If you are in a relationship where your partner can’t take a joke, or gets offended every time you make a silly comment about them — you will likely be miserable. It’s healthy to play around and have couples poke fun of each other. I mean, science says it — so it has to be true!
Joyscribe writes that University of Kansas researcher Jeffrey Hall conducted 39 studies involving 15,000 people over a span of 30 years. That’s three decades of relationship analysis to determine what makes them sink or swim.
Hall says it isn’t enough to seek someone with a “sense of humor,” which is too subjective. You need to find someone with the same sense of humor as you.
“People say they want a sense of humor in a mate, but that’s a broad concept. That people think you are funny or you can make a joke out of anything is not strongly related to relationship satisfaction. What is strongly related to relationship satisfaction is the humor that couples create together.”
That’s the key line: the humor that “couples create together.” That act of creating something unique to your relationship, like shared inside jokes and whatnot, are what really make a strong union.
Hall adds, “Say you and your partner share a quirky sense of humor, but romantic comedies or sitcoms do nothing for either of you… It’s not that any style or a sense of humor is any better or worse. What matters is that you both see quirky humor as hysterical. If you share a sense of what’s funny, it affirms you and affirms your relationship through laughter.”
So there you have it! Poke fun, make fun, love your partner and laugh — Science says so!