Being in a relationship is a challenge. Getting to know the other person with all the good and bad is an exciting experience, but also one that familiarize you with their peculiarities that comes along.
This is why humour becomes a huge part of any relationship.
From the first dates to many more to come, humour not only makes the other person more attractive, but shows us that s/he can make the connection to make you laugh. They have dropped their guards and are asking you to drop yours too.
Here’s why humour is necessary in a relationship!
Reason1 – Humour is essential for a relationship to thrive, both for entertainment and emotional purposes. From those silly childhood adventures to your most humiliating experience in school, these funny stories become the firsts of any new relationship. And the best ice-breakers!
Reason 2- Who haven’t felt the initial awkwardness in a relationship and what’s better than to take it away by acknowledging it. Make a joke out of it. For instance- how they dropped wine on themselves because they were nervous, or how they bumped into something on the road on their way back home. You can’t just help but see the humour behind a role playing gone wrong.
Reason 3 – Where getting offended might have been your normal reaction, you will be surprised to see that if joked about the right way, it could let you see things from their perception that things in fact aren’t that bad. That you being a human made a mistake and it can be laughed away.
However, it’s more than just for a laugh that we need to have some comic aspect in our relationship. It becomes a great tool for constructive criticism.
Different as they are from us, your significant other might not understand that a habit of theirs or something they might have done has upset you so much. You on the other hand can’t understand how they keep doing the same thing again and again.
Your partner might obsessively clean up the place, or take way more time in the shower, sing the wrong lyrics all the time or just leave their shoes anywhere they please. Here your balance of normality has broken. You and your partner are observing things from different perception. You need to say something, but criticism doesn’t seem that constructive when told in the wrong way and would only end up soaring the relationship. What you need is an exaggeration of the habit or the situation itself.
As philosopher Alain de Botton said, “Humour is the most effective way of criticizing another person without arousing their irritation or self-righteousness. Their laughter isn’t just fun. It’s a sign that they have acknowledged an attempt to reform them.”
Nudged in the right way, humour helps you see your behaviour for what they were in the first place – an over-reaction. And it isn’t by a serious ranting that your partner will understand this. Maturity wouldn’t help here. As Botton says, just keep pumping up the overreaction until it becomes so clear and benign by its outsize dimension that our audience starts to laugh.
Remember, it’s all in the tone.
PS: Humour is not only essential in a relationship, but for overall better life too. Here’s a video that might tickle your funny bones.
