I can't really get myself to feel Compersion. How do I cultivate more Compersion? I think it's important to know, like you can cultivate it by cultivating an attitude and cultivating actions, not just trying to invoke an emotion. Welcome to Making Polyamory Work. Hi, I'm Libby Sinback and I want to thank you for joining me today.
I'm a queer polyamorous mom and an integrated relationship guide, and I am committed to helping people who live and love outside the status quo have extraordinary relationships because relationships are at the core of our well-being as humans. I think love is why we're here and how we
heal. Today I am so excited to have the lovely and talented Marie Thouin on my show. Marie is my friend and she is also the author of the upcoming book What is Compersion, Understanding Positive Empathy and Concentrally Non-Managamous Relationships, which is the first ever comprehensive scholarly book on Compersion and it's coming out on June 18th, 2024. Marie has been featured in several magazines and podcasts including Elle, The Savage Love Cast and Multi-Amory, oh and
now she's been on Making Polyamory Work. Marie has also published Seminal Research Studies, The First Encyclopedia Entry on Compersion, and she is also a mindful dating and relationship coach where she supports and guides people of all backgrounds and relational orientations to create intentional and vibrant love lives. I love this conversation that I got to have with Marie
about her work on Compersion. She is an academic but we get right down into the nitty gritty reality of Compersion and it's funny I the last time I talked about Compersion on my show it was about how you don't have to feel it and you don't have to have it but I just really appreciate how Marie breaks down Compersion and gives us a road map on how to cultivate it in ourselves and in our relationships and I just think it's a real recipe for having deeper love in our lives and more
successful polyamorous relationships. So I think you're going to love this conversation as much as I do and so I'm just going to get right into it my conversation with Marie. Hi Marie, welcome to Making Polyamory Work. Thank you so much for having me, Ruby. I am so
honored to be here because I love your podcast. Oh thank you so much. I'm happy to have you here and we are here to talk about Compersion and you have a new book coming out and I can't wait to hear all about your research but before we dive in I guess I just wanted to ask you if you would just introduce yourself I already introduced you in the intro but I just love to hear about a little
bit about Marie the human. Marie the human thank you. Well let's see um I'm 39 years old I live in the San Francisco Bay area I've been here for about 21 or 22 years now originally from Quebec
Canada and I just love life. I think the thing I'll say about Marie as a human is that I have this insatiable curiosity about the human condition what it means to be here what it means to be here together in relationship with one another both kind of at the micro you know individual intimate relationship level and collectively and that's why I have gotten into the work that I do you know in terms of relationship like really what does it mean and how do we do it how do we do it
in order to create better world. Yeah and that's I that's one of the things I really enjoy about knowing you is I I feel that curiosity I feel that hunger for learning all there is to know about life and love and it's interesting because you have two kind of main branches of work that you do right you have the academic and the research side which we'll talk about in a minute but you also are a coach am I right about that. Yes yes exactly I'm a dating and relationship coach.
Cool so let's let's talk about compulsion and your work there but I might ask you some questions about the Southern branch of your work as well if that's okay. Oh absolutely I love talking about both and they're very connected of course. I was going to say I bet they are but let's start with like how you got into this like how did you get into studying compulsion and on an academic level.
Well I mean I was always really uncomfortable with mononormativity you know that widespread assumption that monogamy should be the only way that we create romantic relationships like from a very young age I just really thought that we should have the freedom to create relationships
in the way that we see fit and so I was intrigued by communities that create relationships that are outside of the norms and how you know this is something that is so stigmatized still in our society so when I decided to study psychology and earnest and go for a PhD I knew this was going to be my field of research but then in 2014 I went to a conference called the Future of Monogamy and Non-Monogamy
in Berkeley California and I encountered the word compulsion for the first time. Oh and real quick let's let's define it so that people know what it means because some people might know this word but other people might be like what come per what? Totally I know it's not in the dictionary yet
which is something I would love to help change. Yeah I guess I would not. I emailed the Merriam Webster a couple of times to ask them to include it and they've said no so far but hopefully that will change soon but shortly put compulsion is sharing other people's joy and happiness and if we go into a little bit more detail I actually co-authored a encyclopedia entry last year with Dr. Sharon Flicker and we split it in three definitions because we thought that was necessary to
really encompass what it means. Number one was the positive emotions and feelings that we feel with other people's happiness and successes. The second definition was the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that we might enact in response to other people's happiness and successes so it doesn't have to be an emotion it can also be thoughts and attitudes and behaviors and that's
really important in terms of polyamory and you know how we navigate relationships. Right and then third was compulsion in a more general sense not just in the intimate relationship realm but in general sharing and participating in other people's good feelings and good experiences. So compulsion in a nutshell being happy for other people but it's a little bit more complex when we really look at it. Okay and so you encountered this word compulsion and it was new to you at the
conference. Yes it was the first time I saw that word and when I looked into what it meant it's like this light bulb went on and I was like ah that is what I think love should be like or look like or mean. You know I've been raised in a society that defined love and in love in so many ways and some of them include control and possessiveness and you know wanting people to act how we want them to act. Oh I love you and therefore I don't want you to do a new or see and when I saw
and understood the word compulsion I was like oh that's how I want to feel. I love you and therefore I want you to enjoy your life and find your own freedom and even if it's not necessarily convenient for me I still want to support you in that. So that was the light bulb moment that
made me think okay I want to study this and why is this not a widespread concept? Right I mean it's interesting because the word compulsion was created by the Carista Commune which was a Commune in like the what the 60s and 70s and they created that word out of practicing non-monogamy
and it was specifically originally wasn't it like the joy that you had from your lover being with another lover that was that was sort of the beginning of that word but as you said the definition is expanded quite a bit from there and it's it's funny because to me like that like what you're saying about that like it's it's just a way of loving people being happy that they're happy. It actually seems like that that's a that's not actually a new concept. Am I right about that?
You're right and actually in Buddhism there are four qualities of the enlightened person or Brahma Vaharas if I pronounce it correctly and these are loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and mudita or sympathetic joy which is very much equivalent to comparison and how we see it and according to Buddhist philosophy it's the hardest of the four to really achieve. Really?
Because it really requires that we dissolve the illusion of separation between ourselves and others and that's very hard to do for the human being, for the human ego, for how we're wired with so much of that you know like of course we are separate in some way and we're not from a spiritual lens but that's a very that's a big challenge spiritually. I love that because when I hear that I think that
what we're doing there with mudita and I say it right? Yeah so with mudita it's not just joy and other people's joy but understanding that other people's joy isn't separate from our joy and am I getting it right? That's right. That that illusion that it's even not already our joy is broken. Exactly. Exactly. It's like stepping out of the zero sum mentality of more for you is less for me and actually stepping into a mindset where more for you is more for me. Yes. Yes.
Well so that was like a light bulb moment for you and you were like okay so now let me go do academic research about it. Yes. That is generally how you approach things that you're excited about learning more. You're like I just now I want to go super deep and dig in from like in a methodical let me just find out everything about it kind of way. Yes that is how I roll. I'm intellectualized things first. How long have you been doing this research that is now culminated in book?
Well it's been about a decade. I started my PhD in 2014 and started learning about compersion around that time and then you know between 2014 and 2021 I was studying, interviewing people, writing, you know going through a lot of revision for my PhD dissertation
and then after I graduated in 2021 I started thinking about writing a book based on my dissertation so I started shopping for the right publisher and thinking 2022 I signed a deal with Roman and Lowefield who have a series on relationship diversity and so that felt like the right home for it
and I'm so blessed that I got to work with Dr. Elizabeth Chef and Dr. Richard Sprott who are the series editor for that so it's been really great doing more research and more writing and just also enriching the book with my experience with my coaching clients which I didn't really have you know like back when I was doing my PhD I was just starting to coach so now I feel like my
work and my writing about it there's a lot more nuanced and mature. That's that's that's so cool so this is this is a very long time like a decade of work and learning and process to birthing this book. Yeah yeah it does feel like a birth just a long gestation. A very long gestation. So would you be willing to say a little bit more about your research methods like how how did you like how do you even research comparison how do you do it? I just took I can't
picture it. Okay yeah let's get there to get a lot better. Yeah let's get there. So when something is not really well known yet the best way to research something is qualitative research. So I didn't do a big survey. I actually took a small sample about 20 people originally and I you know it was a sample of non-monogamous folks who had a lot of experience with comparison and I asked them a lot of questions. We did in-depth interviews you know maybe 90 minute long
interviews and I asked them what is comparison for you? How do you experience it? Do you feel it in your body? Is it thoughts? Is it an emotion? Is it a behavior? What is it? When do you experience it and when do you not experience it? When do you struggle to experience it? When do your partners experience it for you? Like so really I had two research questions. One was what is comparison? So really defining it and defining it you know like beyond just a simple definition but really
understanding it. And number two was what are the factors that promote and hinder comparison? And the reason why you know I think the motivation also behind the research was to discover like how do we promote more comparison like to have some sort of roadmap? Right. And also the fact that we can document and understand comparison I think does a lot to challenge mononormativity. So in that system of mononormativity the only valid response to non-monogamy is jealousy and we can't
have an imagine an alternative. So to document what comparison is and how it happens and that we can sometimes like do things to promote it or hinder it is really challenging to that whole paradigm. So yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well and I guess I'm curious based on all based on the research that you did and and it sounds like you also also wove in the experiences from your clients when you wrote the book. What were the most practical findings that you had about
can person? Like if I was reading your book and I wanted to try to find ways to apply what you're sharing to my life or to my relationships what were the things that were the most useful that you found? Well one I really am happy that I found that comparison is not just a emotion. Because oftentimes I think in non-monogamous relationships people are making the mistake of
pressuring each other to feel comparison. And that is one of the big pitfalls that I actually did notice through my work with clients is people would come into my practice and say like hey my partner is not feeling compersion for me and my other relationships. Can you fix them? Can you get them to feel compersion? Right. And oftentimes it just wasn't the right context or the person just wasn't there yet. Well and that whole idea that you can make someone feel
something that it never felt I mean that's not how feelings work. Exactly. Yeah. And that's not how love works. You know like you don't want to pressure someone to feel a certain way like that's kind of anti-compersion ironically. Well I would even call that boundary violating. Yeah. Yes. Yes exactly. So that is something that I found through my practice but also through my research finding that compersion doesn't only show up as an emotion but also as behaviors
and attitudes. You know like people who might come to my practice and say you know I everything is fine and I am signing on to this but I can't really get myself to feel compersion. How do I cultivate more compersion? I think it's important to know like you can cultivate it by cultivating an attitude and cultivating actions. Not just trying to invoke an emotion. Right. So you can still be an integrity and show up in a way that you want to show up without always having to like maintain
this emotional state almost artificially because we're very complex individuals. We can't just invoke an emotional the time. So compersion can both be a thing that you feel and a thing that you practice. Am I getting that right? Yes exactly. What are some practices that you observed in your research that you would call compersed practices? So it's really kind of showing up in a supportive
way for our partners. So let's say my partner is going on a date with someone else and I'm feeling some jealousy or some insecurity around that but I really want them to go on a date and I don't want to tell them not to. I can still say like hey listen I'm feeling some insecurity right now but I really want you to have a good time and you know you look great on that outfit and have a
great time. So that would be in my book showing up compersively because you're not sabotaging that up relationship and you're still showing up supportively without forcing yourself to feel a way you're not feeling. Right. Yeah you're showing up with an intention to support your partner's joy. Yes exactly. In the same way where I think even an anonymous couple you know you could transfer that to like hey you're going to see a baseball game I'm not that interested. I'm not like
ecstatic for you to go see this baseball game but have a great time. I want you to be happy. I want you to enjoy yourself. Yeah yeah and you might not even be happy about the time that you're not going to get to spend with them while they're doing it too. You might even be bummed out. Oh well I'm going to stay home with the kids so that you can go watch that baseball game but I'm doing it and I'm happy to be doing it. I'm not doing it this from this place of resentment or bitterness.
Instead I'm celebrating like the way in which I am supporting and showing it for you so that you can have your joy. Exactly exactly. That sounds just like generosity to me. I'm wondering if there's a dark side to that though. Did that ever show up in your work? Like if people were like too compulsive in their practices or you know pressured themselves too much to a place where it
didn't feel good for them to be supporting their partner. Did that ever show up? Well yeah there are people who might go to the extreme of being so self-sacrificial that they don't really honor their own needs and their own feelings and they just always show up as like this almost like martyr like person and that's not healthy either. Right. So it's important to also like look at how full is my plate. You know before I take everything from my plate to give it to you
you know can I make sure that I have a full plate? Relationally, individually and socially which actually then leads me to the other really practical finding of my research is what are the factors that promote or hinder a comparison? And you know that is all about having a full plate in these different areas. So it's like cultivating a garden where a comparison can arise in a more
organic and beautiful and integrated way. Yeah so if I'm hearing you right if you have a full plate, if you're taking care of yourself intending to what you need that creates it's like the soil and the fertilizer to make it possible for a comparison to bloom. And if you're if you're not taking care of yourself or tending to what you need it's going to be a whole lot
harder for a comparison to show up. And it makes sense to me because I think if we're not experiencing our own joy it's going to be really hard to experience other people's joy as as joy for ourselves because we're not tapped into our own our own joy. And that's what we're ultimately what we're feeling when we're feeling happy for someone else is it still our joy right? Mm-hmm right exactly.
And yeah like if you want I can run you through the six factors that promote comparison and kind of the flip side is what hinder is comparison and that gives an idea of what that you know that kind of garden or ecosystem is. Yeah. And so great great like the first is ideological commitment to non-monogamous values. And that means being on board what's happening and being on
board with non-monogamy to begin with. And the flip side to that would be being under duress sometimes poly under duress or pud and not really having full-hearted consent to what's happening. So, comparison definitely is highly dependent on consent. Right. And for everyone to say like a real yes to to that relationship that they're in. And so yeah that means having a clear why also like why am I non-monogamous like why am I in this why am I with you why am I in what am I getting
into this? Yes well that actually is another factor which is the perception of benefits from your partner's other relationships. And that's where maybe comparison can be not only this spiritual ideal but also this practical thing where oh my gosh yes I'm benefiting from from it
it can be almost there's a utilitarian right side to it. And I actually discuss that in my book like is it you know the spiritual ideal or is it utilitarian and ultimately it can be both and in the best case scenario it is both you are perceiving and receiving benefits from your partners
at a relationship whether it is you have a richer social life you have a richer sexual life you are feeling less pressure to fulfill all of your partner's needs there's so many things that people can perceive as benefits and that definitely feeds into comparison.
Another one is the security within the relationship. So if you're feeling like there is this sense of almost like saturation like you have a lot of love you have a lot of trust you have a lot of transparency and consent and communication within a relationship it's going to be a lot easier to be generous and to say like oh great there's a surplus of love you can give someone else it doesn't feel like it's depriving me from you know the little bit I have if I'm feeling
scarce and insecure. So security within the relationship is a huge one. There's also security within ourselves. Is that of course fun? Yeah I mean I'm telling them a little bit out of order I hope that's okay. Sure you can get the book to find what a you know what the strict order is there's no order in a garden. Exactly exactly so security in yourself that's important too that
makes sense. Exactly so do I feel secure enough within myself and do I do I have enough autonomy you know like just even financial and material autonomy where my partner spending time and resources towards someone else is not maybe as deep of a threat. Right. To me and my livelihood and my sense of security in the world because if I perceive any threat you know to my relationship has
a deep threat to my survival. Right. It's going to be harder to have again that sense of generosity and let go and I'm like yes of course I want you to spend time and resources with someone else. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. And there's also a sense of you know are you constantly comparing yourself negatively to your metamorphos. Yeah so that insecurity if it's driving you to comparison of course that would get in the way of conversion. Exactly. So what else what else what are the other
factors. Another one actually talking about metamorphos is having you know something that would promote comparison is positive regard towards your metamorphos. So if you like your metamorphos if you trust your metamorphos if you think that they're bringing something positive to the table and also if you don't feel threatened by them. Yeah. And that can show up in so many different ways. It could be like if you don't feel like they're dramatically better than you or if you don't feel like they're
out to almost like steal your partner and be monogamous with them. If you don't think they're just taking resources away from your relationship ecosystem and actually bringing something to the plate that has a dramatic impact on comparison and actually further research that I didn't do but my colleague Sharon Flicker did has sort of confirmed that this was probably the most weighty
of the factors that influence comparison is how you feel about your metamorphos. Yeah it's interesting that you say that because what comes up for me is how important it is that unbordness that you were talking about before when I think about metamorphos I think about them being on board with your relationship with the shared partner right. I find that to be really really tough when you're getting the sense that your metamorphos is supportive of the relationship that you have.
They're either indifferent or they're actively like hostile towards it. I don't I could see that being really challenging to access comparison in that scenario. Oh my god yes yeah one of the big blocks to comparison is if you feel like you're metamorphos and want you to exist. Yeah yeah that makes it hard. Yeah yeah absolutely so yeah it goes both ways you know it'll comparison like if your metamorphos has comparison for you it will definitely invite you
having a comparison for your metamorphos. Yeah yeah that would make sense. And then the final factor is coming into community and that is the social factor and element to this because of course we still live in a society that's largely mononormative where if you call your mom your friend your your therapist even like you're likely to have someone tell you like oh no wonder you're suffering right now because you're non monogamous and if you were only gonna be monogamous you
wouldn't be in pain right now. So it's important to have community and a support system that validates your choice to be non monogamous and you know having someone or a lot of people ideally to hang out with and to talk to because that is not a path that you can navigate and isolation. Yeah so that promotes comparison both because it provides a support system and also role models so there's people who told me like oh I didn't think I would be able to experience comparison
until I saw it and other people. I saw other people experiencing comparison and then I was like oh okay well that's possible obviously I'm seeing it in front of my eyes so I can also feel comparison. Well and we have in our neurology the ability to mirror other people's emotional experiences and so when we see it we can feel it through them and then if we can feel it through them we can feel what it would feel like for us to so that makes a lot of sense that that I mean
we're social animals we develop our stories around emotion and relationship from like you said what we see modeled and so if we want something different than what the mono normative structure is then it really helps to to be in a space where we can not just know it intellectually but see it and feel it around other people that makes so much sense I say that all the time you people so.
Yeah exactly exactly and even in that category I add resources like books and podcasts like yours and by the way your podcast is usually the first one that I send to my coaching clients because it's so helpful and so healing and it's helped me a ton so yeah having you know like eating your
mind with with information that is outside of the monogamous paradigm and actually you know being reassured that how you're making your choices is okay and some of the pain and insecurities you're feeling is not you know because you're making the wrong choice it is you know like a personal
process right and it's important to distinguish between the two again there are situations where there are maybe abusive dynamics and toxic dynamics where it's not you know it's not you should be feeling like a person exactly exactly a comparison is not always the answer right well and I
think that's so important I'm so glad you said that because when you were even naming out the conditions under which you can most easily cultivate comparison I was thinking that if those aren't present that might not be a sign that you need to do something different yourself to make those
possible there might be some of them that might you might need to shift but it also just might be a sign that you don't have the fertile ground for comparison and so it might be a sign you need to change something exactly like the relationship right right and that's why you know I think this
kind of roadmap of factors is helpful because it helps you identify where is the bottleneck or where are the bottlenecks right and that sort of comparison system and once you're aware of the bottlenecks you can see like can I do something about it or do I need to change my relationship
altogether right right yeah so are the factors that make comparison hard or they just kind of the inverse because I'm already kind of hearing like as we're talking like most of them are just like if you're not secure in your relationship and there's not abundance well then comparison will be
hard if you don't have a supportive metamorphon they would rather you not exist than that makes it hard are there any other factors that make comparison hard that aren't just sort of the inverse of the ones that make it easy well it is very much of a mirroring effect so yeah there's nothing
really outside of that like so if we again take them sort of in order like yeah the absence of being on board with non monogamy or being on board with your relationship would be something like being poly under the rest right or having a lot of internalized mononormativity right that would
be a block to comparison the inverse of you know feeling security within yourself you know could have a lot of insecurities also sexual shame and let's see just negative comparison is a big one well and that one you named also of like if you have a high degree of dependency on your partner such that if you didn't have them you would like totally not be okay so your your whole survival is tied up in this person being you know 100% available to you of course yeah that would make sense that
then that's going to be that whatever happens with that person is going to be tied in with your own personal survival system and I don't we don't talk about that enough actually because we often do that with partners right we do tie in our whole survival system with them we create financial
dependencies we create labor dependencies and so it can get really tricky to be like I'm going to be okay no matter what when actually you might be significantly negatively impacted absolutely yeah yeah that is a huge one yeah and I love that you I love that you put that in with security
with yourself though too because it really is about do I and would I feel safe within myself no matter what or no and yeah I just it's it's a it's a really interesting factor to bring up mm-hmm yep yep and then of course you know like the inverse of feeling secure with your relationship
I mean there can be betrayal there can be breaches of trust and breaches of consent that really impact your ability to feel compression or just limited availability you know like your partner not being there right right exactly again like if you feel like you're plate your relational plate is not
full then it's going to be very hard to watch your partner take something from your metaphorical plate and give it to someone else because you're still hungry right exactly mm-hmm yeah and then you know like some of the blocks to having a positive rapport with your metamores would be
again like perceiving your metamores like a cowboy so to speak like someone who's just here to snag your partner away mm-hmm someone who you just don't like there's also sometimes like if you have almost like a visceral repulsion towards a person like sometimes we have that
and if your partner is deciding to be in relationship with someone that you just you know you have that kind of visceral no too yeah and it's not that you're afraid that they're going to steal them away but it might actually impact the way that you feel about your partner right mm-hmm it
be like why are you choosing this person why are you choosing to make love with this person you I would never and that might create distance and you know like it's that's a hard one because you might not be able to say like oh there's something wrong with that relationship it's more of this
like wow I don't like this person yeah and then you know the other factor of perceiving benefits from your partner's relationship the inverse of that would be either not perceiving any benefits or worse feeling like this relationship is breaking away exactly the cost benefit is just not
in your favor that makes it hard yeah and then finally the community factor is the absence of community you know like if you are trying to do non monogamy just you and your partner your isolated you don't have anyone else to talk to it is going to get extra hard because anyone
else you might talk to about your troubles will make it worse most likely they'll tell you that you're wrong you chose wrongly and that you need to get out of there I love this I I it is a beautiful roadmap and it's interesting I don't feel like it's just a roadmap for
comparison it feels like a roadmap for successful non monogamy in general right yeah well I'm curious Marie what what was the most surprising thing in your research that you found mmm well there were a few surprising things one was that comparison and jealousy can coexist
mmm it will seem more about that yeah like I hadn't felt that but I have never really put words onto that and actually me and Dr. Jolie Hamilton coined a word for that and we call it Comparestruggle and that is when you know a big part of you wants to feel comparison or is
in a space of comparison and support for your partners at our relationships but you're also experiencing jealousy or insecurity or grief or you know some very difficult emotions and gosh holding both at the same time can be very confusing and interesting and a very
beautiful reflection of human complexity overall thank you for those of us who are familiar with IFS or internal family systems think it makes it a little bit easier to understand like there's different parts of us doing different things and saying different things but with jealousy and
comparison I think that's a great example of it's not just one thing it's not a binary or on off switch you can definitely experience both well I think that's the same with any like positive change that you might be making in your life like when I'm thinking about some relationship like
either of an individual or a partnership transitioning from a more monogamous mindset to a polyamorous mindset my thinking there is you might be really excited to embrace this new relational paradigm you might be really excited to explore other partners but then there might be a part of you
that's really sad to let go of monogamy that is grieving the loss of being someone's only or having someone be your only even if like there's like you said a part of you that knows that that's not right for you or knows that's not realistic or knows that that's just not going to work
there might be another part of you that's like oh but that's there there's a part of me that wanted that there's a part of me that that was a really beautiful idea and so you can feel those two things at the same time like excitement oh yes this is right I'm stepping into this new thing it's
going to be really cool I'm also letting go of something different and I experience that a lot with my clients like I have so many clients who are actually in that they're like I'm really excited to step into this new thing and I can see all the things it's going to give me and I
think it'll make our relationship better or it'll make my relationships with other people better it'll make my life better it'll be more authentic to me oh but there was this other way that I'm used to there's this other way that either me and my partner were or that I just was in the
world that the way that I was looking at things and now I have to like let that go and let that die and I don't know that everybody's always prepared for that so I love that you know I think it's very similar with comparison and jealousy right you can have this beautiful intention and deep deep
deep belief yes I can be happy to see you with someone else and it can also rip me up inside at the same time right right oh my gosh and the ability to hold that paradox is very profound in my opinion it really talks yeah to the capacity of human beings to to hold a constellation of
things at the same time and and not make any of it wrong right it makes it yeah absolutely problem yes thank you thank you for that I love how you always communicate from such an accepting and beautiful and compassionate place thank you yeah well so you know we were saying just before I know
I said this just before that this roadmap that you've made of like these six things that can support comparison you could create that fertile ground for it to blossom or if they're not there or something else is there that's the opposite it can really make it very hard I know I had just said that well that sounds like a real recipe for a lot of success in non-monogamy but I guess I wanted to ask you do you think comparison is actually necessary for having a successful
or harmonious polyamorous dynamic or or not yeah thanks for asking that and that's a very important question and I'll refer back to the distinction between the definitions of comparison where you know one way to see comparison is a positive emotion towards your partners that are relationship
and another definition is additudinal comparison or having a positive attitude behavior that is supportive of your partners that are relationships and I think the former the emotional side is definitely not necessary I think it's kind of a bonus you know like it's a great thing when
you can feel it but I don't think you should not be non-monogamous until you have that right but then the latter the additudinal comparison and overall what it means is having a positive interpretation of your partners other relationships I think that is more fundamental because if you don't
have that then you know you might always be really at odds with non-monogamy and always be really at odds with your partners other relationships and the grind of that can be really exhausting and really painful yes yeah I love that you make this distinction now I see like the real deep
power of making a distinction between compersion as a feeling and compersion as a practice or as an attitude because I agree with you I think that if you don't feel it that's okay I don't always feel happy for my partner when they're happy even you know about something that has nothing
to do with them and another partner it might be just I might not be happy that they went to that baseball game or or whatever right like I might just but but you're right I think that if I was not feeling in my heart willing to be supportive if I wasn't feeling in my heart that their joy
didn't amplify our overall life and ecosystem and everything then that would be really that would be really hard and it might be a signal that there needs some that something needs to be looked at there if I'm really feeling that I'm gonna use a fancy word parsimonious I'm feeling that grasping
then I can't I can't intentionally make room for my partner to have joy unless I'm a part of it that that might be that might be a like you said that that seems like that would be a pretty big red flag not just in polyamory but I think especially if you're gonna practice polyamory
or non monogamy that yeah I'm in agreement with you there you I think you need it I think you need to cultivate it now at the same time Marie do you think that it is okay to not be there the minute you start polyamory oh my god of course can you can you build it can you can you get there
like or is it either you have it or you don't oh it definitely can be built and part of it is just really acclimating to one new paradigm you know I've had research participants coming to non monogamy from an affair after there is a monogamy one person had an affair and there was a big
earthquake in their relationships but instead of bolting they decided to talk about what happened and why and they decided that you know we do want to be with other people we both do so let's actually like backtrack heal the betrayal that happened and create non monogamy openly and ethically and consensually and you know it took a couple of years for them to really be in a good place and experience compulsion for one another but they got there and that to me is a testament of how
you can definitely grow into it as long as you're both really willing and you know hopefully getting something out of it you know like again there's the cost benefit balance and if it's favorable enough then you can keep going it's just like one one person is always dealing with more of the cost
and you know having having a really hard time consistently then you know it's going to be really really hard to maintain over time yeah so if I'm hearing you right you could even take this rubric that's in your book take these six elements and really it's not necessarily a way that you're
going to rate your relationship and either you get an A and you're going to be okay or you get a D and you're doomed but rather you can take a look at it and you can say okay well I have this I have this this one is really tough this one maybe we need to do some work around so that we can
like pull the weeds out of the garden that might be choking out compulsion here and and then maybe there's room for it to flourish it doesn't all have to be there right right and that's why I think that rubric is super helpful for us coaches um absolutely no I do actually have this rubric
available on my website what is compulsion.com so if people want to download it they can and I always encourage my clients to download it and show it to me and then we can see what are the main bottlenecks and what can we do about it right like I had a client recently actually start
a non-monogamous relationship with his wife of 15 years after 15 years of monogamy and we said that in his rubric the lowest score was in the community area like they didn't know anyone else who was non-monogamous they didn't have anyone else to talk to so I was able to recommend a bunch
of resources you know including your podcasts including books but also including a virtual community that he ended up joining and made a lot of great meaningful connections there so now you know like his wife went and spent a weekend with someone else and instead of being alone in his
grief in his insecurity in his fear he was able to talk to people throughout the weekend and that would be the whole different and he came out of that weekend feeling like okay well that was hard but I'm okay I'm not alone yeah I recommend that so much to to my clients and also
I obviously also run to twice a year I do a group program where people have the opportunity there to to connect with each other and really hold each other through the work that they're doing I think community working on your relationship in community connecting to other people practicing
non-monogamy if you're practicing it is absolutely is absolutely huge this has been such a delightful conversation Marie and I really just want to appreciate you I'm so excited about your book I am wondering you've already shared the what is compersion.com is that the main place people
can find you or do you have other places that keep people can find you if they want to learn more about you yeah absolutely one of the best places is Instagram I post everything about everything that I can Instagram is awesome thank you so the Instagram is at love underscore insight underscore
dating or you can just type my name well and I'll put the link in the show okay cool don't worry about that all that'll be fine I have Facebook I have LinkedIn and let's see what else yeah um definitely follow me on the socials and go to my website where does compersion.com and
what else did I want to say yeah just find me and I'm so excited for folks to read my book I would love to hear people's feedback about it as well it's coming out on June 18th so I don't know when this podcast will be released but and it's open for pre-order now so you can get it you can get your
name on the list now and yeah your your episode will be out before the book is released so amazing so yeah please go online and order it it's on Amazon Barnes and Noble and Roman and Little Field website fantastic Marie it's been such a pleasure to talk to you thank you for being on the show
thank you Libby it's such an honor and a joy thank you for always being so yeah just loving and compassionate and healing in your message I cannot tell you enough how appreciate it and my clients appreciate it hmm that's so wonderful to hear see you next time okay bye
thank you so much for joining me today if you have any thoughts about what I've said today or a question for the show I'd love to hear from you you can find me on Instagram as that polyam mom or you can go to the shows website making polyamorywork.com and submit a question there I'll also say
that if you're loving my podcasts but you are looking for more support I do this for a living I am an integrative relationship guide so I help individuals couples and groups have amazing relationships you can find out more about my offerings on my website if you love this podcast
please share it with your friends your networks your Facebook groups your co-workers your family etc and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode also if you listen on iTunes I always love getting reviews it literally makes my day and it'll also help more people find the show
making polyamory work is created by me Libby send back it is edited by Finn of the normalizing non-monogamy podcast and hosted on the Spotify podcasts platform Vandalion manages the website and posts the transcripts thank you everyone and see you next time