Compersion: When Jealousy-Inducing Situations Don’t (Just) Induce Jealousy

Abstract

Emotional reactions to a partner's extradyadic romantic interests are assumed to be negative and characterized by jealousy, an emotional state that arises over a perceived threat to one's relationship. Yet, reactions may also be positive, and involve compersion, or taking joy in one's partner's pleasure in other sexual and relational encounters. Although some have argued that compersion is the opposite of jealousy, research has shown that compersion and jealousy are not opposing constructs, despite being treated this way in both theoretical and empirical research.Using a convenience sample of polyamorous (N = 3,530) and monogamous (N = 1,358) individuals we draw on theories of jealousy, emotional ambivalence, and emotional forecasting to examine people's anticipated affective responses to hypothetical situations involving a partner's extradyadic relations, and assess whether experience with having a partner engage in extradyadic relations was associated with anticipating less jealousy and more compersion.Results suggest that people in polyamorous relationships report less jealousy and more compersion with their partners, and that personal experience involving a partner's extradyadic romantic interests predicted more compersion and less jealousy, with experience predicting greater increases in compersion among monogamous than polyamorous participants. Finally, while anticipated compersion was associated with greater relationship satisfaction, neither jealousy nor ambivalence were associated with relationship satisfaction. These results further demonstrate that individuals can experience both positive and negative reactions to a partner's extradyadic relations, both based on actual experience and projection of responses to future events, and that real-life experiences are important in anticipating these emotions.

“I’ve been cheated, been mistreated, when will I be loved”: Two decades of infidelity research through an intersectional lens

“…In studies with individuals in monogamous and CNM relationships, monogamous individuals anticipated greater negative emotions and lower positive affect in response to hypothetical infidelities than polyamorous individuals (Balzarini et al, 2021). In another study, monogamous men rated hypothetical consensual and nonconsensual sexual EDI as more distressing than emotional EDI, whereas monogamous women were more distressed by emotional than sexual EDI (Mogilski et al, 2019).…”

Validation study of the Italian brief version of the multidimensional jealousy scale: Psychometric properties, measurement invariance across gender, and convergent validity

“…Culture would determine the conditions that generate jealousy and the responses expected in such situations. Jealousy should not be thought of as a static, unitary emotion, but as a multifaceted emotion in which culture plays a very important role ( Pines and Friedman, 1998 ; Ward and Voracek, 2004 ; Canto Ortiz et al, 2009 ; Buunk et al, 2011 ; Zandbergen and Brown, 2015 ; Balzarini et al, 2021 ).…”

What do we know about consensual non-monogamy?

“…One important difference between those engaging in CNM compared to monogamy, however, is how they approach sexual and romantic jealousy. In CNM, jealousy is not necessarily regarded as a threat to relationships [15]. Instead, it may be something that is possible to manage [9] or even experience positively as compersion (whereby someone derives pleasure from the thought of their partner enjoying themselves with another [16]).…”