Talk:Compersion

message: "The adjective frubbly is used in the United Kingdom to describe the feeling of compersion."
Really? As a long term UK resident I've never heard it.
--84.9.73.228 10:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frubbly? 

message: I would tend to believe that based on the description, this isn't really an emotion, but rather a specific scenario which brings about another emotion.--65.168.29.10 03:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But if you say "another emotion", it's still an emotion. Whether that emotion is labelled "compersion" or not is a matter of labels. I think what you are asking is, is the emotion described here actually the same as some emotion known by another name? Mdwh 03:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I've experienced this emotion before. I would say the feeling is as unique as it's opposite jealousy is. --Krsont 19:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm more inclined to describe this as a facilitator of emotion. For example: one does not feel jealousy. They feel anger based on the circumstance known as jealousy. In the same manor compersion gives one the feeling of happiness based on the circumstance that compersion describes. However emotion is not as defined as this and therefore allows for multifaceted emotions such as jealousy and compersion. Just because human social history has suppressed wide spread acceptance of these circumstances doesn't mean we can't define an emotion such as compersion. That is my opinion. Compersion is real and I've felt it. Sukima 04:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously you've never felt real jealousy. It feels distinct from anger. --86.138.30.122 (talk) 19:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this really an emotion? 

message: Random integrative note:  As a specific instance of an  Enneagram subtype counterpassion? -- Formerly the IP-Address 24.22.227.53 24.16.160.93 03:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personality theory 

message: "It doesn't need to be sexual, and this distinguishes it from erotic excitement in watching another person or persons behaving sexually, known as voyeurism."
I've removed this line.  First, I believe the comment about it not needing to be sexual in nature is already covered by the previous sentence which is substantially more general.
Second, nothing in the definition of compersion has anything to do with watching--which would be intrinsic to the definition of "voyerism" as opposed to simply fantasizing about someone being sexual--or with sex.  The line "...positive feelings one gets when a lover is enjoying another relationship" is telling here: nothing in the term "relationship" necessarily implies sex. 
Third, they are different emotions.  As mentioned in that line, voyerism involves erotic excitement, as opposed to "positive feelings."
--Nachtrabe 03:20, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voyerism? 

message: "The experience of taking pleasure when one's partner is with another person"?????? This sounds like a PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER! This "compersion" is not natural and is illogical. I've never heard of this term and doubt it actually exists, but since wikipedia is overrun by extreme-liberals, I guess there's nothing I can do about it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.69.140.35 (talk) 23:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just because you haven't heard of it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. --Marc 23:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Being happy that someone you care about is happy is not a psychological disorder. Unless you're the most jealous person on earth, you have definitely felt happy that someone you care about is happy, at some point, for some reason or another. Deusexaethera (talk) 21:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

text: No. Masochism means deriving sexual pleasure from receiving pain. It has nothing to do with this. Marnanel (talk) 01:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WTH??? 

message: It says: "Compersion can be said to be a form of empathy; i.e. pleasure that a loved one is experiencing a good thing in his or her life."
That's all well and good, but I don't think that's the only possible form this takes.  I know a woman who likes it when her boyfriend sleeps with other women, not because she's happy for him, but because she feels like "she's got a real man" (her words); it changes her perception of him.  Now, is this covered by some other term, or does this also fit into Compersion?  Or is it just something peculiar about this girl?  Might be something to consider, though I obviously can't substantiate it because I'm no expert on the subject. --PheonixSong 18:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Compersion is defined as experiencing joy for someone else because of something good they have (i.e., the opposite of jealousy). So, that wouldn't be compersion. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motivations 

message: I removed a PROD tag because if the article is proposed for deletion, it needs the full discussion that would be brought about by an AFD. But it might be well to make a further effort for additional sourcing. . I would personally imagine the concept is discussed as well as the word, but I know the literature on this sort of topic is difficult to find, so I have added a "moresources" tag. Those who support the article, consider it a challenge. DGG (talk) 10:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand the reasoning in the first sentence above. You removed the tag because it would have provided the discussion you say is needed? That would be like a store taking the sign down to get more business. Can I use that reasoning elsewhere in WP? DCDuring 14:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A PROD means the article will automatically gets deleted. I presume he means that this article should only be deleted after a full discussion on AfD (and I agree). He didn't take a sign down, he put one (or rather, two) up. Mdwh 16:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: PROD

message: mudita is an ancient Pali word meaning something like "sympathetic joy", or joy at the joy of others, or the opposite of Schadenfruede.  I went ahead and added it to the See Also: section since the Mudita article already cross-links back to compersion. It may also be worth looking at the "mudita" entry to see ways in which the "compersion" entry might or might not need to be expanded in order to avoid being "unencyclopedic". Can someone help with etymology and the place of "compersion" within academic psychological frameworks? Or a bit of a historical thread; i'm sure that "compersion" is not the first English-language attempt at a word, phrase, or expressed-concept to mean "the opposite of romantic jealousy".  I can hardly imagine that Shakespeare or Wordsworth didn't tackle the theme, for example. --Ajasen (talk) 00:18, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compare to "Mudita" 

message: I have removed text in the entry that is not referenced. It claims that many polyamorous people disagree that compersion is the opposite of jealousy. This content was already on the page when I found it, and Sim conners dressed it up but did not add a reference. Just trying to maintain NPOV on the entry. Here is the text (from Sim conner) that was removed:
"It may be possible to experience one (or more) forms of jealousy while still feeling compersion. For example, one might feel exclusion jealousy because he fears his partner will spend more time with a new lover and less with him. But at the same time, he might feel happy because he has seen how happy his partner is about her new partner. Therefore, some who practice polyamory believe it is possible to experience some form of jealousy concurrently with compersion."
If folks think it is important to keep, please add a reference.
VS 78 (talk) 15:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Personal?) disagreement re: "opposite of jealousy" 

message: Is this really an example of compersion? Alzheimer's does not assume a specific notion of identity. I would argue that the person she loved and had a romantic relationship was no longer present. This seems like an attempt to manipulate the facts to lend credibility to the idea. I actually think compersion is possible, at least in some people, but I think it's meant to apply to polyamorous situations. Was O'Connor still having sexual relations with her husband. It's unlikely he could even consent. It doesn't even say whether he knew her to see her. The article also tries to make a pseudo-scientific and ageist distinction between "young love" and "old love," essentially arguing that young love is selfishly motivated and inferior. This doesn't seem like the best case to make for compersion. This could, perhaps, be expanded into an "example" section? I know Satre and de Beauvoir had open attitudes towards sexually. Did they have anything about this? I'm no expert, I just feel that examples should be rigorous rather than questionable. Dooga16 (talk) 08:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that the New York Times article doesn't actually use the term 'compersion' (although it appears to be discussing a similar concept), it should probably be removed as off-topic. Robofish (talk) 23:11, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cases in the News 

message: It looks like there were some edits to the opening paragraph recently.  I corrected some apostrophes and also made the description more accurate.  The original line "commonly used to describe enjoying multiple romantic or erotic partners coexistently and/or elapsing over time" implies that the joy is from the first person experiencing the relationships.  But compersion is when the person feels joy for their partner, not for their self. asciiman (talk) 04:59, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening paragraph 

message: There seems to be a number of issues with this page that I believe could best be fixed by merging this page with Polyamory or something similar. First of all, it's important to point out that Wikipedia isn't a dictionary or a slang, jargon or usage guide - see WP:NAD. The term seems to be a jargon term that is used exclusively within the polyamory community. Of the eight citations listed on this page, two of them come from clearly unreliable blog sites, another one is a broken link, three come from books that appear to be self-published and aren't accessible on the internet, and two more make no reference to the term. Wikipedia policy, as per WP:NEO is not to allow neologisms. That means "To support an article about a particular term or concept we must cite what reliable secondary sources, such as books and papers, say about the term or concept, not books and papers that use the term." After my own searching, I can't find significant secondary neutral sources referring to the term - it seems to be exclusively used within a particular community, and thus may not be notable for its own page. I also quote from WP:WORDS: "Neologisms are expressions coined recently or in isolated circumstances to which they have remained restricted. In most cases, they do not appear in general-interest dictionaries, though they may be used routinely within certain communities or professions. They should generally be avoided because their definitions tend to be unstable and many do not last. Where the use of a neologism is necessary to describe recent developments in a certain field, its meaning must be supported by reliable sources." The word doesn't appear in general dictionaries, and it's being used exclusively within a certain community. I think instead of deleting the term it could be merged into the Polyamory article. mikeman67 (talk) 17:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think merging some of the material to polyamory could be appropriate, and some the content should perhaps appear in the mudita article, since compersion and mudita seem to encompass nearly identical concepts. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:03, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: On the article discussing schadenfreude (the opposite of mudita), there is a section titled "Neologisms and variants". Perhaps the mudita article could have a similar section where it discusses compersion. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 18:17, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have anything to add, really, other than my support for the merger. As much as I hate to see it go, Mike's arguments are bang on. There's absolutely no reason I can find to keep this page. – RobinHood70 talk 09:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've gone ahead and nominated the article for deletion, Prototime and RobinHood70, over here. Please feel free to share your though on this, I'm hoping to get more of a discussion going on this. mikeman67 (talk) 14:15, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: The Kerista Commune's website defines compersion in two ways: compersion n. 1) the opposite of jealousy AND 2) positive feelings about your partner's other intimacies. That second definition is over-informed in most interpretations of compersion by the first definition whenever jealousy is the only antonym offered. The second definition, when taken alone, leads to an additional contrast (beyond jealousy, and beyond schadenfreude, as well) in which you experience positive feelings about the alleviation of your partner's enmities with others. These positive feelings and impulses to alleviate suffering, in a word, are the emotion compassion. From m-w.com: "n. sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."
Therefore, an opposite of compersion is compassion, and acknowledging this antonym is integral to understanding compersion as an emotion. Both compersion and compassion promote positive feelings in the person feeling the emotion, but one comes with an impulse to support the joy of others and the other comes with an impulse to alleviate the suffering of others. There is very little work that has been done that I am aware of in linking the specific terms compersion and compassion, however, scientists, positive psychologists, and psychotherapists are already studying the connection between the emotion described in Kerista's second definition and compassion — they're just using different language.
Here are some examples:
1) Limits of Symhedonia: The Differential Role of Prior Emotional Attachment in Sympathy and Sympathetic Joy
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/7/206/files/2016/09/symhedoniaEmot06-1u2gha2.pdf
2) The Emerging Study of Positive Empathy
http://ssnl.stanford.edu/download/file/fid/566
3) Barbara Fredrickson describes one side of the biological process of love as celebratory. She offers a meditation on it here: https://www.positivityresonance.com/meditations.html
4) I like that you feel my pain, but I love that you feel my joy: Empathy for a partner’s negative versus positive emotions independently affect relationship quality
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0265407517746518  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anna.d.hirsch (talk • contribs) 23:55, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compared with Compassion 

message: I think compersion shouldn't only be here on polyamoury, since many people use it not just for romantic relationships. in this article from 2017 it's defined and argued as a word for the feeling of a family member, partner or friend having happiness -and not just sexual or romantic. But platonic too. https://medium.com/inspire-the-world/compersion-is-the-word-youve-been-missing-your-whole-life-1ea8dd5443ef
Often compared to 'Mudita' which is not an exclusively romantic or non-monogamous word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudita
In my own experience in poly and non poly communities it is used in a platonic sense as well, but I realize this is anecdotal. ~~PA~~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.84.86.98 (talk) 07:09, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A revisit. 

message: Compunction connected? 24.17.50.10 (talk) 18:10, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compunction vs Compersion