we know by instinct that humor 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 TV we
don’t just want to laugh per se for two
people to be able to tolerate one
another over time we need to life 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 all balance our partners
will be a little crazy in many areas and
we will be – of course they might turn
out to ring their mother five times a
day clean the kitchen as if surgery was
going to be performed there always
insist on inviting friends around or
want to arrive at the airport six 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 feels swiftly
attacked and refuses the insight leading
to stifled irritation and bitterness
this is where humor comes in humor is
the most effective way of criticizing
another person without arousing their
irritation or self-righteousness her
laughter isn’t just fun it’s a sign that
they’ve acknowledged an attempt to
reform them if people tend to get
annoyed when criticism 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’re
unable to spot their deviation from the
mature mean so the comedic gesture
involves subjecting the troublesome
aspect of the other to extreme
exaggeration which then jolts them into
recognition of a problem while at the
same time offering them the relief of
feeling that they art of course quite
that bad in the late 1980s the then
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
grew increasingly authoritarian with her
colleagues and fellow Paula
serious-minded articles appeared in
newspapers urging the prime minister to
be not collegiate and empathetic it
didn’t work at all mrs. Thatcher simply
got offended and dug in but then a
comedy show using puppets called
spitting image turn the Prime Minister
into a deep voiced psychopathic matron
with a tendency to whack her naughty
colleagues over the head with a
truncheon this obviously wasn’t how mrs.
Thatcher actually behaved and yet it was
a tenfold exaggeration of a real and
painful truth about her remarkably
presented in this form the Prime
Minister could see the point felt us
waged by the wildness of the
exaggeration and was in a position to
laugh at herself in her memoirs she
recalled tuning in to the program and
chuckling realizing that she would
henceforth need to learn to rein in a
tendency that had clearly gotten out of
hand the comedy shows was rehearsing a
move we all need constantly to make in
our relationships here too we should use
the tactic of kindly comic exaggeration
to point out the failings of another
person
imagine responding to a partner who’d
become a little too agitated about any
sign of dirt in a kitchen in answer we
might massively overplay that gravity of
the issue and insist let’s commit
suicide over the bread crumbs by the
sink you’re right life is no longer
worth living on these term we could nip
round the late-night pharmacy get a
bottle of sleeping pills or else just
take the bread knife to those larger
veins in our ankles soon we won’t have
to worry about this messy world any
longer come on
it could even be fun one would during
the speech need to be chirpy relaxed
with just a playful twitch of the lips
as one elaborated the technical details
as comedians no tone is everything the
comic move is to blow up departures from
the norm to such manifestly absurd
proportions that even the partner can
see them for what they always were
uber reactions comedy skillfully teaches
us that the way to get someone to see
that they have overreacted is not to
sound mature and reasonable it’s to
continue to pump up the problem until
the overreaction becomes so clear so
benign
by its outsize dimensions that our
audience starts to love will have learn
to criticize through humor and our
relationships will be a whole lot more
secure as a result especially when we
allow our lover to magnify our own failings into jokes in turn
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 TV we
don’t just want to laugh per se for two
people to be able to tolerate one
another over time we need to life 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 all balance our partners
will be a little crazy in many areas and
we will be – of course they might turn
out to ring their mother five times a
day clean the kitchen as if surgery was
going to be performed there always
insist on inviting friends around or
want to arrive at the airport six 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 feels swiftly
attacked and refuses the insight leading
to stifled irritation and bitterness
this is where humor comes in humor is
the most effective way of criticizing
another person without arousing their
irritation or self-righteousness her
laughter isn’t just fun it’s a sign that
they’ve acknowledged an attempt to
reform them if people tend to get
annoyed when criticism 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’re
unable to spot their deviation from the
mature mean so the comedic gesture
involves subjecting the troublesome
aspect of the other to extreme
exaggeration which then jolts them into
recognition of a problem while at the
same time offering them the relief of
feeling that they art of course quite
that bad in the late 1980s the then
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
grew increasingly authoritarian with her
colleagues and fellow Paula
serious-minded articles appeared in
newspapers urging the prime minister to
be not collegiate and empathetic it
didn’t work at all mrs. Thatcher simply
got offended and dug in but then a
comedy show using puppets called
spitting image turn the Prime Minister
into a deep voiced psychopathic matron
with a tendency to whack her naughty
colleagues over the head with a
truncheon this obviously wasn’t how mrs.
Thatcher actually behaved and yet it was
a tenfold exaggeration of a real and
painful truth about her remarkably
presented in this form the Prime
Minister could see the point felt us
waged by the wildness of the
exaggeration and was in a position to
laugh at herself in her memoirs she
recalled tuning in to the program and
chuckling realizing that she would
henceforth need to learn to rein in a
tendency that had clearly gotten out of
hand the comedy shows was rehearsing a
move we all need constantly to make in
our relationships here too we should use
the tactic of kindly comic exaggeration
to point out the failings of another
person
imagine responding to a partner who’d
become a little too agitated about any
sign of dirt in a kitchen in answer we
might massively overplay that gravity of
the issue and insist let’s commit
suicide over the bread crumbs by the
sink you’re right life is no longer
worth living on these term we could nip
round the late-night pharmacy get a
bottle of sleeping pills or else just
take the bread knife to those larger
veins in our ankles soon we won’t have
to worry about this messy world any
longer come on
it could even be fun one would during
the speech need to be chirpy relaxed
with just a playful twitch of the lips
as one elaborated the technical details
as comedians no tone is everything the
comic move is to blow up departures from
the norm to such manifestly absurd
proportions that even the partner can
see them for what they always were
uber reactions comedy skillfully teaches
us that the way to get someone to see
that they have overreacted is not to
sound mature and reasonable it’s to
continue to pump up the problem until
the overreaction becomes so clear so
benign
by its outsize dimensions that our
audience starts to love will have learn
to criticize through humor and our
relationships will be a whole lot more
secure as a result especially when we
allow our lover to magnify our own failings into jokes in turn
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