Do you and your partner often laugh at jokes that no one else can understand? The good news: This can be a sign of a happy relationship. Jeffrey Hall, of the University of Kansas, studied how humor can affect relationships between partners and it turns out that if you like the same jokes, this is essential to your relationship.
Humor can make your relationship stronger
When it comes to humor in a relationship, we often think of couples who joke and tease each other nonstop. But it turns out to be much more important when we like each other's sense of humor and create fun together. In his work, Jeffrey Hall looked at 39 studies with more than 15,000 participants, and here are his conclusions on how humor affects romantic relationships.
What is strongly related to relationship satisfaction is the humor that couples create together. In other words, it is important to match up with your loved one and their sense of humor. Even if your partner tells you weird jokes that no one else understands, you understand and respond in the same way.
Common humor is what draws us to our potential partners
Studies also suggest that shared laughter is one thing that can attract your potential partner right from the start of an interaction. If two people meet for the first time, a woman laughing at the man's jokes (or his attempts at joking), may be a sign that she is genuinely interested in further communication. If both tell jokes and laughs, it's an even better sign of a spark between the two.
