Compersion
Feeling glad that a partner is happy with someone else.
Compersion is the feeling of being glad that someone you love is happy, used especially when that happiness comes from another relationship. It is often described as the flip side of jealousy.
In its wider sense it is just empathetic joy. One common comparison is the joy parents feel when their children get married. In [[polyamory|polyamory]] it names something more specific: a warm reaction to a partner's other relationship, including toward a [[metamour|metamour]].
The word is traced to the Kerista Commune, a polyamorous community in San Francisco.
Many polyamorous people treat compersion as something to work toward, and treat jealousy as a feeling to explore and understand rather than something to build the whole relationship around avoiding.
That makes it a goal, not a test. Compersion and jealousy can turn up on the same evening, about the same person, and feeling one does not cancel the other or mean you are doing [[ethical-non-monogamy|non-monogamy]] wrong.
Compersion is not the absence of jealousy
It is sometimes presented as a pass mark: feel compersion and you are good at polyamory, feel jealous and you are not. They are two different feelings and they can sit side by side.
Nor is it a performance. Putting on a gladness you do not feel is the opposite of what the word describes.
Saying it well
Say this
- I felt real compersion seeing them together.
- Some jealousy, some compersion, both at once.
- Compersion is a goal, not a rule.
- I am glad they are happy. That is compersion.
Not this
- If you feel jealous you are not really poly
- Just feel compersion instead
- You should be happy for them, so why are you upset?
- Compersion means you do not care
Questions people actually ask
What does compersion mean?
Feeling glad that someone you love is happy, especially when the happiness comes from another relationship.
Where does the word compersion come from?
It is traced to the Kerista Commune, a polyamorous community in San Francisco.
Is compersion the opposite of jealousy?
It is often described as the flip side of jealousy, but the two can be felt at the same time.
Do you have to feel compersion to be polyamorous?
No. It is something many people work toward, not a requirement.