Using Humor with Women in a Romantic Relationship

We’re a few days away from the launch of my novel tease-the-girl method, Lush Teases™ (you can find the latest Lush Teases™ video here). In keeping with this week’s theme (‘tease weak’), I’ll be discussing the use of humor with women – in your romantic relationships.

While much of what I’ve been marketing Lush Teases™ for is the dating/seduction aspect of humor, the fact is humor plays an outsize role in your ongoing romantic relationships, too.

In the Lush Teases™ sales presentation (which will be live in a few more days), I quote a number of studies on the effects of humor. Some of these are on humor’s impact on your relationships – and the effects are LARGE:

• 92% of couples say humor makes “significant contributions” to their romances (source)

• 75% of couples laugh together once per day

• Partners’ humor use is strongly tied to relationship quality & satisfaction

• Constructive humor in particular dramatically raises long-term relationship satisfaction (source)

• Women rate their partners’ sense of humor as one of the four most IMPORTANT factors to them staying in the relationship (source)

Humor is important enough for relationship health that women strongly look for it when selecting long-term partners. It plays such a role in relationship success that men’s poor use of humor in their relationships is actually predictive of divorce.

In other words, humor is vital – if you want a good relationship that is.

In this article, we’ll look at HOW you should be using humor in your relationships, and in WHAT ways you can use it.

 

The 4 Types of Relationship Humor

There are four (4) times a man can/should use humor in his romantic relationships:

1. Flirting with her
2. Reassuring her
3. Admitting faults
4. Restoring normalcy

Although before we talk about these, first we need to discuss the humor that as a man you must AVOID using in your relationships at all costs.

 

Humor that Corrodes Relationships

Negative humor – jaded, cynical, critical, dismissive, aggressive; in a word, unpleasant – is bad juju for your relationship health. The more you use this kind of humor, the lower relationship satisfaction dips, and the worse your relationships fare.

For example:

• “If it was up to me I’d shoot every idiot driver on the road.”

• “Are you sure you’re related? Your sister looks like a crab had sex with a chimpanzee.”

• “If you put on any more weight there won’t be any pants in the house that fit you.”

If you catch yourself engaging in negative humor, you need to break this habit. It might be because you’re depressed – if so, break your depression. It might be because you just learned that type of humor and think it is funny – it might be, but it also stings and carries around a lot of negative weight with it. People have emotions, and when someone you are close to uses negative humor on or around you often, it drags down your mood and affects your feelings toward that person.

(if you’re with a woman who uses negative humor on/around you, you need to call it out every time she does it and let her know that kind of humor corrodes relationships. Help her break her own bad habit, for the sake of your relationship with her; not to mention any she might have after you if you don’t stick around)

Negative humor is not the only kind of corrosive humor, however.

There is another type, that many men engage in without even realizing it is bad. That type of humor is avoiding humor. Avoiding humor “is used to either minimize or avoid conflict entirely, often by changing the focus of conversation.” (source) As you might expect, people who fear confrontation use this type of humor a lot, but all it does is delay the inevitable conflict while making them look like scaredy-cats (nice guy syndrome).

Robin Williams (whom I just used as an example the other day in my breakdown of uproarious vs. subtle humor) delivers a perfect example of this near the beginning of the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. He gets fired, causes a mess, and when his wife comes home he tries to avoid the confrontation with jokes. She, sick of putting up with this from him, demands a divorce.

Men use avoiding humor when women are stirring up drama and the man is too afraid or tired to deal with it. It can be tough (especially if you aren’t used to doing it), but you need to be able to just stand your ground and not respond to drama with humor.

I am the ultimate troll. I troll people (people such as women) constantly. If I did not have a relatively professional image to maintain running Girls Chase, I would probably use the Internet much more often for trolling, because most people are not very funny and make for plum targets. However, one time I never, ever joke around or troll is when people are upset with me (* unless I don’t care about them and there is an audience). That’s because I know it’s not effective and it only worsens things.

Look: if someone is upset at you, he or she is trying to feel heard. People get upset when they feel like their message is not getting through. If you respond to that by joking their upset away, guess what that does? It makes them feel even more strongly that their message is not getting through, which only escalates the frustration.

Don’t use negative humor, and don’t use avoiding humor.

If you have a habit of using these types of humor, break it.

You’ll thank me later when you realize your relationships are a lot healthier and far less dramatic.

 

Relationship Humor Type #1: Flirting with Her

All right, let’s talk humor in your relationships!

The first type of humor we’re concerned with is flirtatious humor.

If you thought the flirtation ended with the initial seduction, au contraire, mon ami. It continues so long as you keep this chick in your life!

In my opinion, you need to flirt with your woman every single day. The only time you should not be flirting with her is if:

• There is currently some heavy unresolved drama between the two of you.

• She is being rude or disrespectful toward you – no rewarding that with flirtation.

• She is super stressed out, frazzled, running around, with no patience for play.

• She is in mourning over someone/something (though even here, some light flirtation can help, if it is very light and if you are sensitive to her pain).

At all times you should bear operant conditioning in mind – flirtation is a reward, that you should be giving her when she’s earned it (or at the very least is in a neutral state).

READ MORE: Operant Conditioning in Your Romantic Relationships

The one thing you very much do NOT want to do is flirt with her when she is behaving badly.

Flirtation = reward.

Giving her a reward = you will get more of whatever behavior you’re rewarding.

Just make sure you’re giving that flirtation out when she is being good, and you won’t go wrong.

Relationship flirtation can be as simple as slapping her on the butt and telling her, “You’ve got to keep that thing [i.e., her butt] under wraps; I can’t focus with that hanging out around me!”

It does not need to be anything overly complex. Just flirt with her on her sexy appearance, her beautiful voice, her cheerful demeanor, or anything else you like.

You can also chase frame her: e.g., she wears something skimpy and you tell her, “Working hard to distract me, I see!”

 

Relationship Humor Type #2: Reassuring Her

As the man, you are the rock of the relationship. She looks to you for guidance, leadership – and reassurance.

READ MORE: A Failed Relationship is a Failure of Leadership

Women are skittish creatures by nature. They get anxious, they worry, and they second guess.

The easiest way on the PLANET to reassure a worried woman is with humor. That is for one very singular reason: if you’re able to make a joke about it, whatever IT is, she is going to assume it cannot possibly be THAT bad. Otherwise you would be too stressed out yourself to be joking!

This is for ‘normal’ worries and fears, mind you – it’s not for major/extreme ones (we’ll talk about those shortly).

Some examples of reassuring humor:

• If her coworker is driving everyone nuts at work: “Sounds like someone needs to slip some chili powder into this chick’s food in the break room.”

• If she’s worried that one of her breasts is large than the other: “Well now that you’ve pointed it out I will never unsee it and I’m afraid we’ll just have to break up.”

• If she talks about how she is getting older: “Yep, a few more years and we’ll have to put you out to pasture.”

• If she’s worried about the economy: “Don’t worry, if it goes tits up the boys and I will form a party of raiders and steal from all the rich people on Prospect Street.”

Now, there are a few times ‘reassuring humor’ is profoundly inappropriate, and that is any time she is not just a bit stressed out, but majorly worried or concerned. A few clearcut examples:

• When she is not merely worried, but distraught. She does not need reassurance here, she needs comfort. Leave the humor aside.

• When a loved one is injured (especially when the injury is untreated/extent is unknown). When it is a loved one who is hurt, YOU are supposed to be worried YOURSELF – if you’re not, it shows a profound lack of sympathy, which is itself very worrying. Don’t make jokes until the loved one is firmly in the clear and the danger is past (and perhaps not even then, if people are still distraught about it).

For instance, if her kid brother lost his leg in a freak accident, don’t make a joke (he’s an injured loved one, and everyone is probably distraught). However, if it was you who lost your own leg in a freak accident, a joke can be okay (e.g., “Think they have any one-legged marathons I can participate in?”) – but only AFTER she’s no longer distraught. If you joke around while she’s distraught over you becoming a one-legged man, she’s going to think there’s something wrong with your head, too!

Humor to reassure is great; just be sure it’s something light enough that a little reassurance is what’s needed, and not something major where humorous reassurance risks looking heartless.

In a word: calibrate!

 

Relationship Humor Type #3: Admitting Faults

Research on humor lists admitting faults as one of the common functions of humor:

To laughingly disclose one’s serious mistake… is to formulate the disclosure as a less serious topic of conversation.

As an example, let’s say you live with a woman (wife or girlfriend) and she asked you to pick up some milk on the way home. Tragically, you forgot to do this, and reached home without the milk. When she asks you where the milk is, you can use humor to frame your forgetfulness as less of a big deal:

HER: Did you get the milk?

YOU: Oh, right. Milk. Well, the good news is there’s one less baby cow that will have to go hungry today.

Is this avoiding humor? No – not if you’re not using it for items too big or serious for humor, and not if you drop the jokes if she wants to escalate it to a confrontation. (i.e., if she starts arguing that you always do this, you always forget the things she asks you to buy, you don’t use humor there; you deal with the drama in other ways)

While the quote I listed above talked about using humor to frame ‘serious mistakes’, I don’t recommend it for actually serious ones – people might try using it that way, but if the mistake is serious, and will be perceived as serious by the woman, joking about it becomes avoiding humor, which makes you look afraid.

But for small mistakes, humor lets you frame the mistake in a funny way, so you both admit the fault yet also make light of it:

• Got home half an hour late and your girlfriend’s been stuck outside your place waiting for you to arrive? “I’m installing a doggy door next week that should be large enough for you to slip in through.”

• Forgot her birthday? “Oh, I am so sorry. We’re going to celebrate your birthday TWICE this week to make up for it. I’ll get two cakes, don’t worry!”

• Can’t remember her best friend’s name? “I feel horrible, but what was your friend’s name again? I talked to her for two hours and it feels like we’re old friends now, except I don’t know what to call her; it’s so weird.”

For dealing with light faults, humor helps minimize your culpability and buoys up the relationship with a little more fun (just don’t use it for BIG stuff!).

 

Relationship Humor Type #4: Restoring Normalcy

You can use humor to restore the relationship back to normalcy after a disruption has passed.

For example, after:

• You and she had a big fight, but now it is over; it’s all water under the bridge.

• You and she were hosting a big holiday party and mingling with people all night. Now the guests are gone and it’s back to just the two of you.

• You’ve been away on business travel for a week, but now you’re back and the two of you have gotten together again.

You do not want to use humor while you are in the midst of a disruptive event.

I mean, a little humor here and there in the party might be fine, but she’s likely to be too distracted hobnobbing to pay much attention to it. And you definitely do not want to be using humor during drama, if it risks feeling like you’re running from the problem or else don’t care.

But once the situation has resolved, there is nothing left to fix, and the two of you are ready to ‘get back to normal’, humor is the perfect tool for this:

• After drama is totally over: “See, I knew it was going to be trouble when you said we haven’t had a big fight in a while yesterday. It’s like you were winding up for it mentally or something and just hadn’t realized it yet!”

• After the holiday party guests have left: “Gee, it’s so quiet now. I kind of want to put on some background noise of people laughing and talking just to not feel like something is missing.”

• After returning from business travel: “Next time I’m gonna pack you in my suitcase and take you along with me. Or maybe I’ll see if you can fit inside my carry-on luggage; those luggage handlers are pretty rough with the suitcases.”

Using humor this way breaks the tension of the two of you wanting to get back to normal but not quite being there, and allows her to laugh, relaxing the vibe. Normalcy = restored.

 

Wrap Up

You’re now fully prepared to deploy humor to its best effect inside your romantic relationships.

You know what types of humor to avoid (negative humor & avoiding humor).

You know the key types of relationship humor you can use:

1. Flirting with her
2. Reassuring her
3. Admitting faults
4. Restoring normalcy

You know the guidelines around when to use and not use this humor:

• Don’t use it with anything truly serious, urgent, or traumatic

• Don’t use it while you’re in the midst of some dramatic affair

• Above all, keep operant conditioning in mind: is her behavior right now something you wish to reward or something it’d be better you did not reward?

If you want a rule of thumb to remember, keep that “75% of couples laugh together once per day” metric in mind. That won’t be the case always if you’re dealing with particularly heavy drama or a very serious issue, but if there’s nothing stopping it – get that daily laugh in.

In three more days, I’ll be opening the doors to my unparalleled seductive humor model, the Lush Teases™ Method. This is THE method used by slick humor-using playboys the world over in their seductions and relationships. LUSH describes the universal ‘sexy humor’ model – one every humor-producing ladies man eventually stumbles upon through heaps of trial and error IF he continues using humor seductively long enough – broken down and packaged up so that you can learn to create and use humor this way with girls, even if you aren’t traditionally a ‘comedic’ type of guy.

You can watch the first three videos on Lush Teases™ here if you haven’t seen them yet:

1. Does Teasing Girls Help You Get Them?

2. My Favorite Way to Tease Women

3. Teasing Women MUST Be Sensual!

If you’re not on the launch list yet, be sure to take the quick “How funny do girls find you?” quiz (I email you a free ebook on being funny with girls at the end of it) to get signed up.

More to come soon.

Stay funny,

Chase