Polyamorous Views On Jealousy and Compersion
The concept of compersive behavior is widespread within the polyamorous community, and was originally coined by the now defunct Kerista Commune in San Francisco. The related adjective is "compersive".
It is common for people within the polyamorous community to state that jealousy comes with the territory of open romantic relationships. Compersion has often been referred to as "the opposite of jealousy".
In romantic relationships, thoughts and feelings of security, fear, and/or anxiety over anticipated loss of a partner or of that partner's attention, affection, or time emote both compersion and jealousy as natural reactions to perceived complexities of nonmonogamy and are quite extensively covered in polyamorous literature.
In her book Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits, Dr Deborah M. Anapol describes five different types of jealousy - possessive, exclusion, competition, ego, and fear - before discussing compersion. The books The Ethical Slut and Opening Up also devote entire chapters to discussions of jealousy.
Investigative reporter and sex educator Eric Francis wrote on his Planet Waves website that an individual could look for their own compersion within jealousy itself: "Right inside the jealous episode is a fiery core of erotic passion. It may surprise you how good it feels, and if you get there, you can be sure you're stepping right into compersion."
Read more about this topic: Compersion
Famous quotes containing the words views and/or jealousy:
“A foreign minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good man of business if he is not an agreeable man of pleasure too. Half his business is done by the help of his pleasures: his views are carried on, and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure; by intrigues with women, and connections insensibly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of amusement.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I don’t mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don’t show jealousy.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)