through it and you can support them in that. If they want that from you, you can also show compassion and offer soothing and a big one here to just acknowledgment, acknowledgment that they are struggling or aren't into something, but are willing to stick with it. Anyhow, an acknowledgment that they may be wishing, they felt one way, but they don't. And that they might be disappointed about that too. It can be pretty powerful and connecting to be seen and heard for where you are and just be understood and acknowledged that you're dealing with something that isn't what you'd like to be dealing with.
But you just that's where you are. You can show respect for that and honor your partner for being willing to accept and move through. Whatever's hard for them because they see the overall benefit to themselves and to your relationship. And they value confronting things and supporting your overall happiness more than staying in their own comfort. Then what can flow in is not judgment or resentment or disappointment, but appreciation and gratitude. So to recap, conversion is a weird term for something that I think is pretty common to the human experience and much bigger than the context of polyamory. And it's super great when you can feel that, but there are times when you won't and that doesn't mean you aren't a good polyamorous partner and it doesn't mean you're lesson lightened or a bad person. It just means you're human. And this is part of it.
It might be worth taking a closer look at what's going on and listen to the feelings that come up. But as you listen, it might just be that some things aren't your cup of tea, and everyone will need to learn how to accept and move through that. And if your partner isn't feeling conversion, it's important to allow them to feel that way and find other ways to appreciate what they are feeling and how they're moving through it while remaining with you, what can be so tremendously healing for your partner is to love them wherever they are right now to love them exactly as they are, rather than how you might wish them to be.
