Moving Toward Non-Monogamous Neutrality and Acceptance Instead of Forced Compersion
Chapter 5 of the Composting Competition Book Club Video Series: Exploring the jealousy-compersion spectrum in non-monogamy and polyamory
In Chapter 5 of Marie Thouin’s book, What is Compersion, she creates an expanded “Spectrum of Compersion” that looks like this:
Marie’s research shows that this jealousy-compersion spectrum is fluid and complex. It’s NOT linear in that it doesn’t always move from jealousy to neutrality to attitudinal to embodied compersion — nor is it hierarchical — it’s important to remember that feeling embodied compersion is not “better” or “more evolved” than feeling neutral or jealousy.
In this metamour book club episode we discuss:
Salina’s need for predictability & consistency with non-monogamy to build secure attachment
“fire growth” and choosing a life where we’re often on edges of change
why the nervous system needs time to digest new experiences to stay within the window of tolerance
the importance of building a relationship with yourself first and foremost
how resistance to our jealousy often makes challenging emotions persist
anticipating the times when we might feel triggered, and how we might plan to care for ourselves in those instances
relationship co-design, moving away from the relationship escalator expectations & building new connections without assumptions
whether empathy for negative experiences should be labeled as compersion or not
This chapter really normalizes the fact that:
Jealousy shouldn’t be a shame-producing emotion.
It may continue to appear for us no matter how much experience with non-monogamy we have.
If we’re currently in a ‘mostly jealous’ phase, let us set the goal of moving towards NEUTRALITY (the next notch on the spectrum, rather than beating ourselves up if we don’t FEEL HAPPY that our partner is dating others).
Let there be hope that in the right conditions, it’s possible to move towards attitudinal or even embodied compersion over time, but it’s not the holy grail of polyamory or nonmonogamy.
We Want to Hear From You!
Join the subscriber chat & weigh in:
Catch Up on The First 5 Chapters
If you’re new here, watch the other videos in this series: Composting Competition and Moving Toward Compersion