Compersion: The Heartwarming Opposite of Jealousy—And Why It Matters in All Relationships
Learn the Opposite of Jealousy—And How It Can Change Your Relationships
Have you ever felt a warm, expansive joy watching someone you love thrive, even when their happiness had nothing to do with you? Maybe your best friend got a huge promotion they’ve wanted for so long. Or perhaps your sister started a new relationship she’s so happy in—and somehow, you feel so genuinely happy for them. That feeling? It has a name.
It's called compersion. And get this: it can even be applied to our romantic relationships. In fact, it can be a transformative emotional tool that allows you to alchemize jealousy into happiness for your partner. Compersion is a word that’s particularly known within the poly/ENM communities because it’s often thought of in the context of being happy for your partner’s happiness for another relationship of theirs.
If you’ve ever experienced intense jealousy within a romantic relationship, you might be clutching your pearls right now thinking, “Oh my god, I could never be HAPPY for my partner that they liked, loved, or had a good date or even SEX with someone else!” But what if that was the very emotional elixir you needed to heal your wounds around jealousy?
Compersion is a radical concept for many individuals who regularly struggle with feelings of jealousy. However, it has the power to completely alter one’s relationship to how they view others, and how they relate to others.
If you’re curious or even skeptical about how embracing an attitude of happiness for your partner could help heal your own frustrating relationship to jealousy, keep reading!
Compersion might just be the emotional antidote to jealousy you’ve been looking for.
What Is Compersion? A Meaning Rooted in Joy
Compersion (noun): the feeling of genuine happiness when someone you love experiences joy, intimacy, or success—especially in the context of romantic or sexual connection with someone else.
The term originated within polyamorous communities in the 1990s to describe a specific emotional experience: feeling joy for your partner's joy, even when it involves another partner. But since then, the meaning of compersion has expanded well beyond non-monogamy. Today, it's recognized as a kind of emotional generosity that can apply across all types of relationships.
You can think of compersion as the opposite of jealousy. Where jealousy contracts and tightens, compersion opens and softens. It reflects a belief that your loved one’s joy doesn’t diminish your own—that love, affection, attention, and connection aren’t finite.
Define Compersion: Etymology, Emotion, and Evolution
Let’s break it down.
Define compersion: An emotion of joy felt from another's joy, especially in romantic or sexual contexts.
Etymology: Believed to have been coined by the Kerista Commune in San Francisco in the late 20th century.
Modern usage: Often used in polyamory, but gaining traction in monogamy, friendship, family, and beyond.
To put it simply: compersion is empathy's delight-filled cousin.
Is Compersion Really the Opposite of Jealousy?
Jealousy is often rooted in fear—of loss, inadequacy, comparison. It's a valid and human emotion. But it's also one that can lead us to act out of insecurity. Compersion, by contrast, invites us into secure connection. It says, I can feel full even when I’m not the center of attention.
Let’s look at a quick comparison:
So yes, compersion is the opposite of jealousy—not because it erases it, but because it transforms it. Like any emotional skill, compersion can be cultivated.
Understanding Jealousy: More Than Just One Emotion
Before we can fully embrace compersion, it helps to understand the emotional terrain it often shares space with: jealousy and envy.
Many people use jealousy and envy interchangeably, but they’re not the same. Here's a quick breakdown:
Jealousy typically involves fear of losing something (like a partner's affection) to a rival.
Envy arises when we lack something someone else has (like a job, lifestyle, or quality).
If you’ve searched for the "jealousy or envy" difference, you’re not alone. This distinction matters because compersion is most powerful when we can accurately identify what we’re feeling. The "jealousy envy difference" helps us understand whether we’re responding to perceived scarcity or simply desire.
There are also different types of jealousy or what some call jealousy strains. These might include:
Romantic jealousy - feeling jealous of your partner’s attraction to others or their past or present romantic/sexual relationships and experiences
Social jealousy - feeling jealous of someone else’s social relationships and status
Professional jealousy - feeling jealous of someone else’s career success or work accomplishments
Familial jealousy - feeling jealousy towards someone else’s family (how big or close or healthy their family is)
Do any of these resonate personally for you? Understanding your unique jealousy strain helps clarify where your emotional work begins.
And for those still wondering, the definition for jealousy is this: a complex emotion that arises from perceived threats to a valued relationship, often involving fear, anger, and insecurity.
Why Jealousy Can Harm Romantic Relationships
In the context of monogamous relationships, feeling jealous that our partner simply finds another person attractive or has had other romantic relationships and sexual partners in the past is rooted in a deep wound of insecure attachment.
If you look inward at the wound with curiosity, it is usually pushing for an unrealistic standard of love where any and all threats of another person taking your partner away from you, simply ceases to exist. That’s just not realistic!
As a relationship therapist who has worked with clients on this issue before, the wound typically knows no limit. Say for example you want your partner to stop hanging with the friend group that consists of a woman he hooked up with before. But then there’s a coworker at his office that feels threatening to you. Or what about when you’re both watching Love is Blind and he takes a second look at a woman on the show and you feel a tinge of jealousy?
In significant cases of intense jealousy, one could put their partner in a cage, never to be around other people again, and someone with a jealousy wound would fear that their partner is thinking about other people in that way. — The point is, in many cases the issue is not resolved by simply restricting your partner’s access to others. The issue lies within your own ability to trust that you are worthy of being committed to and that no matter who we are or what we do, our partner’s can always leave us. In fact, it is their right!
The Insecure Possessive Nature of Jealousy
We don’t own people. And guess what: even if we marry someone, we still don’t own them and it doesn’t guarantee that they will be faithful. We can certainly hope for the best, but there is no way to ensure with 100% certainty that you wont get hurt in love. Moreover, it’s often common that the more a person tries to control their partner, the more a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs. It’s normal to want to protect something or someone we cherish from outside threats, but when it becomes a pervasive theme or source of tension in a relationship, something needs to be addressed.
If you are in a relationship where your partner is actually crossing a boundary of yours, then uphold that boundary! Walk away from the relationship if you need to. But when you try to control someone else’s behavior repeatedly, you must recognize that:
1. You either need to do inner work to heal your insecure attachment and jealousy
2. The relationship has an incompatibility that needs to be acknowledged
The good news is: it doesn’t have to be this way! Having a jealousy wound isn’t a permanent sentence to relationship hell. —It can be healed through effective therapy, and practicing the concept of compersion can help!
Compersion in Polyamory (and Monogamy, Too)
Compersion has long been associated with polyamorous relationships. Imagine watching your partner come home glowing after a date with someone else, and instead of feeling threatened, you feel genuinely happy for them. That’s classic compersion in polyamory.
But it doesn’t end there.
You might feel compersion when your child forms a new friendship. When your ex finds a new love and seems truly content. When your friend finally lands the book deal you were both dreaming of. These are all forms of emotional attunement and expansion.
Compersion isn’t limited to polyamorous or sexually open relationships. It’s a way of approaching the world with less fear and more trust.
The Psychology of Compersion: Why It Feels So Good
From a psychological standpoint, compersion reflects a high level of emotional maturity and attachment security. It suggests that you trust your value in the relationship and believe that love is not a zero-sum game.
Compersion may also be linked to:
Self-worth: You don’t need to be the only source of someone’s joy to feel worthy.
Resilience: You can tolerate and even celebrate discomfort.
Perspective-taking: You can imagine the world through someone else’s eyes.
This doesn’t mean compersion comes naturally to everyone. In fact, for many of us, it takes intentional unlearning.
How to Cultivate Compersion (Even If You’re Jealous Right Now)
Here’s the good news: compersion can be practiced. If you currently struggle with intense jealousy within romantic relationships, it doesn’t have to be this way either in your current relationship or for the rest of your life, single or partnered. — I know it may seem impossible, but any emotional wiring in our brains can ultimately be re-wired with consistent effort and practice. If you are curious about how to begin transforming jealousy into compersion follow these steps:
Name Your Feelings
Feeling jealous? That’s okay. Naming it is the first step to loosening its grip. When we identify an emotion, we can recognize we’re experiencing said emotion, but that we aren’t it. Try reframing that a part of you feels jealous, not that you ARE jealous. The former, recognizes many other parts of you exist leaving those parts free to navigate the jealousy. The latter part connotes that the totality of you is jealous, which can feel all-consuming. Language matters! — Jealousy is a feeling like any other emotion (sad, angry, happy), and it’s perfectly okay to feel it. Once you recognize a part of you is feeling jealous, you’re free to then decide what the best way to handle it is, rather than the jealousy deciding for you.
2. Pause the Comparison to Others
Jealousy often thrives in imagined hierarchies—the belief that we exist on some invisible scale of who's more attractive, funnier, more desirable, or more worthy. But these hierarchies are just stories rooted in a deeper jealousy wound—one that’s often trying to protect us from pain or rejection. It’s overactive, not malicious. When we recognize that this wound comes from fear—not fact—we can meet it with compassion. You’re allowed to feel jealous. You might not love that your partner is attracted to someone else or had a positive sexual experience outside your relationship. And that’s okay. The key is remembering that jealousy doesn’t have to mean your relationship is threatened. Just as you’ve felt jealousy in other areas of life without letting it define you, you can learn to be with this feeling without letting it consume you.
3. Shift to an Abundance Mindset
Ask yourself: What would it feel like to believe there is enough love to go around? Imagine a new mother who has just had a baby. The mom is the baby’s world and the baby lives in bliss. Then the mother has a second child, and that first child has to contend with their first experience with jealousy. The first child learns that mom’s heart is actually big enough for both of her children. Romantic jealousy can actually be the same. Your heart is capable of accepting that the people you love can be happy loving others as well. Work on the idea that your heart is big enough to hold that idea with romantic and sexual partners.
4. Tune into Empathy
What joy is your loved one experiencing? Can you feel a glimmer of it, too? Do you love your partner? (I hope the answer is, “Yes!”) Do you want your partner to be happy? (Once again, I hope your answer is a resounding, “Yes!”) — Then simply feel happy that they are happy. Begin mindfully practicing this with easier things. The next time they share happiness with you over something small like enjoying their favorite coffee, getting a new album they’ve been wanting, or being excited to go on a weekend trip with friends, practice feeling happy for them. — If you can do that, you’re a lot closer to compersion than you think!
5. Reflect on Your Values
What kind of partner, friend, or person do you want to be? When we love someone, we don’t aim to possess them, lock them in an invisible cage and throw away the key— that isn’t love, that is fear disguised as love. Love is reverence for who someone is and all that they can be; it’s wanting happiness for them and recognizing that their happiness will come from many sources beyond you. If you’ve ever heard the poetic phrase, “If you love something, set it free— if it comes back to you, it’s meant to be.” When we love someone, we trust that they love us too— that we don’t need to put an invisible electrical fence around them to keep them loyal to us. By loosening our restrictions on someone we love, we’re actually saying “I love myself; I know my worth.” They’re free to do whatever they want, and if some of what they want to do doesn’t include me, then that’s great!
Of course it’s important to be aligned with your partner(s) on the degree of closeness, but from a value’s perspective, reflect upon your concept of what love is and see if it is based in fear or reverence and respect for autonomy.
Building compersion often requires deeper inner work, especially if we’ve been conditioned to see love as something scarce or fragile. Therapy can help uncover and reframe these relational patterns.
Real-Life Examples of Compersion
Claire, in a monogamous marriage, feels a burst of joy when her husband reconnects with an old friend and lights up with happiness, even though she doesn't share that bond.
Dev, who recently opened their relationship, surprises themselves by feeling a soft, full-body warmth when their partner shares a happy story about a new romantic interest.
Leah, who lost her job, finds herself genuinely cheering for her best friend's promotion—even as she grieves her own setback.
These moments of compersion are often subtle but powerful. They show us what it means to be connected without control, close without clinginess.
Final Reflections: What If We Chose Joy Over Jealousy?
Compersion challenges the idea that we must compete for love. It invites us to feel happy for others without making it about ourselves. And in doing so, it softens our relationships and expands our capacity to love.
You don’t have to be polyamorous to explore compersion. You just have to be curious about the possibility that another person’s joy can be a source of yours, too.
So next time you feel jealousy creeping in, pause. Take a breath. And ask yourself: Is there any part of me that can choose joy instead?
Ready to Explore Compersion in Your Relationships?
If you're navigating jealousy, exploring ethical non-monogamy, or simply trying to build more secure and generous relationships, therapy can help. I work with individuals and couples who want to cultivate emotional clarity, transform their relationship patterns, and expand their capacity for connection.
Reach out if you’re ready to begin that journey.