The Importance of Employing Gentle Humor During Stressful Situations That Arise Within Relationships

In the insightful animated video “Humour In Relationships”, the School of Life explains why a keeping a sense of humor and an ability to laugh at oneself is helpful in maintaining a long-term, committed relationship. Gentle humor employed during times of over-reaction and irrationality, serves to diffuse the situation and allow the partner to see the situation for what it is

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: over-reactions. Comedy skillfully teaches us that the way to get someone to see that they have over-reacted is not to sound mature and reasonable. It’s to continue to pump up the problem until the over-reaction becomes so clear, so benign by its outsize dimensions that our audience starts to laugh. We’ll have learnt to criticise through humour – 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 return.