Compersion Is a Useful Lie: The Unicorn Grazing in Shangri-La
Monday, March 24, 2025.
Let’s begin with a beautiful thought:
“Compersion is when your partner experiences joy with someone else, and instead of feeling jealousy, you feel happiness for them.”
Lovely, right?
It sounds like spiritual enlightenment with better sex. It sounds like love unchained from ownership, love evolved beyond mammalian insecurity.
It sounds like something written on driftwood in a polyamorous co-op bathroom in Vermont.
But here’s the truth: compersion is a useful lie.
It’s a noble fiction, like Santa Claus, or bipartisan cooperation.
It’s an idea so beautiful, so aspirational, that even if it doesn’t quite work in reality, we feel compelled to believe in it anyway—like a unicorn grazing in Shangri-La.
And no, this isn’t an attack on polyamory. Quite the opposite.
This is an inquiry into whether compersion can exist without polyamory, and what it tells us about human attachment, jealousy, and the myth of boundless love.
What Is Compersion, Really?
Compersion is a term born from the Kerista Commune, a 1970s intentional community in San Francisco that practiced group marriage, shared parenting, and a wildly idealistic view of emotional sharing (Easton & Hardy, 2009). They needed a word to describe joy felt when your partner experiences pleasure or love with someone else—especially a new sexual partner.
It’s often called the “opposite of jealousy,” and it’s been elevated in polyamory culture to near-mythical status. You’ll find memes about it, Reddit threads full of humblebrags, and books urging us to “lean into it.”
But like most spiritual ideals, the more you chase compersion, the more elusive it becomes.
Can Compersion Exist Without Polyamory?
Here’s where things get even stranger: in 2025, monogamous couples are starting to co-opt the language of compersion.
You’ll see phrases like:
“I love how happy you are with your friends.”
“I enjoy watching you enjoy your solo hobbies.”
“Your ex is such a great co-parent.”
It’s not the full-blown, “go enjoy sex with someone else while I feel nothing but joy,” variety. It’s micro-compersion—emotional generosity sprinkled into domestic life.
But here's the catch: it’s still hard.
Even in monogamous couples who claim to love each other deeply, jealousy simmers.
It simmers over time spent apart, compliments given to others, or God forbid—attention given to that one yoga instructor who always says namaste with too much eye contact.
Let’s Talk About Human Wiring
At this point, let’s abandon the unicorn for a moment and talk evolutionary neurobiology.
Humans evolved with attachment systems, not just to survive, but to stay close to those who protect us.
According to Bowlby (1969), attachment is biologically programmed: we bond, we cling, we monitor for threat. In adults, this manifests in romantic jealousy, fear of abandonment, and protest behavior when love seems at risk (Hazan & Shaver, 1994).
In other words:
Your brain isn’t designed for compersion. It’s designed to detect rivals and defend your mate bond like a territorial lemur.
Even those with a secure attachment style—the Holy Grail of emotional development—may find that compersion is possible in fleeting moments, but rarely sustainable.
MRI studies show that romantic jealousy activates the insula, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex—the same regions involved in pain and threat detection (Takahashi et al., 2006).
Compersion? eh…So far, no one’s mapped that out.
Is Compersion Even Real?
The short answer: maybe. But it’s rare, complex, and context-dependent.
Some studies on consensual non-monogamy (CNM) do report positive emotions when partners connect with others, especially when it enhances the overall bond or sexual confidence (Moors, Matsick, & Schechinger, 2021).
But these reports are also:
Self-Selected: Those who hate polyamory aren’t filling out the surveys.
Culturally Loaded: There’s pressure in CNM circles to "perform" compersion and appear emotionally evolved.
Temporally unstable: Compersion today, jealousy tomorrow.
It’s a bit like being proud of your toddler for learning to walk—until he walks into traffic. What begins as joy can rapidly morph into threat.
So Why Believe in Compersion?
Because even if it’s rare, even if it’s neurologically suspicious, it points us toward something noble. Or not.
Compersion, whether in polyamory or monogamy, suggests:
That we don’t own people.
That our partner’s joy is not a subtraction from our own.
That emotional generosity is possible, even if imperfect.
And in this sense, compersion, at its best, becomes a sort of spiritual exercise, perhaps even a minor irritant to the epic forces of Cultural Narcissism. Compersion is not so much a feeling you chase, but a practice you persistently undertake. Like forgiveness. Or patience. Or keeping your mouth shut during an argument about kitchen sponges.
Compersion for Monogamous Couples: Real Applications
So, how do monogamous couples practice something like compersion without opening their relationships, joining a commune, or losing their minds?
Here are real-world practices that mimic compersion’s spirit:
Celebrate Separate Joys
Be genuinely curious and excited about your partner’s achievements, friendships, and creative work—even when they don’t involve you.
Honor Nonsexual Intimacies
Recognize that emotional intimacy can exist with others without being a threat. Normalize deep friendships and emotional closeness outside the dyad.
Struggle to De-center Ownership
This is hard for Americans because of our cultural FOMO. Practice saying things like: “I don’t own your joy, but I get to witness it.” (Then give yourself a cookie for not clenching your jaw.)
Talk About Jealousy Frankly and Honestly
Don’t pretend you’re above it. Just like meditation, the work is in returning—not perfection. Jealousy is human; awareness is divine.
Compersion as Myth, Metaphor, and Mirror
Is compersion real? Some folks believe so. It depends. Sorry, I just don’t see it in the wiring diagram.
If you’re asking whether humans are naturally wired to feel joy when our primary attachment partner experiences pleasure with someone else— I’d comfortably venture probably not.
But if you’re asking whether humans are capable of practicing emotional generosity, of stretching toward empathy, of rewriting scripts carved by fear and scarcity—then yes.
Compersion might be a useful lie, but like all great myths, it gives us something to reach for, even if we never arrive.
A unicorn grazing in Shangri-La is still worth looking for, if only to remind us that we are not bound by evolution’s first draft.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Easton, D., & Hardy, J. W. (2009). The ethical slut: A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other adventures. Celestial Arts.
Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli0501_1
Moors, A. C., Matsick, J. L., & Schechinger, H. A. (2021). The science of consensual non-monogamy. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(6), 1432–1450. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211019068
Takahashi, H., Matsuura, M., Yahata, N., Koeda, M., Suhara, T., & Okubo, Y. (2006). Men and women show distinct brain activations during imagery of sexual and emotional infidelity. NeuroImage, 32(3), 1299–1307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.05.049