Envy is a variety of Jealousy that is positive. When my now ex-wife and I purchased a child care center, and remodeled it for a capacity of 66 children, my wife fulfilled her life long dream of being an entrepreneur, a boss, and doing it in a way that is of contribution to children.  I had this sense of envy. Here I am as an MBA managing multimillion dollar projects for software clients, and I don’t really have any freedom of choice. Not even to do the things that are better for my clients, as I found from time to time when my boss overruled me, ordering me to do things that were better for our firm at the client’s expense.

So I started buying small, low priced single family houses and amassing a small portfolio of property that over time came to exceed the value of that child care center.

My envy led to me to see that if my wife could have something, so could I. and so I did. Her achievement and my envy created a sort of benevolent competition. We both were more engaged and committed to our respective missions because we both liked succeeding ourselves and that gentle feeling of we can do even better after seeing what the other was creating. Further, we helped each other even as we tried to make our respective businesses more successful.

Jealousy on the other hand is the desire to see the other lose the thing I don’t have.  A long time ago, in management consulting, we hired a software architect for a suddenly hot software technology platform where experienced architects were in very short supply. Having been involved in the interview and selection process, our entire small team was well aware that this person made about 33% more than typical for a principal software architect role in our firm. Further, this person made it very clear that he was buying a large, million dollar very opulent house in the suburbs of where he lived, essentially a house price about four times what was the norm for the rest of the team based on our own, significantly lower salaries. In addition, he was upgrading his luxury car, and deciding between various Mercedes and BMW models. 

We were a small team of four, hired on to create a software development strategy and plan to deliver a multi-million dollar project for a large, $51B market cap client.  Quickly, all of us realized that our team member was far better at boasting about his affluence and all the amazing status symbols he was purchasing than he was at contributing to our mission to win a large project with our top tier client. This created jealousy in the team, and I must admit, in me. We were shouldering his workload while he was on the phone with his realtor and various luxury car dealers.

Finally, our team developed a case of jealousy. While we were doing the work that was assigned to him, he was getting material things we couldn’t have, and we were dissatisfied with our perception of blatant unfairness of the universe. 

Very quickly this individual was laid off for a level of demonstrated capability lagging the expectations and requirements for his role. Jealousy was a contributor to this rapid exit from our firm, if this individual had been less boastful about their material accumulation of things we didn’t believe we could have ourselves, he might have been tolerated far longer as a slightly less efficient and less capable team member who just so happened to have negotiated a very favorable pay package.

Jealousy is the major emotion in soap operas, where different stars mercilessly ruin each other’s lives.   In our teams’ case, there was a mix of envy and jealousy. We created elevated levels of performance that the person we were jealous of couldn’t match, and our jealousy made this individual quickly lose his job rather than signing up for tasks we knew he couldn’t accomplish well.

Compersion is a term used in most often in polyamory as the feeling of joy in seeing someone get the things we ultimately wish for ourselves and the people we love. It’s specifically used around the tough topics in both non-polyamorous and “poly” relationships would typically create jealousy or at least envy. For example, Steven sees his partner Mary experience love or sexual pleasure with Ramon, and with his compersion, Steven is happy that Mary gets to have the experiences of love and sexual pleasure. Steven wishes Mary to be happy and fulfilled, even if he is not always and not exclusively the source of Mary’s joy and fulfillment. With envy, Steven might feel inspired to work on becoming a radically better lover, taking tantra and communications classes and the like, so that Mary chooses him more often as her lover of choice. With jealousy, Steven might sabotage Mary’s relationship with Ramon so that Mary is more focused on Steven and stops her association with Ramon. 

Any good husband is happy to see his wife happy from getting an award at work. Yet most husbands feel very uncomfortable seeing their wives happy from sexual pleasure with another man. The prioritization of being happy at someone’s happiness over primal emotions like sexual jealousy is the root of compersion.

With compersion, which I believe is an extremely challenging emotion to master, Steven simply witnesses and supports Mary’s joy without going into comparison. With his compersion, Steven feels neither the need to take any action to better himself, or to lessen the perceptions of Ramon. 

Compersion has the energy of contended detachment. It’s good for my soul to simply witness another person experiencing joy without creating any story about myself and what I have or lack right now. Compersion also has the energy of non-ownership. The same way many corporations limit awards, education or networking opportunities to many employees, because those simply make those employees more employable elsewhere, most partners limit their significant others’ exposure to pleasure from elsewhere that might create impetus to seek other partners.

Envy is about noticing that I can be more, if this person can have that, I can emulate aspects of them and also have that. There is a comparison with others in envy, and that potentially negative energy channeled into the activities of improving myself and my circumstances.

Jealousy is the energy of self-loathing projected outward. An individual feels inadequacy and even pain at someone else’s success and joy, so they attempt to inflict pain and on them. Judas Iscariot struggled with the fact that unlike himself, Jesus was so popular and greatly adored by so many. Judas, as a trusted member of Jesus’ inner circle, was willing to see Jesus punished, even killed to lessen his own feelings of inadequacy. As you can see, being around people who are jealous can be very toxic and damaging to your successes and accomplishments in life.

Compersion is the transcendence of biologically wired sexual jealousy, designed to prevent the raising of a child by another man, or the risk of the primary partner falling in “lust” or love with another. This is an example of the Buddhist notion of “Mudita”, which is a pure joy untainted by self-interest