About the cultivation of erotic empathy, self-awareness, and engaging creatively with shame, projection and vanity. Photos and essays by Eric Francis.
The idea for Book of Blue came out of my work as a facilitator on the Tantra, Polyamory and Swing conference circuit starting in the mid-1990s. As a presenter at a diversity of events, I took up two topics that I didn’t notice anyone focusing on.
One was compersion, which is an idea that covers a broad spectrum of forms of erotic empathy. Essentially, compersion means experiencing a positive response to your partner’s sexual pleasure — in whatever form it takes — including their desires and imagination. Yep, they would take pleasure in knowing what lurks in the back of your dirty little mind, and you would get lusty telling them.
Part of understanding compersion calls for being in contact with the nature of jealousy, which is not what it seems (more details on that for another discussion).
In sum, though, jealousy is an inner crisis connected to the fear of death, triggered by one’s sense of self dissolving in the face of a jealous episode. If someone is strongly identified with a relationship, if the relationship is threatened, they will feel their whole identity is threatened and their whole life is collapsing.
Envy, a different feeling, is related to competition (and is often thought of incorrectly as jealousy). Envy is about wanting what someone else has. That’s running through the streets and racking up cash on monetized videos: the envy economy. You will pay me to want to be like me.
Exploring compersion can get complicated when people outside the primary relationship are involved (such as in polyamorous situations). Typically, that is the only time the idea of compersion comes up, if it does. Usually this is in concept only. If you’re struggling in your poly situations, dive into compersion. It’s learnable though mostly takes either a sense of daring or natural appreciation for life.
I take an additional approach to the topic. Compersion can be explored within couples who are devoted to their own and one another’s truth. No third parties or extracurricular activities are necessary. The easiest way to demonstrate and experience erotic empathy is by witnessing your partner do themselves while you tell them how beautiful they are.
And there is self-compersion, where you would explore pleasure-gifting and verbal appreciation for yourself…with the resonance of empathy as you observe yourself. This invokes the inner witness.
The Book of Blue photographers are: Eric Francis, Dani Voirin, Beth Bagner, Maria Henzler and Neal McDonough.
