Compersion

Compersion is an empathetic state of happiness and joy experienced when another individual experiences happiness and joy. It is sometimes identified with parents' pride in their children's accomplishments or one's own excitement for friends' and others' successes. It is commonly used to describe when a person experiences positive feelings when a lover is enjoying another relationship, especially in the context of polyamory and Swinging.

In his Planet waves internet site (focusing on Polyamory) Eric Francis (American investigative reporter, essayist, author, editor and photojournalist) says "Compersion begins the first time that we are turned on by someone else's pleasure, or the idea of someone else's love for anyone beside us. You may think this is "totally out to lunch", but for some people it is totally natural. There are those who are not the "jealous" type, and then there are those who just love "love", no matter whose love it is. We all know it is possible. We may have an idea of how good it would feel to dissolve into the safety, freedom and unconditional acceptance of our lovers and all that they are, including the other people that they may love, and how great it would feel to let them experience all that we are, including the other people WE may love."

Historical Context for Compersion

Notions of openness in relationships and the positive feelings associated with providing a loved one with that freedom to explore and experience life to find happiness, have abounded in many historical philosophies. For example, from the 4th Century BCE the concept of Hedonism grew into a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).

Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by a student of Socrates, Aristippus of Cyrene.

With this in mind Compersionists aim to find happiness and pleasure as humans using a communicated, honest and agreed approach within their relationships resulting in partnerships where seeing a loved one experiencing happiness and pleasure creates feelings of happiness and pleasure in oneself. Inferentially, one could say that compersion is the state of being able to practice pure hedonism.

In the last two centuries, the Utilitarian philosophical approach developed to consider happiness. Utilitarianism addresses problems with moral motivation neglected by Kantianism by giving a central role to happiness. The 18th and 19th-century British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill defended the ethical theory of utilitarianism, according to which we should perform whichever action maximizes the aggregate good. Conjoining hedonism, as a view as to what is good for people, to utilitarianism has the result that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest total amount of happiness. Compersionists aim to provide their loved ones with the freedom to achieve the greatest amount of happiness and therefore align with many Utilitarian principles.

Etymology

The concept of compersive behavior is widespread within the polyamorous and swinger communities, and was originally coined by the now defunct Kerista Commune in San Francisco. The related adjective is "compersive".

Formal definitions

• PolyOz defines compersion as "the positive feelings one gets when a lover is enjoying another relationship. Sometimes called the opposite or flip side of jealousy." They comment that compersion can coexist with jealous feelings.
• The Polyamory society defines compersion to be "the feeling of taking joy in the joy that others you love share among themselves, especially taking joy in the knowledge that your beloveds are expressing their love for one another."
• The InnKeeper defines compersion as "A feeling of joy when a loved one invests in and takes pleasure from another romantic or sexual relationship. ... Compersion does not specifically refer to joy regarding the sexual activity of one's partner, but refers instead to joy at the relationship with another romantic and/or sexual partner. It's analogous to the joy parents feel when their children get married, or to the happiness felt between best friends when they find a partner."
• From Opening Up, Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio writes that compersion is, in part, "the ability to turn jealousy's negative feelings into acceptance of, and vicarious enjoyment for, a lover's joy." (p. 175)

Non-Monogamy

Michel Foucault (Template:IPA-fr; was a French philosopher, historian of ideas,and social theorist, who wrote in 1976: "We must... abandon the hypothesis that modern industrial societies ushered in an age of increased sexual repression. We have not only witnessed a visible explosion of unorthodox sexualities; but –and this is the important point – a deployment quite different from the law, even if it is locally dependent on procedures of prohibition, has ensured, through a network of interconnecting mechanisms, the proliferation of specific pleasures and the multiplication of disparate sexualities."

The movement towards 'non-monogamous' relationships arose during the 'sexual revolution' in the 1960's, made possible by the invention of the contraceptive pill and the prevalence of safer sex practices during the same period. The phenomenon of swinging (or at least its wider discussion and practice) is regarded by some as arising from the upsurge in sexual activity during this period.

Swinging or partner swapping (sometimes referred to as the swinging lifestyle or simply the lifestyle) is a non-monogamous [1] behavior, in which partners in a committed relationship agree, as a couple, for both partners to engage in sexual activities with other people, sometimes referred to as recreational or social sex.[2] Swinging can take place in a number of contexts, ranging from a spontaneous sexual activity at an informal social gathering of friends to a swingers' club and can involve internet-based introduction services. By nature, successful Swinger partnerships must have compersionist attitudes to the seeking out of pleasure and not just acceptance of their partner finding pleasure with others but also experiencing pleasure from those liaisons.

For practitioners of Polyamory, there can be many relationship arrangements (whereas swingers remain in a committed partnership with one significant other). In order to manage multiple relationships and feel love and derive pleasure from each other's experiences, successful polyamory based arrangements are also compersive in nature.

Non-Monogamist views on jealousy and compersion

In romantic relationships, thoughts and feelings of security, fear, and/or anxiety over anticipated loss of a partner or of that partner's attention, affection, or time elicit both compersion and jealousy as natural reactions to perceived complexities of nonmonogamy and are quite extensively covered in polyamorous and 'Swinger' literature.

It is common for people within the non-monogamous community to state that jealousy comes with the territory of open romantic relationships. Compersion has often been referred to as "the opposite of jealousy"., though this relates more to the state of mind of successful practitioners rather than being a "cure" for jealousy.

In her book Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits, Dr Deborah M. Anapol describes five different types of jealousy — possessive, exclusion, competition, ego, and fear — before discussing compersion. The books The Ethical Slut and Opening Up also devote entire chapters to discussions of jealousy.

Investigative reporter and sex educator Eric Francis wrote on his Planet Waves website that an individual could look for their own compersion within jealousy itself: "Right inside the jealous episode is a fiery core of erotic passion. It may surprise you how good it feels, and if you get there, you can be sure you're stepping right into compersion."

Related terms

The adjective frubbly and the noun frubbles are sometimes used, in the poly community in the United Kingdom and the United States, to describe the feeling of compersion. These terms are more suited to cheerful, light-hearted conversation, and they are more grammatically versatile, for example: "I'm feeling all frubbly" and "Their relationship fills me with frubbles".

See also

• Mudita (Pali or Buddhist term for "sympathetic joy")
• Naches (Yiddish for "pleasure, especially from children or grandchildren")
• Schadenfreude is generally considered to be the antonym of compersion.

External links

• The dictionary definition of compersion at Wiktionary