Humor and long-term romantic relationships

Abstract

For over 30 years, researchers have offered empirical evidence of humor’s role in romantic relationships. Committed partners believe that humor is an important part of relationship success, and joking around is a common form of daily talk among romantic partners. This chapter will offer a qualitative and quantitative (e.g., Hall, 2017) review of the research on humor in romantic relationships. It will address how the association between relationship satisfaction and humor depends, in part, on the style or type of humor (e.g., aggressive, affiliative) and whether it varies based upon whether it is perceived in one’s partner or self-reported. In other words, this chapter will explore whether people who report having certain styles of humor are more likely to experience romantic relationship satisfaction and the ways that partners’ styles of humor are associated with satisfaction. This chapter will offer a qualitative review of humor’s association with other constructs relevant to romantic partners, such as partner embarrassment, stress relief and coping, teasing, and playfulness. Finally, this chapter will propose some future directions for research on humor in long-term romantic relationships.