Be With Someone Who Makes You (Laugh Until You) Cry
I look back at my dating history and wonder what exactly I was looking for from my relationships. I’m sure my friends have often wondered the same thing. Too often, I dated people who were nothing like me, with too few common interests. Worse, they made me cry far more often than they made me laugh, and yet I stayed in some of those relationships for a long time.
We should be with someone who makes us laugh until we cry, not someone who just makes us cry.
That should be a simple enough standard. Why aren’t we looking for partners that bring us that level of joy? Why aren’t we asking for laughter and humor in the relationships we’re seeking out?
I spent too many years seldom laughing hard enough to make me cry. I have a sense of humor, and I have many friends who make me laugh. But I found myself in relationships where humor was rare and true laughter was almost non-existent.
What laughter existed in my relationships came almost entirely from me. I brought the lightness and the humor. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I found that my partners didn’t bring out that side of me. Those relationships felt heavy, and I never really laughed enough much outside of entertainment.
When I was single and dating, I also didn’t put humor high up on my list. It’s not like I left it out entirely, but I didn’t really prioritize it. I looked at humor as a bonus, not as a main attraction.
Despite the vast amount of romantic comedies being produced by Hollywood, there’s this idea that relationships are supposed to be filled with angst and intensity.
We have this idea that love feels like push and pull, like tension or drama. We look for the brooding hero rather than the easy-going guy with a genuine smile who makes us laugh. It’s like no one’s ever heard of a relationship that can be intimate, intense, and still filled with laughter. But it exists. And it should exist. Even the most serious of souls still need laughter in their lives. Shouldn’t we share our joy with the ones we love?
I wasn’t prioritizing humor, but banter is one of my favorite things. I also laugh until I cry- sometimes on too little sleep or too much alcohol but often because I’m genuinely amused by life. Humor is important to me in a way that I didn’t realize when I was doing without it. I wanted someone who could make me laugh until I cry- not just someone who would make me cry- and yet I couldn’t quite articulate this. Humor was always just the add-on to a whole list of other requirements, right?
Then I met my match.
He’s the biggest AND of my life. Like he’s smart AND sexy. He’s attractive AND has a great sense of humor. He’s strong AND sensitive. He’s fun AND intense. He’s all of the ands, and every single day of our relationship, he makes me laugh.
Yes, it’s the whole package that really gets me- this man who loves me and is just what they said in the film Fools Rush In: He is everything I never knew I always wanted. But on the long list of my favorite things about him, humor is up there near the top.
If laughter really is the best medicine, most of us are taking too small of a dose.
We’re settling for being the only ones bringing humor to the relationship. Assuming there’s any humor in our relationships at all. We don’t go looking for the guy who makes us laugh, but his value is priceless.
The other day I had a hard parenting day. It felt like a total parenting fail, and I was stuck in this shame cycle of not being good enough. As a single parent, it would have been far easier to deny it or to simply not mention to my significant other that I had royally screwed up the whole day. After all, there’s this idea we sometimes have that if we share how hard our lives can be no one will want to share those lives with us. It can be difficult to admit our flaws, to say that we are so far from perfect. But I was crying and stuck in this idea that I could have been so much better and had fallen so short. He called during this, and I could have screened the call or pretended everything was okay.
But of course, I didn’t do that. Instead, the story of how bad my day had been came rushing out, along with more tears I couldn’t seem to stop. He didn’t tell me it wasn’t a bad day, and he didn’t blow off my experience. Instead, he validated that we all have bad parenting days, and yet we can choose to do better on the next one. He reminded me that I’m not failing, even though I felt that way in the moment.
But what he did that was even more powerful is to make me laugh before the end of the call while my cheeks were still wet with tears. He made me laugh, and I smiled so much by the end of the call that my cheeks hurt.
He didn’t distract from the issue with humor.
He didn’t use it as a tool to deflect or to lighten the mood. He stayed with me during the struggle, letting me talk and yet reminding me that one bad day doesn’t define me. Before the conversation was over, he’d made me laugh- because even on my toughest days, he knows just how to access that in me. He brings my best self to the surface, the most joyous version of me.
Sure, he’s the whole package, the very specific human I want in my life. I’m not downplaying that everything he is goes into making this work. But I will say that humor wasn’t a priority for me before because I thought it was just a bonus quality. An add on. An extra.
But it’s more than that. He makes me laugh, not cry. When I’m sitting with gratitude for this man and this relationship, the humor ranks a lot higher on my list than a bonus. I wish I could go back and tell past Me that humor is a lot more important than that. But since I can’t, I’m telling you:
Love someone who makes you laugh. Laugh more. Access your joy. If your partner doesn’t make you laugh, ask yourself if that’s really the relationship you want. Maybe it is. Maybe you don’t mind outsourcing laughs to your friends. But if it matters and you’re not getting it, it’s out there. I hope you capture a little of that joy for yourself.
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