Thursday, February 3, 2022

Compersion: Polyamory Beyond Jealousy

 

Happy New Year Everyone!!!! It's been a long time, right? Well, I've been taking some time off and experiencing life and love and all of the above.  This book review has been in the works since last year, I'll get to the reason why it took me particularly so long to finish this book during my review.


Compersion: Polyamory Beyond Jealousy by Hypatia from Space.

"The author, Hypatia is a polyamorous blogger and writer that has intensively focused her research on this feeling somewhat unknown to most people." 

I honestly had high hopes for this book.  There's not enough talk in the polyamorous community about compersion but instead, the focus is on jealousy.  I decided to purchase it online and start reading it.,I dove right in as soon as it came in the mail. Today, I looked at my reading stats for this book and I started it on December 11th of last year and finished it today.  Why has it taken me almost 2 months to finish this book?  Well, the first reason was I didn't like the writing style at all.  I try to be extremely honest about my book reviews but I just couldn't give it anything past 2 out of 5 stars on the Goodreads app. I had so many things to say about this book that I started writing them down just so I could remember all of the things that I didn't like about the book. The book also felt very dry and didn't even excite me enough. I read several other books since starting it. 

First, I'm going to say that I've never had an issue with compersion. I love when my partners are happy and I know as a polyamorous person that my partners will be engaging with others-it's a given.  I really wanted to read this book to see if it would help someone truly achieve compersion by learning certain steps or techniques that the author provides. After reading it I'm not too sure.  I don't want to be nitpicky but here are some of the things I didn't like about the book.

  • The book is very couple-centric. The author doesn't do a very good job of even thinking about solo poly folks and how they may feel.
  • The book feels more like the author's own personal journey with compersion but no real clear-cut advice on how to truly achieve compersion. 
  • 75% of the book is how the other person or her partner should act or do to mitigate her jealousy. For example on page 158, she says there is nothing wrong with asking your partner or metamour to take things slowly.  As a solo poly person, I found this extremely offputting. It felt like she was telling people not to take responsibility for their own feelings. 
  • The author uses words and portions of other books from other polyamorous writers that seemed really good but I'm not sure if her personal story was as genuine. 
  • This book really feels like the author is jealous and is trying to cover it up. She even wrote on page 229" In order to feel compersion, we  must have healthy self-esteem." As I read further I realized this was taken directly from another book.
  • She constantly referred to people as polyamorous and not polyamorous people or folks. I kept on asking myself who proofread this?
There are a few things that I did like about this book and they were:
  • The ending had a ton of material really discussing how to achieve Comperson. I think if she would've put this information towards the beginning of the book it would have been really good. 
  • She discusses having your own user's manual to give to new partners. The user's manual idea was taken was another author and her book but it really gave great information. 
Overall the book was just meh to me. I even wrote down What has this book achieved? I'm not sure how it will truly help someone who wants to experience compersion.  I'd like to find other books on the topic of Compersion. If you have any recommendations please let me know.