Compersion in Action

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are I hope you have blue skies. Welcome to That Other Lifestyle podcast. I am your host Jayson, leave Vanilla behind as we talk about compersion in action.

This podcast is for adults only. We’ll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language, so it’s not safe for work. If you’re under 18, this isn’t the place for you. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it’s open to everyone no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or personal truth. While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity’s sake. This show is for everyone, lifestyle, vanilla, or the curious.

Want to connect? Send me an email to host@thatotherlifestyle.com, visit my website at thatotherlifestyle.com, and check out my favorite lifestyle product recommendations at benable.com/thatotherlifestyle. Everyone is welcome here because the lifestyle is about so much more than you think.

I want to talk about compersion, specifically putting compersion in action. I have done two episodes about this enigmatic force that drives the lifestyle before and I have more to add to the conversation today. I want to talk how to do compersion, how to outwardly show compersion in any situation and the ways that compersion permeates the lifestyle.

Backing up for the new folks in the audience. Hi. Welcome. My two episodes about compersion have been my most popular so far. I have been wanting to do another episode on this topic. I wanted to wait though. I needed inspiration to hit me. As usual, the idea for this episode came from a party over the weekend.

We were hosting a crawfish boil over the weekend. 70 pounds of crawfish and shrimp and crabs and sausage and potatoes. 20 or 30 LS friends. I don’t know I didn’t take a head count. A friend of ours brought a new couple to the gathering. She introduced me to lady friend as Jason, he has a podcast and it is really good.

Then my friend told me she loved the episodes on compersion. Which warms my heart and makes me smile. She said the episodes helped her to understand the concept because it was something she struggled with when her and her spouse joined the lifestyle. She shared she had trouble doing compersion, feeling the emotion. Not feeling jealousy. Being able to feel compersion.

Now I may not be entirely doing the conversation justice, she could have been speaking French at that point in the night as I was not entirely sober at the time of the conversation. I started partying around noon and this was somewhere around 8 or 9 at night. I was a couple of hours deep into drinking and feasting and celebrating life at this point.

I may not remember the other high points of the conversation but drunk Jason did remember to put the idea away in the filing cabinet in my brain for later reference. Sober Jason the next day while I was recovering rolled around the conversation in my head.

I had to ask is compersion something we do? Can you do compersion? Is it an action or just an emotion, something we can act on or just feel. If we can act on it does that mean we can get better at it. Like working out, if I lift weights my muscles get bigger. If we actively use and foster compersion, do we get better at it? See the trail of questions starting. Following these questions to their logical start or end, how do we work out our compersion muscles?

Hey you new folks. You may be confused, and I don’t want anyone to be confused so let’s answer what the fuck is compersion? Did I randomly make up this word? Did I misspell compression repeatedly to the consternation of Microsoft Word?

No. I am willing to bet you have never heard this word before. Coined by a hippy commune in the 1990s, compersion is an emotion. It is a good word. A new word. The word is being embraced by the world at large in publications like the Atlantic and Psychology Today. What is it?  Compersion is the joy we feel when another person feels joy that is not directly our doing. Simple enough.

If you are in the LS you will get asked by vanilla people why? Why do we do this? Or how can we watch our spouse getting sexed up by another person? They can’t wrap their brains around it. I feel the reason the concept is so hard to grasp is that there is not an accepted term for the emotions that the lifestyle creates in people.

We have words for happiness or joy or sadness or anger or that pesky jealousy. But out in the vanilla world there is no word for when we feel happiness and joy for another person when we were not the cause of that joy. That’s compersion.

Story time to illustrate my thesis statement. On a warm humid summer night, you stand in the dugout of a baseball field. Your adult recreational softball league, called the Juicy Bats, played hard all season and tonight is the last game against your rivals the Swinging Slices. Yes, this town is big enough to support two swinger based adult softball teams.

The air is thick with sweat, dust, and the electric hum of anticipation. It’s the bottom of the ninth in the championship game. All the sweat-soaked afternoons, the cuts and bruises, the desperate dives and exhausted sprints—it all comes down to this. A gaudy, oversized, golden pineapple trophy gleams under the floodlights, perched like forbidden fruit waiting to be plucked. You imagine it displayed proudly in your orgy room at home, its absurd opulence a testament to conquest and camaraderie.

You play left outfield. Not glamorous. Not heroic. But you poured everything into this game. Days blurred into drills and muscle aches, frustration burning in your chest until it forged something stronger. Resilience. Hunger. And now—helplessness. Because all of that drive, all of that sacrifice, has led to a moment where you can only watch. The crack of the bat, the flight of the ball, the cold indifference of fate. It’s out of your hands.

Bill, the last batter from your team, stomps to the plate like a man preparing to raze cities. Bill always comes through with a titanic home run. He played high school ball, a little in college. He’s the guy who treats every practice like it’s the fucking World Series, barking out advice, spitting crude insults, demanding better from everyone—including himself. He’s a straight asshole about baseball, but he earned the right to be. He’s ruthless. Precise. Tonight, right now, he has one last chance to earn his swagger.

The bases are loaded. Bottom of the ninth. One pitch. One swing. It’s Shakespearean.

The crowd’s roar throbs in your ears as Bill taps his bat against home plate, a rhythmic clink that somehow cuts through the chaos. He’s ready. You see it in his eyes, cold and calculating, a predator scenting blood.

Gary, the pitcher, rotates the ball in his hands like a man handling a live grenade. His eyes narrow. His chest swells with the weight of everyone’s expectations, his own pride sharpening into something like rage. His arm snaps forward, the ball scorching the air, a blur of force and fury.

Bill swings with every ounce of might and arrogance he has left. The crack of the bat is a gunshot. Deafening. The ball rockets skyward, soaring into the darkened sky like it’s trying to tear through the clouds. Flying. Floating. And then—gone. A home run. The kind they write songs about. The kind that lives forever.

Bill drops the bat like it’s beneath him, a smile creeping across his face as he saunters around the bases, drinking in the adoration like a man downing whiskey. The dugout explodes with screams of victory. You can barely hear yourself think over the chaos.

Your heart swells, your chest aches with something like joy. Pure, radiant joy. Not for yourself. For him.

And then you stop. Break it down. You didn’t swing the bat. You didn’t launch the ball into orbit. Bill did. You contributed to getting the team to this moment, sure. Team effort and all that. But the glory, the final swing, that was all Bill. His skill. His moment. And you are genuinely happy for him. Because his success feels like yours. Because watching him triumph fills you with pride and warmth.

That’s compersion in action. It’s not about sex. It’s not even about sharing a win. It’s about feeling joy for someone else’s happiness, with no strings attached. No jealousy. No resentment. Just a pure, unfiltered appreciation of someone else’s moment.

And damn, it feels good.

Compersion can exist in the vanilla world. We just don’t call it compersion. What would you call the feeling you have in that moment? Happy? Is there any word in the vanilla lexicon that fits? That adequately gives quantitative justice and glory to that feeling?

In the lifestyle, I meet people who tell me they enjoy watching their spouse in sexual situations with others. They enjoy seeing their spouses pleasured. They enjoy seeing their spouses as confident sexual beings. What’s funny is that other people will devote a hundred words to trying to explain this feeling because they don’t know there is a single word for that feeling, compersion.

Compersion can take many forms. We are not just locked into the aspect of my partner had an orgasm, I am happy for them. You can feel compersion when your spouse is the center of attention at a party. You can feel compersion when someone flirts with your spouse. Your spouse can feel compersion when they know you are having a good time either with or without clothes.

For newbies, joining the lifestyle, without this word and framework, they can get lost in their emotions. Trying to apply vanilla concepts of relationships to the LS is not going to work. This is a whole different world over here. Without words to help quantify what you feel, then you start grasping, trying to fit these new sensations into a context your brain will understand.

Newbies lack a word to quantify a feeling. This new sensation of happiness seeing their spouse in action, it feel good. Real good. It is arousing and there is a feeling of happiness. Not quite sure how else to define it. That lack of definition can be a problem. Without a vessel like a word to contain and define that feeling, there is a danger that that feeling of happiness can be mislabeled as actually something bad or a negative emotion. Like you are a bad person for feeling joy in this moment watching your wife get good dick.

These emotions without a name can run wild flipping between positive and negative. Since I don’t shy away from any topic let’s talk about the emotions you may feel when you see your partner with another person. On one side, there will be positive emotions, if and only if you are going into this with the right mindset from the start. When you feel this unnamed feeling your mindset will determine whether it lands in the positive or the negative side of the equation.

Remember the lifestyle is not here to save your marriage, fix your marriage, redeem your marriage. These acts are voluntary, and we do them to enhance our marriage.

If you go into any encounter with the mindset that this will enhance our marriage, brings us together, an activity we are experiencing together for the purpose of enjoyment, approach this with positive intentions, that will foster compersion. That will help you have a positive outlook on the emotions you may be feeling.

If you go into an encounter with doubt, with reservations, thoughts that you are inadequate or you are only doing this to make your spouse happy, this will not foster compersion. This is lead you down the path of shame and anxiety after, which are very negative emotions that will sour your experience in the lifestyle.

And after the encounter, after all the fuckery is done. You are back home, you have showered and you two are laying bed together what emotion will be in the space between you? Happiness that you shared a wonderful moment, or will the noxious anxious thoughts run through your mind all night? Did he enjoy himself more with her than me? How come she doesn’t make those noises with me? Did she have an orgasm? My husband really liked that blowjob, did he like it better than mine?

Some people say jealousy is the opposite of compersion. I say no. Anxiety is the opposite of compersion. Compersion is happiness and contentment. Anxiety is restless and not content.

Speaking of jealousy real quick. For our purposes, jealousy is a tool to help us divine the true source of our insecurities. When we feel jealous or even anxious we have to look inside first and then share second. If you did have a bad experience that is leaving your brain all twisted, I need you to ask yourself why do I feel this way? What was it about this encounter that makes me feel this way? Did I go into this with a clear and positive mindset?

We can’t accurately share our feelings until we have a handle on them internally. Think about what happened during the encounter that you didn’t like or did like. Did your spouse do something that you did not like? And as a side note, I promise 99 out of 100 times, whatever slight you think happened, was probably completely innocent and they didn’t realize it was an issue. Assume positive intent on your spouse’s part. Give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Once you have a handle on your feelings, then you need to share them. Share how you feel with your spouse. Go through the positive and negative emotions you are feeling at this moment. The number one benefit of being in the LS I hear from couples is that communication gets better. Now is the time to communicate. Getting your spouse’s perspective will help you understand your feelings better.

Sharing is not just for negative emotions either. In the same moment, you could share all the positives you experienced, all the things you did enjoy. If you want to foster compersion with your spouse, talk. Talk about the good stuff. Talk about how you enjoyed when he picked up the other wife and put her against the wall. Talk about how you enjoyed seeing your wife in the middle of a pile of people.

Look you cannot force compersion. If you don’t feel it, no force will make you feel it. The lack of feeling compersion could be an issue you need to address with your partner. If you don’t feel compersion, ask is it because I don’t feel anything at all or I feel negative emotions instead. If you feel negative emotions, you need to talk that out. That may be insecurity and anxiety overriding your ability to feel compersion.

If you don’t feel compersion at all meaning you don’t feel anything at all before, during, or after an encounter, you need to figure out why? Is there a mental block holding you back from feeling any emotion? I ain’t a psychologist. I can say compersion does enhance the lifestyle, it is a motivating emotion for what we do. The lack of any emotion I would see as concerning that needs a deeper dive on your part. Not making an assessment here of good or bad, just you need honesty with yourself and why you are doing this.

That was super fucking heavy. And I am not done. Compersion extends beyond your personal relationship. It can. It could. I dare say it needs to. You can be happy for your spouse having a good time. What about other couples in the Lifestyle?

Hear me out. Throwing this out there. Do you feel compersion when couples you are friends with have a good time with another couple? As in they ain’t fucking you, they are fucking someone else and you are happy for them?

Compersion is not just locked in with your spouse. I know it is a quiet part of the lifestyle, people rarely share who else they are fucking while they are hanging out with a couple. My wife and I usually use the code word “we hung out with the”. We leave it nebulous if we actually did anything and that phrase could encompass, we did six hour fuck fest or legit sat around and played cards all night. We are acknowledging we spent time with a couple and sparing the details.

Think about it though. Would you be happy for one of your friends if they had sex with another couple? Weird concept to wrap our heads around. I at least wanted to throw it out there. Is it possible right? I can be happy for one of our friends getting laid. I bring this up because I experienced this and I had to flip an emotion, intentionally step in the way of what could be a negative feeling and say no, stop that.

We are at a spicy party. Spicy party being the kind of party that people show up at with the intention of fucking versus a crawfish boil where the intention is to feast and try to wash your hands really good. Spices and genitals are not a good combination.

Anyway, few years ago my wife and I were at a spicy party that was evolving into a full blown orgy. People were getting naked. Clothes were coming off. Was I in the mood for fuckery? Not really. My wife wasn’t either. Our original intention was to make an appearance then we couldn’t figure out a way to gracefully duck out.

There was one of our friend couples there, we had done stuff with the before and we did stuff with the after this point in time. Our friend couple started to engage with a different couple. It happens. This caused negative feelings in me.

We were at a party, one of our friend couples went off to get busy with another couple. And that caused a negative feeling in me. I felt at that moment unworthy; I was questioning why I wasn’t involved, dejected. And this is wrong. I acknowledge this way of thinking is wrong but I am still human.

I had to stop myself. I had to stop that train of thought and reframe it. Manually. This is one of the way to find compersion. In action, walking you through a real example here. I was feeling dejected and rejected. This was me though. I acknowledged that was I was feeling was an emotion in my head. It belonged to me. No one did anything on purpose, intentionally to me. There were outside factors on why I couldn’t participate in the fun. My wife and I made a conscious decision that night not to really participate in the fun. Our friends were fully in the right to engage with another couple since they wanted to do the fuckery with someone.

I stepped back in my brain, looked at the situation. I could either be upset or the other option, I could be happy for them. I choose to be happy for them. My friends were getting to have fun. Getting to have fun with a couple I knew they were scoping out for a while. I don’t need to participate, and it was not my place to join in. We don’t have an exclusive agreement with our friend couple. They can do whoever they please just like my wife and I can do whoever we please. I could be happy for them and I am genuinely happy for them.

I share this to show that yeah even the guy with the podcast who rambles every week. I feel these emotions too. We all do. You may have a moment you feel weird with your spouse or with another couple or single person. I get it. Reframing though is a powerful tool. Analyzing your emotions, taking a step back, figuring out what you are really feeling and then reframing it.

And no I didn’t say anything to my friends because it isn’t my place to say anything. They didn’t do anything intentional. And that’s the thing with all these emotions. When someone intentionally does something, then yeah speak up. But if it is just me feeling an emotion, it’s mine to work through, not theirs.

To my credit I have gotten better at reframing my emotions. Which I think comes with experience and exposure. Nothing will replace your lived experience in the Lifestyle.

That was me intentionally reframing a negative emotion into a positive. That is compersion in action. What else can you do to foster compersion? Little actions add up to big results.

As always I got a list. Let’s talk about verbal cues in action. You may not be the most verbal person, your words never betray your inner thoughts. Now is a good time to start if you want to try and become more comfortable by offering encouragement to your spouse.

This could be telling them how good they looked at a party or how much you enjoyed seeing them flirting with someone. It could be a simple as giving them a peck on the cheek and telling them good job after they gave another person an earthquake orgasm.

Your intent here is to express directly and honestly what you are feeling for them. Don’t worry about the words. The words will escape you in the moment and that’s fine. The verbal reinforcement is powerful. It shows your spouse that you are happy for them. It shows your spouse you are enjoying yourself. And by saying words of encouragement, you are thereby hearing words of encouragement.  A simple good job and a pat on the ass. Just like big burly sports players.

Speaking of touching butts, physical affection works too. This is holding hands during sex with other people. It happens. It’s great. Hugging them in public. Using your body to communicate happiness in a moment. Not complicated. We are not sitting on anyone’s face in appreciation, though you could. Yell out good job Jason then jump onto my face for a beard ride.

Finally just a simple smile at the right moment communicates books of information. It tells me my spouse is having a good time. They are in a comfortable situation. They are calm and excited about what is going on. Yeah, people underestimate the value of a smile. A real smile not that half hearted smirk of contempt. Big teethy smile.

When my wife and I are in social situations, I am genuinely and honestly watching her and her mannerisms. She is the kind of person who may not use her words to communicate her emotions but after 20 years together, I have a pretty good read on her body language. That tells me what I need to know. If she is uncomfortable or not enjoying the moment, I know I need to step in.

Being mindful of compersion and using your body language and words to communicate joy, I fully admit can be a strange thought. Vanilla world, don’t you dare express happiness physically. Don’t fidget, don’t smile, don’t make eye contact. Lifestyle, we need that type of communication. And the benefit is if you are comfortable sharing joy then it is easier to share not joy. Thinking this through, I say it is easier to share when we are unhappy with a situation via body language, like resting bitch face, arms crossed, pensive tense.

Sharing joy with body language is perfectly natural though. We need to reprogram ourselves to express it freely without hesitation or worry of judgement. We don’t have to think about it if we are having a good time. But then we do think about it and immediately catch ourselves. Stop it.

Stop catching yourself and changing your mannerisms because you think they are awkward or not acceptable behavior. Laugh, smile, giggle, sway with the music of life. These actions show others you are confident in yourself and are sexy as hell.

We have defined what compersion looks like, compersion in action? Since everything can be defined by it’s opposite, what does compersion not look like?

I would say conditional support as in you are only supportive of your partner’s actions if they behave in a manner that you have constructed in your brain that you have not shared with them. I admit conditional support is a loaded way to say this. Rules and boundaries are technically conditional support. You are saying I will support your behavior as long as you abide by the rules and boundaries we have agreed upon. The key word there is we, a couple has discussed and established their operating procedures. Versus you in your own head, creating guidelines for your spouse that you have not communicated to them. How do you expect them to honor your thoughts when you have not shared them with your spouse?

If someone is abiding by a couple’s rules then support for their actions should be unconditional within reason. If you are thinking, my wife better not kiss him or I will get upset, I have to ask, do you have a rule against kissing? And if you say no, then that’s fucked up. Compersion cannot exist if you are going into a situation with deception or ill intent.

Compersion cannot grow in a field of resentment. If you are harboring feelings of resentment, then of course you can’t be happy for your partner. Give you an example. Let’s say as a couple, you meet another couple and decide to get naked. The other husband’s dick ain’t working that night. But your husband lays down the hammer. He gets laid and has fun, you don’t. If that happens enough, that will create resentment. Your husband gets to have fun while you sit on the sidelines with a man who has a floppy dick.

Or looking at all this as a zero sum game. Like there is only so much happiness to go around. If my wife has too good of a time, if she experiences too much happiness then that is taking joy away from me. Happiness is infinite. Or thinking that as a couple you both have to experience the same level of happiness in an encounter, not sure how to measure that.

Look honest truth here. Sometimes you will have a lot of fun. Sometimes you won’t. Sometimes your spouse will have more fun than you. All these scenarios will fucking happen. Doesn’t mean anyone lost the game because this isn’t a fucking game where you keep score. Enjoy the ride. Accept there will be good times and not good times.

Another. Give us more. Performative compersion. Faking it. Straight up faking. You don’t feel compersion so you fake it. Don’t do this either. If you are not feeling it, say something. You faking that you are having a good time or you are happy for your spouse, leads to a world of hurt. You need to share your lack of compersion with your spouse. Don’t do things because you think it will make them happy either. That is one of the worst actions you can do.

Going along with that is suppressing negative emotions you may feel. It is okay to feel jealous or insecurity or anxious. Our hobby is having sex with people we meet off the internet. By it’s very nature the lifestyle is chaotic and wild. Suppressing your emotions, good or bad, will make it impossible to enjoy what we do. Do not ignore your feelings. They are valid and you need to share with your spouse. You are a team in this.

What does compersion look like in different play styles? What the hell do people get out of these sexual encounters? Starting at one end of the spectrum and running to the other end. No play style is inherently better than any other, I put them on a scale for ease of discussion though.

Parallel Play. This is where a couple does not engage physically with another couple. They stick to their own spouse. This has a slight exhibitionism or voyeurism edge here. You enjoy your spouse or yourself being watched in some way. You enjoy the sexual energy in a room. The air becomes electric when two couples are fucking in close proximity. Joy is derived from the act of being watched. That you are spectacle for another.

Soft swap couples. Light touching, maybe kissing or oral. I say soft swap is having sex with my spouse with extra steps. Soft swap can be super fun. It takes the pressure of penetrative sex out of the equation. Could be more relaxing depending on the other coupe you are with.

For soft swap compersion comes in when you see your spouse being adored and pleasured, knowing that the ultimate sensation of full penetrative sex is reserved just for you.

Full swap. Alright this is the full on fucking. Penetrative sex. This one is the easiest to quantify. You enjoy watching your spouse get fucked. So vulgar. I know right. Yeah watching your spouse get fucked and pleasured by another. This could be a kink or a fetish or just compersion. Knowing your spouse is having a good time and giving someone a good time, physically.

Moving over to group activities. Orgies. I ascribe to the theory that an orgy involves at least five people total. This case you may watch your spouse deliver to multiple women or enjoy the company of multiple men in interesting positions. This is the ultimate visual feast. No porn can compare to seeing your spouse participate in group sex. With orgies compersion involves exhaustion. Seeing yourself or your spouse completely spent physically and sexually. That sigh of contentment after. Seeing your spouse in configuration of human bodies you could only dream about. Savoring those memories of the moment.

On the far end of the spectrum from parallel play we have gang bangs. As in one person enjoying the company of multiple other people. Gang bangs, say the woman being enjoyed by multiple men. All the women I talk to who enjoy gang bangs tell me the same thing, they are empowered. They are in control of the moment. That power they feel transmits to their husbands. Their husbands can fulfill a sexual fantasy, see their wives as powerful erotic creatures. I am probably forgetting or omitting other play styles.

Compersion is a muscle we need to work. It is an emotion we can get better at by acknowledging it, fostering it and allowing it space to grow.

I always appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host@thatotherlifestyle.com. My website is thatotherlifestyle.com.

My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone, sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only and please join us for the next episode. Remember STI testing is important and takes a community to make a difference.  Go to STDHero.com and use my promo code TOL10 for 10% your order.

Whatever you may do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day.