Laugh Alone Or Together, But Just Laugh

We can laugh on our own, or we can laugh with others. Shared laughter is more satisfying than laughing alone. Shared laughter is affirming and confirming. Shared laughter has enormous bonding power. It is difficult to argue with one with whom you just laughed. Not only does laughter catch us off guard; it makes us drop our guard, if only for the duration of the laughing.

Humor is vital to the health of a marriage. When couples come to me for counseling, one thing very much in absence is humor. The couple’s sullen disposition reminds me of something the philosopher Nietzsche said regarding a certain negative brand of religionists: they maintain that there are some things about which you absolutely must not laugh. Humorlessness bears similarities with lifelessness; it is a killer of relational life and love. So couples who come for counseling usually come with just this problem: there are things in their relationship about which there can be no laughter.

Now of course, there are certain issues which will never be laughable. These include issues of adultery, abuse and addiction. Yet if a couple wants to work things out, sooner or later, humor will have to find its way back into the relationship. They simply have to learn to laugh, not only at the other, but at themselves and their penchant for over-seriousness. Research has demonstrated that laughing at the same things is a key element of a fully functioning marriage.

When humor makes its precious face reappear in a marriage, the couple has definitely moved toward healing and reconciliation. I am yet to see just when and how humor has made its return, but it is a most welcome agent for healing, love and common life.

Humor is about as important to the well-being of a relationship as forgiveness. And much more in daily evidence. I have friends I want to spend time with if for no other reason than that I know that we will share a few good laughs together.

I have a humorous friend in Des Moines, for example. I don’t know quite why, but when the two of us get together, we always seem to have a third friend join us, namely laughter. He has a great laugh, and when he laughs, which he is sure to do, I cannot help but join in. We typically fall into a laughing grove. Then we mutually discern how fundamentally laughable is so much of what we take far too seriously, far too often. So we laugh and laugh – and probably make most people around us uncomfortable. Who are these two guys, and why are they laughing so hard?

When I look back on my life, some of my fondest memories are of laughing together with loved ones. Life seems more bearable, situations more tolerable, when laughter enters the scene. The opposite is just as true: when you cannot laugh, you cannot lift off you, or have lifted off you, whatever is weighing or pinning you down.

Humor removes burdens and barriers between people. It grants us a weightless break; it clears rather than fouls the air. Humor prompts us to realize, “I can do this; I can bear up and take it a bit longer.” No wonder oppressed people have developed humor to a fine art, for laughter helps us to endure. And if there is one thing we have to learn to do, it is to endure.