Compersion

[zorro]

For quite a few of us on OHW, one of the joys of sharing a wife is the glow of compersion (the exact opposite of jealousy). I am trying to understand more of how it feels for me.

Towards that end, I want to invite other husband who think they are conversive to tell me exactly what they experience. How does compersion feel? It is wonderful but complex and subtle.

As I sort out my own feelings, I will post them, maybe more than once.

Z

[MarknSusan]

Zorro,

My wife and I both have compersion for each other.

We “don’t just think” we have compersion…we know that’s what it is because we have researched it, we live it, and realized that it is something that is very special.

Jealously, which as you note, is the opposite and damaging to relationships.

Sexually….For me at least, I can tell you that I realized a long time ago that when Susan was/is with someone that she really was attracted to , she had a glow about her. It’s hard to explain. But the “vibe” she put out was something I clearly sensed and it made me happy for her, because I sensed her happiness and excitement.

It was many years later that I researched and found out it was compersion.

However, it took Susan much longer for her to have compersion for me (sexually) when I was attracted to, or with another woman…. Unless she was there and involved….as time went by she sensed it and encouraged me to enjoy.

I might add for me at least, compersion is also something that is also non sexual.

I also have compersion for others that I know …even when it’s non sexual when good things happen to them. So IMO compersion is something the I sense and get pleasure out of… when family or good friends do well I sense and share their joy.

In summary…IMO, if more people had compersion the world would probably be a much better place.

[zorro]

In summary…IMO, if more people had compersion the world would probably be a much better place.

Definitely.
I have noted over the years you and Susan and I and Ruth have a lot in common.

I feel joy when Ruth experieces ecstasy with another man's cock or lips. I "catch" her ecstasy. And it feels so natural and "right," as though everything is in its place (surely a delusion in this world turned mad).

I love the feeling.

I believe you are right that we can feel compersive about the joy others experience in non-sexual parts of life. I feel it when someone I care about is successful in a part of their life important to them. Others may only feel envy. I am lucky.

I am pleased to hear Susan can be compersive for your sexual joy. I wonder sometimes if men have greater capacity for compersion. Although there are many of us who can masturbate to thoughts of our partner's pleasure, I hear of few women who masturbate to the image of their husband fucking another woman.

But that is getting off the topic. For me, compersion also has an extremely erotic flavor. My focus here is what this emotion of compersion feels like, whether for a man or a woman.

[Cdncuck]

I think you will get a variety of answers. Everyone's experience will be similar in some way. At the same time, each person involved will have an experience unique to themselves.

My experience when my wife is involved with another man is that I experience great joy on her behalf. Her excitement makes me feel happy that she's having a good experience. There's a bit of a sense of pride (don't know if pride is an adequate word but don't have anything better) and incredible arousal all at once.

[EvilGenius23]

some links regarding the topic
https://www.definitions.net/definition/compersion
https://psychcentral.com/relationships/compersion

[EvilGenius23]

some links regarding the topic
https://www.definitions.net/definition/compersion
https://psychcentral.com/relationships/compersion

[MarknSusan]

Zorro,

Re: “I have noted over the years you and Susan and I and Ruth have a lot in common.”

I agree and there are others on here that I sense we have a lot in common with.

I sent you a message to a Research Article on CMN which I found to be very interesting. Especially when they discussed jealousy and compersion. It’s rather long but but IMO very well worth the read.

The participants (all women) describe the feeling they have with compersion and it also indicates the “uptick” with CMN.

And thank you for posting this thread. I think it is very useful for us to communicate on this subject.

Mark.

[SilverStag]

Agree that it is probably different for everyone.

Cecil gets a renewed spirit when she plays (or even when she is planning to play) that translates into a happier and more thoughtful daily self. For me, I'm thrilled that she is getting the attention she wants and deserves and is having an adventure that will send her back to me feeling attractive and cared for.

She often sends me off to play with other women and is genuinely happy about seeing similar changes in my attitude. For us, it is a win-win-win-win.

As I have often opined, these playtimes stroke the Ego, and feeling better about ourselves may be a big part of why we do this.

[hotfreaks]

I think you will get a variety of answers. Everyone's experience will be similar in some way. At the same time, each person involved will have an experience unique to themselves.

My experience when my wife is involved with another man is that I experience great joy on her behalf. Her excitement makes me feel happy that she's having a good experience. There's a bit of a sense of pride (don't know if pride is an adequate word but don't have anything better) and incredible arousal all at once.

I'm so happy to see someone else use the word " pride" as a way to describe their hotwife. That is exactly how I feel.

I'm proud to see how many men lust after my wife. And even more proud of my wife that she is submitting to her sexual desires without letting the social stigmas of being viewed as a whore or a slut bother her.

I didnt know what compersion meant until now. But I did know that I do not have an ounce of jealousy whatsoever.

[BB-Kink]

Please post the link to the article. Sounds interesting:

I sent you a message to a Research Article on CMN which I found to be very interesting. Especially when they discussed jealousy and compersion. It’s rather long but but IMO very well worth the read.

[MarknSusan]

Please post the link to the article. Sounds interesting:

I sent you a message to a Research Article on CMN which I found to be very interesting. Especially when they discussed jealousy and compersion. It’s rather long but but IMO very well worth the read.

It is published in the Cogent Mental Health Journal. Title is:

Jealousy: A comparison of monogamous and consensually non-monogamous women’s experience

Authors:

Joli HamiltonORCID Icon, Nicholas R. MorrisonORCID Icon & Ayla N. Gioia

I know the mods don’t want links posted here but if you search the web this should get you there. Be advised it is not a statistical
supported paper because there were only a very limited number of women involved. It is also a LONG read, but it is very interesting.

[zorro]

Thank you, @MarknSusan, for sharing the link for the Cogent Mental Health Journal. There are several interesting pieces that struck me. Just some random comments:
1. I am delighted there is research underway into the different experiences of CNM couples. It is very nascent, but research has to start somewhere, even with very small-sample studies. I don't think much can be concluded by the findings except that there is validity to the proof-of-concept that differences in attitudes and personal experiences can be studied systematically. That is a real contribution.
2. I like its open recognition that accepting and working with CNM can be problematic for some therapists. The monogamist worldview and ideology has long been engrained in psychotherapists -- and anthropologists -- so that what is actually ideology is mistakenly assumed by therapists as necessary reality (i.e., that people are naturally monogamist so anything else must be abnormal). A monogamous couple may be neither happy nor healthy. Arguably, some people are born who just emotionally need and prosper with multiple sexual/romantic partners. That iis the way they are -- CNM is not a pathological practice.
3. The article really focuses on experiences of jealousy, not comperson. Compersion comes in the backdoor (no pun intended) as a check or mitigating factor against jealousy. The authors insightfully mention that at least for their CNM couples experiencing both jealousy and compersion at the same time is not uncommon. Personally, that is true for me. I can feel transient jealous feelings as the mating process begins with a lover -- but also intense excitement and joy that increase as the actual play activities progress. I have thought of this as transient jealousy giving way to unspeakable compersive pleasure == but perhaps the jealous responses are buried in there somewhere, susceptible to being ttransmogrified through eroticizing lealousy into compersion and overshadowed by the pleasure of compersion.
4. They offer a definition of compersion as experiencing joy for a partner's sexual satisfaction with another. As a working definition, that is a good start. What is lacking is a good description of how that joy feels. They do a bang=up job of describing physical reactions associated with jealousy and then an almost shotgun description of associated emotions (anger, hurt, anxiety, etc). They do not do as much with tcompersion. I know my compersion is joyful, erotic, uplifting (physically and emotionally), and exciting in a pleasurable way. It definitely correlates with partner satisfaction. Picking another as a partner who turns out to be a dud does not lead to compersion. Maybe ruefulness and disappointment. The response to the partner's pleasure is central. Just sharing is not what compersion is about; ecstatic response for the woman does the trick emotionally. And the compersion can be all enveloping, as though nothing else matters.
5. One of the associated physical responses for the male in CNM play, at least for me, is vigorous and intense erectile turgor. Ruth's being pleasured well and flipping out orgasms and whole-body shaking get me hard. My heart races. Emotionally, I feel joy, relaxation, calm, peacefulness, and an intense desire to witness more. One (or once) is nice, more even better. There is a longing for her to have more partners and more sex with each partner.

Well, enough for a start. Self-observation on an individual level is where this exploration needs to start. Our pooling our individual observations can help us what is universal and what are variant responses.

Hoping to hear from more husbands about their physical and emotional reactions that may fall under the name compersion.

[BrunetteLover]

Depends on the relationship, depends on a lot of factors.

I find that if I get too much of a rush due to circumstances, and appear pumped-up when my wife has completed her meeting with a man, it can be risky.

At this particular moment, her head is in a few places, one part of her thought process is re-entering normal life. Usually, she wants to re-absorb the emotions, and have a calm moment.

She prefers if I am fairly neutral in my feelings, until we get home and can have our own moment.

She really prefers that neutral emotional gap between him and me.

[BrunetteLover]

There is another factor.

I don't want to begin to rely on any scenario to get me turned on.

I want to be able to be turned on by my wife after she has spent the day hiking as much as I am turned on by her screwing around.

So I have an interest in remaining neutral as well.

[Tacoma75]

I’ve never heard the word but am interested to look it up. My wife recently hd a young man interested in her and I have felt both sides of it, but oddly enough to me, more so in the happiness for her happiness than jealousy.

[Tank Turner]

Dear zorro,

Thank you for initiating an important, informative, and crucial topic. Regardless of term used to describe nontraditional sexual relations between husband and wife, compersion without jealously is a dominant factor of couples who've expanded their sexuality beyond convention. We have had many sexual encounters that involved other men, yet in comparison to most posters on this forum, I'm a novice.

Recently my wife told me that her girlfriend compliment me. She told my wife that she wished all men had my knowledge of women's sexuality. I think most men do have knowledge of women's sexuality. But there are too many men who lack knowledge of their wives' sexuality.

I instinctively knew the first time I fucked my wife on the evening of our first date that she was extremely sexually experienced and as extremely sexually confident. I was enamored of her ease of talking candidly about sex. She was beautiful and had an amazingly hot body, and she absolutely loved sex.

I refer to the first month of our relationship as our booty calling phase. We were both seeing other people. We were not committed to each other. I learned a lot about her during that phase. She was committed to her belief which was based on fact that sex was normal and natural. She loved euphoric orgasms. She loved everything about sex. She learned what men loved and expected from sex She was delightfully sexually enlightened. She did not permit social norms to influence her sexuality. She believed that nudity was normal and natural. She believed that Americans' Puritan influence of nudity was silly. She explained what every human being knew at adolescent: males and females have different bodies. They should not be inhibited by shame from nudity where appropriate. We were perfectly sexually compatible.

During our booty calling phase, I began seeing her more often and at least one other woman less often. We had an established routine of rationalizing our relationship by following dating rituals. Regardless of whether we did dinner, movies, or other dating rituals, we knew the intent was to fuck each other into oblivion. It was an intensely sexual relationship with an appearance of legitimacy. About a month into our sexual relationship, we rested in bed after incredibly euphoric porn star sex. We found ourselves in a deeply intellectual and philosophical conversation that forced me into deep thought. That conversation caused me to see her as an amazingly dynamic. multifaceted woman who was also the best sex I ever had. Within days we were in a committed and exclusive relationship.

My wife has always loved sex. It was and remains an important and nonnegotiable component of her personality. She wanted and wants sex every day. She expected me to satisfy her sexual desires. Sex was mutually beneficial. I assured she experienced as many euphoric orgasms as she desired. She told me that her obligation was to assure my sexual euphoria. Her ease and comfort to engage in graphic sexual communication was charming, alluring, and absolutely adorable. I loved her for it, and I still love her for it. Our unrestrained sexual conversations enabled us to know what was important to each other. She made damned sure that I knew oral sex was important to her the first time she had sex. Probably her dominant frustration with other men was their lack of knowledge of how to use their mouths and tongues to entice her clit to release orgasms. She effusively complimented me for my oral sex skills after the first time I applied them to her clit.

After she knew that she could completely trust me, she told me about her endocrine system abnormality a symptom of which was release of an abundance of testosterone into her system causing her to become insatiably horny. BTW, that abnormality is fairly common among women. If not treated, it can result in irreversible damage. Thankfully, her mother caught it when she was in puberty. She has to be examined by a physician at least until menopause and possibly for the rest of her life. A common system of that abnormality is dense and excess body hair such as a darkened mustache. My wife does not have that symptom.

When I was able to fuck her four times over the course of an evening, she wanted more. I was biologically incapable of keeping pace with her libido. As we matured, her libido increased while mine went the opposite direction.

We had dirty talked for years about her doing gang bangs, fucking multiple men, doing a "fuck my wife" porn audition, and her dominant sexual fantasies. She revealed her sexual desires in her dirty talk. I listened to every word she said while watching her body language and monitoring her body's physiological changes. Her pussy would gush love lubricant when I dirty talked her about fucking her while she sucked another dude's cock. A MENSA IQ wasn't required to know what she wanted to experience.

We have the most indissoluble marriage of all married couples we know. Our kids are my wife's entire world. She loves her family. She'd never do anything to jeopardize it.

Except for one unique sexual experience, we've always engage in expanded sexuality together. MFM sex is usually her dominant fantasy. She has most if not all normal and common women's sexual fantasies. She relies on me for protection. With rare exceptions, we've always engaged in MFM sex in our master bedroom. She's most comfortable and safe in our bedroom. She can control her environment.

If I moderate alcohol imbibing, I can get two money shots an evening, not nearly enough to satisfy my wife. My two money shots are her pregame warmup. After my second money shot, I'll usually seek refuge on my side of the bed before falling asleep. Most of the time before falling asleep, my wife and I will make eye contact and hold it until a guy she's fucking repositions her. I've always sensed deep love for her while she was porn starring, Her expression of mystical euphoria and confidence are adorable. Being watched is another of her many fantasies. She loves it most when I watch her. I'm proud that she's my wife.

Jealously usually implicates resentment. It's destructive. Our open, honest, and nonjudgmental sexual communication probably was most crucial to eliminating any possibility of jealousy. I knew my wife was a long way from virginal when I met her. Among her most alluring traits were her sexual experience and sexual confidence. During our dating relationship, she was unequivocal that sex was extremely important to her. She expected me to fulfill her sexual desires. She had no gender confusion. A man's sexual responsibility was to cause her to experience euphoric orgasms. Her responsibility was to cause men to cum. I can remember the first time she explained to me that successful sex resulted in men cumming, and a blowjob required her skills to cause men to cum. It wasn't a blowjob unless she caused men to cum. Hence, I knew that most if not all of the sex she had, and she had a lot of sex before I met her, was for physical euphoria. She might have loved boyfriends like she loved other friends. I'm the only man she's ever been in love with.

I do sense enormous pleasure from the mystically euphoric expressions on my wife's face while she was porn starred by other men.

If men haven't experienced the sensation that we know, it's doubtful that we could explain it in a manner that they could understand.

[Greg_N_Shelley]

For me, a defining aspect of compersion is apprehending a type of magnificent beauty that I never saw before or noticed as a direct participant in our love making.

When we first started, the idea was threesomes. Then during the first play date, I was so mesmerized by how beautiful she looked engaged with our guest - the radiance of her erotic “aura” and the power of her passion - that I never felt compelled to join in.

For me, that beauty produces a nearly mystical type of bliss. Pure euphoria and as you wrote, Zorro, deep state of peace. I can’t even describe it with words.

That to me is the essence of compersion.

As for jealousy, I’m maybe an oddball of sorts. I never experienced even an ounce of jealousy during our CNM activities. I was humbled initially by the capabilities of very gifted guys, but never jealous or envious of their skills or her pleasure with them. In this regard, I’m not sure if compersion is a counterforce to jealousy. I don’t see them as being poles on a scale or even directly relational, but rather two separate types of emotional experiences with a shared trigger event.

[Parsifal]

Similar to Greg's, my experience of compersion isn't as a counterforce to jealousy. I don't view compersion and jealousy as opposites or even "directly relational" either, as he so eloquently put it. And I would add here that the word "compersion," as a number of us are using it, does not mean exactly the same for all of us. I will agree, of course, that compersion seems is a feeling and thus affects us emotionally and so we can all sense it as an emotion. I will further agree that compersion is experienced as a pleasurable response to the whole complex of our wives' sexual attraction for and satisfaction by other people, whereas jealousy is an unpleasant response; and to that extent the two feelings are perceived as opposites - the same stimuli producing pleasure with one and displeasure with the other. But for me, the source of compersion is very different than the source of jealousy. Let me explain.

Compersion grows out of a special sense of empathy. And here is where we tend to talk past one another when we use that term generically to refer to the pleasure we're feeling. Some of us are so bonded with our mates that we are almost one with them. Paradoxically, this bondedness can be so deep that our sexual desire for them can be suppressed because we no longer are able to experience them as "Other"; we have so projected ourselves into our wives that we lose our sense of mystery in their separateness. So with compersion we recover that sense of separateness. As they feel the attraction for someone else who is other, we internalize that desire for the other too. I read Greg's comment to describe his appreciation of Shelley in this way. He is mesmerized by the beauty of her but also by his coexperience of her erotic bliss in tandem with the other. Other husbands may feel (or also feel) the wife’s desire for other man in projected homosexual experience. This is why sometimes people who don't really understand compersion in all of its dimensions mistake it for latent homosexuality. It is true that some male compersionists do have homosexual feelings, but far from all do. Also, because compersion is a form of empathy, an eroticized empathetic experience to be more precise, is also quite common for the compersionist to identify on some level with our wives' lovers - that the lover becomes a proxy or avatar for ourselves. Thus in my experience of compersion, there is a dual empathetic response - I am empathetic of my wife's bliss, pleasure and satisfaction to the point of wanting her to reach her orgasm, and I'm also feeling the other man's desire for my wife. And in the case of my empathetic coexperience with him of my wife, I do feel that pass through of his desire for her. For me, compersion is a heterosexual form of projected new relationship energy achieved through the mechanism of empathy.

Jealousy, on the other hand, flows out of insecurity and egotism. It is a close cousin in this context to the fear of abandonment. In my darkest hours, I sometimes poatulate compersion as simply libidinized fear of abandonment, but I know it is much more than that. You see, jealousy and compersion can coexist. Some of our most wicked compersive experiences can be accompanied by hurt or humiliation, and these mixed emotional colors - and appreciation therefor - are what give us some of the wondrously unique cuckholding kinds of desires we see expressed in some of the postings on this site. I always envy the compersionists who succeed in fully purging themselves of the hurt some of the rest of us experience on some level with the hotwifing games.

[mychubbyhotwife]

I enjoy watching and knowing she is enjoying having sex with another man. If she is happy, I am happy. She loves me more for "letting" her experience different men. She likes experiencing and interacting with new people and different personalities. She is what some might call a "people person". She is also I've come to know as a very "sexual" person. She loves sex and doesn't mind trying new things. Bondage. Dildos and of course having sex with other men. Or women. Our love grows stronger for each other by every new satisfactory experience.

[Greg_N_Shelley]

You said that really well, Parsifal.

...Also, because compersion is a form of empathy, an eroticized empathetic experience to be more precise, is also quite common for the compersionist to identify on some level with our wives' lovers - that the lover becomes a proxy or avatar for ourselves. Thus in my experience of compersion, there is a dual empathetic response - I am empathetic of my wife's bliss, pleasure and satisfaction to the point of wanting her to reach her orgasm, and I'm also feeling the other man's desire for my wife. And in the case of my empathetic coexperience with him of my wife, I do feel that pass through of his desire for her. For me, compersion is a heterosexual form of projected new relationship energy achieved through the mechanism of empathy.

I’ve been contemplating that idea since you first proposed it in other dialogue.

I never really thought much about his role in my experience of compersion, but I see a truth in your statement. The beauty I was describing wasn’t only the beauty of Shelley’s pleasure and her erotic radiance, but their dynamic beauty together. And perhaps that’s why I specifically tend to share stories about Bret instead of other men she played with over the years. She always had fun with other guys, but her sexual chemistry with Bret was special and my perception of beauty was always amplified when witnessing them together.

In its simplest definition, compersion is experiencing ‘joy in another’s joy.’ Yet as suggested by the diversity of responses to Zorro’s opening post, I suspect we’re all a bit different in how we experience that joy on a personal level.

[leggysman]

I don't think I have felt compersion yet.

Maybe because in general, she dates solo. The times I have been present, I was participating. I've never just sat back and watched, for more than a few minutes.

Of course I love when she has fun. I wouldn't want her to do it, otherwise. Part of what makes hotwifing hot for me is seeing her desire directed at other men, and the fact that she loves having sex with them.

One of you more experienced fellows wrote elsewhere that, over time, the erotic charge of your wife fucking other men kind of wore off. What was left was, I think, compersion.

So far, the erotic charge has not worn off, for me

[Greg_N_Shelley]

I don't think I have felt compersion yet.

Maybe because in general, she dates solo. The times I have been present, I was participating. I've never just sat back and watched, for more than a few minutes.

Of course I love when she has fun. I wouldn't want her to do it, otherwise. Part of what makes hotwifing hot for me is seeing her desire directed at other men, and the fact that she loves having sex with them.

One of you more experienced fellows wrote elsewhere that, over time, the erotic charge of your wife fucking other men kind of wore off. What was left was, I think, compersion.

So far, the erotic charge has not worn off, for me

I think you may be referring to me.

When we began playing 22 years ago, erotic thrill was the dominant driver and compersion seemed as a lesser force. Or, at least wasn’t the main focus.

That changed at about the same time Shelley started menopause and her interest in hotwifing waned.

Today when I view our home movies or work on Shelley art, I don’t get erotically charged as I once did. But rather, the dominant feeling is celebration and blissful joy from the beauty of it all…

The beautiful way she appears when she’s sexually entranced; the beauty of her playful smile; the beauty of three people sharing an evening of uninhibited fun, etc.

The way I think I described it once: “My hard on is still there, but now it’s largely overshadowed by the Heart.”

[Parsifal]

I don't think I have felt compersion yet.
. . .

Part of what makes hotwifing hot for me is seeing her desire directed at other men . . . .

Some of us are talking past one another because compersion means different things to different people. I'm understanding it as eroticized empathy. So when you are turned on by her desire for other men, you are feeling compersion. It overlaps with the feeling you have watching a porn video that turns you on, in which you may feel desire derivatively through the actors' passion for each other, or by reading a sexy story in which you project yourself in some way into the feeling of one or more of the characters. But when the other person is your own darling Leggy wife, however, the experience is qualitatively different because you are so closely bonded to her that your experience merges more completely with hers; the separateness between you is comparatively negligible, and so you are internalizing the new relationship energy flowing between you and her much more directly. That to me is compersion. It is also qualitatively different to experience it through the senses directly, through watching your wife or joining in, than in bringing into the mind's eye through fantasy or hearing her relate it to you verbally. Seeing it in real time especially facilitates the actual transference of her experience into your own, whereas mere fantasy, rich as it may be, is of a wholly internal source that does little more than cannibalize one's own internal energies.

[Her number1]

I've thought about commenting on this thread several times. Each time I think about it, I read a comment that sums up things better. That's quite okay as I've enjoyed it all!

When Farmgirl is actively seeing a lover, I have a sense of being loved deeply, a sense that all is right with the world. Of course, there is an erotic side to all of this, but the compersion, for me, is love and a 'just-right' feeling.
Simplistic, I know.

[Parsifal]

When Farmgirl is actively seeing a lover, I have a sense of being loved deeply, a sense that all is right with the world.

Yours is a side of it I need to dig for in my own experience of it. It's getting better for me with time, so there's still hope...