Polyamory Observations #12

I sometimes feel like a huge fraud because I am a person who lives in a polyamorous family, who loves what polyamory has offered me, and who is still scared witless about what polyamory requires.


I struggle with the fundamental emotional maturity that is required in order to get to compersion, and compersion is the heart and soul of making polyamory work. Generally, if you go looking for a definition of the word, you find definitions like this:


"a term used by practitioners of polyamory to describe the experience of taking pleasure when one's partner is with another person. It was originally coined by the Kerista Commune in San Francisco (or possibly by the ZEGG community in Germany) which practiced polyfidelity, and has since been adopted throughout the culture of polyamory. The term is often expressed as "the opposite of jealousy."


I seem to be far more likely to feel jealous than to feel joyful for my partner's joy in another, and then I generally feel guilty and ashamed because I have that response. Intellectually, I understand that our love is solid, and I know I shouldn't see every new "interest" as a threat, but my emotions still flare whenever I am confronted with the reality, or even the shadow of possibility. Given time, I usually work my way through that, but it is an intense, uncomfortable, and exhausting business, and I really wish I could just avoid the whole dance.

That's why I spend a fair amount of time looking around for resources and materials that speak to the whole notion of compersion in the context of polyamory. That searching has borne fruit this time, in an amazing find. I came across a series of essays, written by Eric Francis at Planet Waves, Inc. Beginning with an essay entitled It's Not About Sex, It's About Self, the series speaks directly to issues with jealousy and compersion. It is a huge intellectual leap from the drivel that one finds in books like "The Ethical Slut," and I am thrilled to find it. Francis looks at compersion and jealousy and speaks about both from a perspective that I've never seen anywhere else. His writing gets to some of the real "roots" of both jealousy and compersion. He sees those two responses as not "opposites," but reflections of what lies at the depths of relational health. I've "captured" bits and pieces from the various essays here. I'm not sure exactly what I can offer in addition to the elegant and eloquent work of Eric Francis. I offer the following tidbits as a beginning place for this exploration:



It's Not About Sex; It's About Self:
“Our relationship to sex and sexuality is our relationship to existence. If we feel good about our erotic experiences, needs and feelings, we tend to feel good about life. If we are bitter, if we don't get what we need, if we feel guilty or ashamed of our sexual feelings and experiences, that is most likely how we're going to feel about life.”

That seems so simple and obvious -- we are happiest and most centered when what we need is taken care of. How much easier and simpler it is to be generous when we dwell in abundance ourselves...

Touching the Goddess of Curiosity
If you asked most people what was the opposite of guilt, they would say innocence, but when do we actually feel innocent? How about this: the opposite of guilt is curiosity. Curiosity is the mind in an expanded state, ready to embrace what comes its way. Guilt is the mind in a contracted state, aware of how bad it feels or how wrong it is. Curiosity is the mind in an open state, welcoming reality into consciousness.

Open, curious, welcoming... I am wondering how it would feel to be so innocent that it would be safe to be open and curious about whatever might come to be?

The Problem of Self-Esteem
Both sanctioned forms of relationship, marriage or temporary promiscuity, imply that relationship is about property: in one case, property you keep, and in the other, property you dispose of.

In this I can sense a way to find a new bit of valuing in my relatedness. Ours isn't sanctioned in the traditional sense, and I really wonder if, in creating something entirely consensual and designed in the way we choose, we've affirmed ourselves better than we might have in something more mainstream. Does that make any kind of sense at all?

Compersion: the Only Way Out is In
Compersion is the complete acknowledgement of who a person is, in their entirety, as apart from you ... seeing a lover … in the full spectrum of their erotic reality presents a specific challenge, because it can quickly take us to the empty place where we are no longer necessary … It's as close to ego death … as we may safely approach … we are born into that emptiness, shorn of expectation, need, or the sense of loss involved with not being needed. Or, at the least, we recognize that we are needed because of the incomparable properties we possess. And in that space, we can actually exist. To offer another person your compersion is to offer them and yourself the autonomy necessary for each of us to be ourselves; and for love to be itself. It is the living expression that only truth is erotic.

I do recognize the "death" imagery of this, because that is the feeling that is almost always at the root of my jealous reactions -- that sense that I am no longer necessary simply because there is some other. I am working my way around the edges of the notion that I will always be necessary because I am unique in my own self, and therefore not "replaceable." Perhaps it is a sort of emotional and ego reincarnation that happens just as one enters into compersion; a recognition that we are, in our own right, erotic people.

There is so much here. I will likely read over and over, trying to learn at some deep level.

swan