Abstract

The paper focuses on "compersion," a term well-known in polyamorous communities that describes the positive emotion one feels when their partner has a relationship with another person. The paper aims to create a reliable and valid quantitative scale called "COMPERSe" (Classifying Our Metamour/Partner Emotional Response Scale) to measure compersion. The scale is based on a multi-stage, bottom-up process grounded in qualitative data from people in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships.

Key Points

• Background: Compersion is a term coined by the polyamorous community to express the positive emotions one feels when their partner is involved with another person. However, there's a lack of standardized measures to study it.

• Methodology: The study used qualitative data from 44 participants and quantitative data from 310 and 320 participants for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, respectively.

• Findings: The study developed a three-factor scale to measure compersion:

  1. Happiness about Partner/Metamour Relationship
  2. Excitement for New Connections
  3. Sexual Arousal

  The scale showed excellent internal consistency and strong divergent and convergent validity.

• Significance: The paper argues that having a standardized scale for measuring compersion can help clinicians work more effectively with CNM clients and may even have applications for work with monogamous clients.