Redefining Masculinity and Compersion in Non-Monogamy

By Adam Darrow

“You let your woman fuck other guys?” my best friend wanted to know.

When I had my first true consensually non-monogamous relationship, it was because I fell in love with a woman who was extremely, and publicly, non-monogamous. Her name was Jane. She was a sex educator who was clear from the beginning that she liked casual sex, had no plans to stop having it, and was very public about her choices. If I wanted to have a relationship with her, I was going to have to be ok with all of that. Coming from a more traditional set of gender roles and relationship ideas, I was basically thrown into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim.

Negative emotions and powerful feelings of jealousy dominated the early part of my relationship with her. It was overwhelming. Compersion was the farthest thing from my mind. I was merely trying not to drown.

When my best friend asked me that question, he exposed a major fault in the masculinity story that I had been unknowingly telling myself: that I was basing so much of my manhood on how the world saw her behavior in the context of being my girlfriend.

They saw me as a cuck. To them, this was the lowest level of masculinity. Sadly, I found that a part of me thought that way too. I wondered if I was a cuck. Forget the fact that I honestly had no idea what the cuck kink actually was, to me it just meant I was a weak man.

The experience forced me to ask myself: What is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man, a strong man?

We have so much imagery in our culture about traditional masculinity. The stereotypical lumberjack with a big beard and broad shoulders, or Fred Harding holding the tires in that famous black and white photo.

I grew up being fully bought into those ideas and throughout my life I made sure everyone knew all the stereotypical manly things I did. I was a free-solo rock climber; I started and ran successful businesses; I had played ice hockey at an elite level; I climbed mountains and snowboarded down them; I had even built my house with my own hands and tools. Weirdly though, having a girlfriend who fucked other guys didn’t make that list of stereotypical manly things. Go figure.

After a lot of introspection, I realized the actual question I needed to answer was: What does it mean to me to be a man?  How do I want to define masculinity?

I decided I wanted to define it as someone with a rock-solid moral compass. Who stands up for what’s good and right in the world. Who is willing to help protect those who can’t protect themselves. Who treats everyone with respect, regardless of their status. Someone his friends, family, and lovers know they can count on.

Simply put: A fierce gentleman.

And yea, being able to fix my truck and lift heavy things are still meaningful parts of my definition. What can I say? I’m traditional in some respects.

What stood out to me though, was that nothing in my definition seemed to hang on Jane’s choices. And nothing in my definition had anything to do with my sexuality

But the best part about finding my own definition of masculinity was discovering a kind of compersion for myself. I felt joy in seeing how I was already living my life as the kind of man I wanted to be. I didn’t need to change who I was: I needed to change how I was measuring my masculinity.

It wasn’t an overnight shift but as I began sinking into my newfound definition, it slowly silenced the negative voices in my head. I realized I had been complicit in my self-worth as a man being taken away from me, and I was never going to let that happen again. The resulting confidence in myself and by extension, in my relationship with Jane, was remarkable.

When I first got into this relationship, my first open relationship, the confidence I exuded was an act. The truth was that I was in way over my head. I was literally the definition of fake it till you make it. Turns out, my lack of confidence was the main driver of the powerful jealousy and negative emotions that came up when I thought about Jane with other men.

The confidence I found by turning my gaze inward at who I was is what opened the door to success in non-monogamy for me. Her sexual exploits were no longer a statement of my manhood or my masculinity, they were only a statement of who she was, and the truth is, I loved who she was, from the moment I met her.

After reading my story, someone said that it seemed I started my journey into non-monogamy trying to learn how to love this woman, but I ended up learning how to love myself. I was surprised I hadn’t thought about it that way before because it’s absolutely true. Non-monogamy forced me to learn how to truly love myself. And that’s a powerful place to be operating from.

The reality is that I don’t “let” Jane fuck other men any more than I “let” her be female. It’s just who she is. And the fact that she does, doesn’t say anything at all about my masculinity. But the fact that I accept who she is says everything about the kind of man I am. The kind of man I’m proud to be.

Years later after seeing in detail the journey I went on in this relationship, the same friend who asked me how I let ‘my’ woman fuck other men, admitted that he felt I was a far stronger man than he. It felt good to be seen in the way I now saw myself. By living my truth as the kind of man I decided I wanted to be, I had successfully flipped the script.

Can I still be successful at non-monogamy without full compersion?

I honestly don’t think I will ever get to the point where I feel joy from my girlfriend having sex with another man, and I’m really ok with that. Once I got over the jealousy and fear of social judgment by getting completely grounded in my own version of masculinity, I was able to have an incredibly rewarding open relationship.

I’ll even take it a step further. I have started to wonder if I even want to have full compersion. I like getting a little hit of what I call ‘healthy jealousy’ from my partner’s exploits. To me, it’s a form of healthy competition, and that kind of competition is what spurs me on to be a better boyfriend and lover. Knowing she has other options, and can sample the other wares so to speak, means I can never take her, or my relationship, for granted. Plain and simple, competition is good for the consumer. And when the consumer is happy, she tends to make sure I’m happy too.

So yea, I’ll never reach compersion nirvana, but the compersion I do feel is the incredible satisfaction and joy I get from knowing I can wholeheartedly accept her for who she is, no matter what anybody else thinks.  And that makes me feel powerful. Powerful in a manly way. Powerful in a masculine way. Powerful like I’m holding a pair of truck tires with my shirt off in a black and white photo taken in a garage kind of way.

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The full story of the personal journey I went on, is recounted in my book ‘Seek the Risk’. Check it out at seektherisk.net

About the Author:

Adam Darrow is a born-and-bred New Yorker whose life has included programming on Wall Street, teaching high school, competitive extreme sports, being a ’90s raver, and dumpster diving while trying to make it as a photographer. He discovered writing later in life and now writes about lived experience, particularly the male experience in the world of modern intimate relationships. His work explores sex, masculinity, fear, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves until experience forces us to reconsider them.