We know by instinct that humour is pretty important in relationships
But the reasons are often left a little vague
It isn't that we crudely want entertainment, there are enough comedians on the TV
We don't just want to laugh per se. For 2 people to be able to tolerate one another over time, we need to laugh
in the nicest way, at our partner and at ourselves.
Spending time closely around someone inevitably exposes us to constant departures from what we could call normality or balance.
Our partners will be a little crazy in many areas and we will be too, of course.
They might turn out to ring their mother 5 times a day, clean the kitchen as if the surgery was gonna be performed there
always insist on inviting friends around
or want to ride to the airport 6 hours before a flight
We need to say something but doing so directly and in a serious voice can be painfully counterproductive
Too often, the partner just feel swiftly attacked and refused from inside leading to spiceful irritation and bitterness
And this is where humour comes in
Humour is the most effective way to criticizing another person without arousing their irritation or self-righteousness
Their laughter isn't just fun, it's a sign that they've have acknowledged and attempted to reform them.
If people tend to get annoyed when critisism is delivered in a serious tone
it's that they can't see the extent to which their attitudes have abandoned proportion and balance
They are unable to spot their deviation from mature mean
So the comedic gesture involve subjecting the troublesome aspect of the other to extreme exaggeration
which then jolts them to the recognition of the problem
while at the same time offering them a relief of feeling that they are of course quite that bad.
In the late 1980s, the then Bristish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher grew increasingly authoritarian with her colleagues and fellow politicians
Serious-minded articles appeared in newspapers urging the Prime Minister to be more .. and impathetic.
It didn't work at all, Mrs. Thatcher simply got offended and dug in
But then a comedy show using puppets called Spitiing Image
turned the Prime Minister in to a deep voice psychopathic matron with a tendency to whack a naughty colleague over the head with a truncheon
This obviously wasn't what Mrs. Thatcher actually behaved
and yet it was a 10-fold of exaggeration of a real and painful truth about her
Remarkably, presented in this form, the Prime Minister can see the point
felt assuage by the wildness of exaggeration and was in a position to laugh at herself
In her mermoir, she recalled tuning into the program and chuckling,
realizing that she would henceforth need to learn to reign in a tendency that clearly have gotten out of hand.
The comedy show was a rehearsing move we all need constantly to make in our relationships
Here to we should use the tactic of kindly comic exaggeration to point out the failing of another person
Imagine responding to a partner who become a little too agitate to any sign of dust in the kitchen
In answer, we might massively overplace the gravity of the issue and insist: "Let's commit suicide over the breadcrums by the sink,
you are right, life is no longer worth living on this term.
We can nip round to the late night pharmacy get a bottle of sleeping pill or else I'll just take the bread knife to those larger veins in our ankle.
Soon we will have to worry about these messy world any longer.
Come on it could even be fun."
One word, during this speech you need to be chirpy, relaxed with just a playful twitch of the lips as on elaborated of technical details
The comedians know tone is everything.
The comic move is the blow up departure from the norm to such manifesting absurd proportion
that even the partner can see them for what they always were: overreaction.
Comedy skillfully teaches us that the way to get someone to see that have overreacted
is not to sound matured and reasonable
It is continue to pump up the problems until the overreaction becomes so clear
so benign by its outside dimension that our audiences start to laugh
We have learned to critize through humour and our relationship will be a whole lot more secured as a result
especially when we allow our lovers to magnify our own feelings into jokes in turn.