Making Fun Of Your Partner Can Make Your Relationship Stronger, Study Says

A good sense of humor is one of the main things people look for in someone they would want to be in a relationship with. Fairly so, we believe. I mean, can you imagine being in a relationship without any laughter between you and your significant other?

According to one study, making fun of your partner can actually strengthen a relationship. Of course this should be within boundaries. When we say making fun of your partner, we are talking about laughing at a silly outfit, funny haircut or a certain mispronunciation.

This does not include hurling insults at each other, belittling each other or anything that could be hurtful to the other person’s feelings.

According to Joyscribe, Jeffrey Hall from the University of Kansas conducted 39 studies involving over 15,000 people over the course of 30 years. From his studies, he concluded that humor was a critical part of building a successful relationship.

More specifically, Hall goes on to explain that partners should share a similar sense of humor to get the best results from a relationships.

In a statement, Hall explained, “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. Say you and your partner share a quirky sense of humor, but romantic comedies or sit-coms 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.

Playfulness between romantic partners is a crucial component in bonding and establishing relational security. Particularly shared laughter, is an important indicator of romantic attraction between potential mates.”

He further added, “Having an aggressive sense of humour is a bad sign for the relationship in general, but it is worse if the style of humour is used in the relationship. If you think that your partner tells mean-spirited jokes, then it’s likely you’ve seen that firsthand in your relationship.”