As someone who doesn’t like to be pigeonholed into tightly defined labels or identities, novogamy is the term I had been waiting for all my life! Finding out about it gave me a sigh of relief—and a breath of fresh air.

Novogamy is the freedom to adopt any relationship structure that suits you and your partner(s) in a consensual manner, at any given point, without binding yourself to a rigid identity or set of beliefs. The term was coined by Dr. Jorge Ferrer in his recent book, Love & Freedom: Transcending Monogamy and Polyamory, which explains in great detail why monogamists and polyamorists should finally stop their ideological war (and live happily forever after on whatever relational path suits them best).

Refreshingly, novogamy says that we don’t have to choose between monogamy OR polyamory—OR any other relationship style for that matter, in a permanent way. Novogamy expands relational choices beyond the mono/poly binary, and eschews the age-old debate around the supposed superiority or naturalness of monogamy versus polyamory—and instead argues that there is no such thing as one “universal truth” when it comes to intimate relationships.

Creating a relational life that embodies the necessary conditions for compersion represents a remarkable feat in and of itself—because these are conditions of healthy relating. We may compersion as a flashlight to illuminate the areas in our relationships that can be improved.

The essence of this journey into empathy and gratitude can apply to monogamists and consensually non-monogamous folks alike—providing a foundation for relationship satisfaction and individual happiness in any relationship style.

Is compersion necessary for successful non-monogamous relationships? Well, it turns out, it depends on how we define “compersion”. I discovered that, far from being a single concept, compersion falls into two main categories: embodied and attitudinal.

A personal introduction to the book “Love and Freedom: Transcending Monogamy and Polyamory”, by Jorge Ferrer, PhD. This book proposes a paradigm shift in how romantic relationships are conceptualized, a step forward in the evolution of modern relationships. In the same way that the transgender movement surmounted the gender binary, Ferrer defines how a parallel step can—and should—be taken with the relational style binary. This book offers the first systematic discussion of relationship modes beyond monogamy and polyamory, as well as introduces the notion of “relational freedom” as the capability to choose one’s relational style free from biological, psychological, and sociocultural conditionings.

Ferrer articulates three relational pathways to living in-between, through, and beyond the mono/poly binary: fluidity, hybridity, and transcendence. Moving beyond that binary opens a fuzzy, liminal, and multivocal relational space that Ferrer calls novogamy.

I believe that some of us are wired to be more compersive than others. Equally important, I have found that there are times when it is easier or more challenging for me to feel good about someone else’s happiness. Self-awareness and self-care are key parts of the equation. Additionally, while compersion is most frequently discussed in the context of polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, I think it has broader applications.

The pursuit of relational freedom requires a new approach to jealousy: Buddhism in particular offers a spiritual perspective and practice for moving beyond jealousy. This blog explores how the extension of the Buddhist contemplative quality of sympathetic joy or mudita from its original context to intimate relationships can transform jealousy and thus support greater relational freedom.

In this blog, influential philosopher of emotions Ronald de Sousa explains that jealousy can be transformed into compersion when we reframe the core sensation of jealousy into a positive (although counter-cultural) story. Rejecting the idea that we are entitled to sexual jealousy, or that jealousy is proof of love, de Sousa argues that we may free ourselves from culturally-based assumptions by ascribing compersive meanings to our lover’s extra-dyadic intimacies.