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Humor and Laughter Strengthens Relationships

Humor and laughter work to reduce stress, ease pain, and lift your mood. Positive humor also draws people together and strengthens the bonds in relationships.

A sense of humor is attractive. People who can make you laugh are a pleasure to spend time with. People who draw out your sense of humor help you keep worries in perspective and make you feel better about yourself.

Laughter helps with the awkward moments as people get to know each other. Positive humor can help friends and couples work through conflicts. It helps long-term relationships continue to feel fresh and exciting. Sharing laughter and funny moments together builds intimacy and strengthens feelings of connection.

Laughter isn't a cure-all for relationship problems, but it can help you through rough patches. If you have a history of laughing together, you're more likely to be flexible, open-minded, and forgiving as you deal with disagreements and disappointments. Knowing how to make each other laugh can help keep your relationship resilient.

How to Bring More Humor and Laughter Into Your Relationships

Even if you don't think of yourself as naturally funny, you can learn to appreciate humor and be humorous in ways that strengthen your relationships. If humor comes easily to you, there may be ways that you can refine your humor to build stronger bonds. Here are a few suggestions:

• Smile. Show that you're relaxed and happy by smiling. Just as laughter is contagious, a smile is likely to draw smiles in return—and a smile is the first step toward a laugh.
• Create calm spaces in your life for shared laughter. If you or your friend or partner are hurried or anxious, attempts at humor may fall flat or even be perceived as irritating. While humor can be used to defuse tension, it's easier to spark a laugh when you and the person you're with are both calm. If you find yourself too tense to laugh, step back from what's worrying you, and take a few deep breaths to relax. Help your friend or partner create calm spaces, too, then find ways to share a laugh.
• Find things to laugh about in your everyday life. Absurdity and silliness are all around, waiting to be noticed and laughed about. Young children are naturally funny if you're lucky enough to have them in your life. Pets and other animals can make you laugh. Even things that don't seem funny at first can be if you consider them from different perspectives. That aggravating request at work almost surely has an element of absurdity to it if you let go of your frustration and consider it with humorous eyes.
• Learn to laugh at yourself. Let go of your defensiveness and own up to the fact that, like everyone else, you make mistakes—that you have quirks and awkward moments. Set aside your pride, and turn an embarrassing interaction into a funny story. Your partner or your friends will appreciate the laugh and respect you for both your openness and your sense of humor. (One caution here: If you find that all your jokes are at your own expense, you may be overdoing the self-criticism, perhaps because of self-esteem or self-confidence issues.)
• Share things that make you laugh. When you find yourself laughing out loud at a joke, cartoon, or video, share it with your partner or a friend. Share entertainment that makes you both laugh, like funny movies, TV shows, or comedy acts.
• Do something silly together. Play a game designed to make you laugh. Go out for a karaoke night. Try something you're not very good at, like bowling or miniature golf, and laugh at your mistakes. Crank up the music and do some outdated dance moves together.
• Remember funny incidents from your past. Keep a mental inventory of things that have made you laugh together in the past. Bring them up as funny memories when you both need a lift.
• Draw on inside jokes. Inside jokes are the words or phrases that spark funny memories for you and your partner or friends, but no one else. When you're together, use them for a private laugh.

Humor Cautions in Relationships

Tastes in humor vary widely, and different types of humor can be experienced as warm-hearted and uplifting or mean-spirited and cruel. Use care with humor in your relationships. When you're laughing together, what you're doing is working. When you find yourself laughing by yourself, your attempts at humor may be doing more harm than good:

• Pay close attention to the other person's reactions. If they're not laughing with you, you've missed the mark. No matter how funny you think you're being, if it's not funny to the other person, stop. Learn what the other person finds to be funny, and calibrate your humor to lift their mood.
• Aim to laugh with others, not at them. Positive humor includes others by finding things to laugh at in shared experiences and everyday absurdities. Aggressive humor, sarcasm, and ridicule get laughs at other people's expense, and can be offensive and hurtful. Lighthearted teasing is appreciated by some people, but not by everyone. Mean-spirited teasing is almost always damaging to relationships.
• Don't use humor to avoid serious issues. While humor can defuse tension and help you discuss tough issues calmly, it can also be used to change the subject and avoid those issues. Watch that you are using humor to grow closer in your relationship, not to "keep things light" when significant problems or painful emotions need discussion.

For More Information

"The Two Sides of Humor in Relationships," Psychology Today (B. Goldsmith, May 2019)
Link opens in a new windowhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-fitness/201905/the-two-sides-humor-in-relationships

"Managing Conflict with Humor," HelpGuide.org (Updated 2022, August)
Link opens in a new windowhttps://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/managing-conflicts-with-humor.htm

"How Laughter Brings Us Together," Greater Good Magazine (J. Suttie, July 2017)
Link opens in a new windowhttps://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_laughter_brings_us_together