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Have You Hurt Your Partner With a Joke?
Two sets of strangers open up about accidentally hurting their partner’s feelings.
More about this episode
A Conversation on Hurting a Partner’s Feelings
Laughter is an important part of any relationship, but it’s crucial to be cautious about where that humor is being directed. Some studies indicate making jokes at your partner’s expense may leave them feeling disrespected—impacting your relationship satisfaction.
Taking a mild jab at each other behind closed doors is different from joking in front of your family, friends and strangers—keep in mind other people witnessing your jokes may be as easily offended as your partner. It’s important for couples to have open dialogue about their feelings when it comes to joking around, so you can avoid unknowingly causing emotional harm to the person you care about.
Transcript
Opinions. We all have them, especially when it comes to love and sex. So what happens when two people who've never met get to share their opinions in an open and honest conversation? Maybe they learn something about the other person and maybe they learn something about themselves.
I'm Dr. Judy and this is Well, In My Opinion. Today, we're asking the question, “Have you hurt your partner with a joke?”
One of my favorite pastimes is getting you and our daughter's jaw to drop. My favorite thing at the dinner table is just to see what I can say, where Kelly goes, “Oh.” It's the best noise ever to me when my wife and my daughter goes, “Oh. Oh. Did he?”
I think unless you know Skylar though, it would make you look really bad.
If it was just scripted on paper with no nuance, my kids would be taken away.
Yeah. Like “That’s a woman's job,” like when you’re in the kitchen.
She'll tell me to pick something up and I'm like, “I'm pretty sure that falls under your responsibility.” Like just as a joke. I get up and I get it. But I say it with a big smile. If it was scripted, like man says, “I think that's your responsibility,” now I look like Rodney Dangerfield in a wife beater, Natural Born Killers with a cigarette, ordering you around. You know what I mean?
That’s okay, I put you in your place too.
You do. There are things that—you're kind of sexist too.
I mean, it is what it is.
It is what it is. We accept our roles.
We accept our roles.
We do. I'm just trying to think if you’ve ever said something and it went too far where I was just like—have I ever shunned you and not talked to you for a day because you made a joke? That would go against everything I believe in, I think.
I don’t know. I think it hurts you when I make fat jokes.
Oh, there we go.
When I call you fat.
That's not true. I call myself fat all the time.
But I think you don't like it.
That's interesting that you think that but then you still do it. Isn't that interesting?
I like to piss you off.
Yeah. You like to lean back in the chair, just see what's going on. Eventually you fall, you know? I'm not going to be behind you to pick you up. But I think it's important to joke about—like your kids have to know that everything's funny, ‘cause even when you watch movies like Saving Private Ryan or Thin Red Line, to me they're not that realistic because there's not enough humor. If you don't have humor in your movie, it's immediately disingenuous to me because when I talk to my grandpa—or anybody—he tells me like, "Yeah, we were scared, but we were also massively joking around."
And so when a movie is just too wistful and too like Tom Hanks writing in a book and talking about his wife—I believe that stuff happened, but there were dick jokes and fart jokes five minutes later too. So that's what real life is. So I think sometimes people watch movies and think we're supposed to always be in this Tom Hanks drama, and that's just not the way it is. So joke around. Dick’s are funny.
[Nods]
Having laughs in a relationship is super important, but it's also important to remember that it matters where that humor is being directed. In couples where jokes were directed at the other person, relationship satisfaction tends to be much lower than in couples where the humor is directed outwards. So be careful where you point that thing.
My husband does this thing that drives me crazy. Like whenever I try and be sexy with him, he gets shy and he starts to giggle, and I'm like, “No, I'm being sexy. You're not supposed to giggle when I mean sexy. Do you not think I'm being sexy right now?” He's like, “No, you're totally sexy.” I'm like, “You're laughing. You're not supposed to laugh.” That drives me crazy.
I will say I'm very sensitive about my hairline cause I'm 31 and I'm receding a little bit.
You have plenty of hair.
My girlfriend will make little jokes just about my hair. And especially if like seeing someone with a full head of hair and hair line and she'll just make a joke of like, “Oh, I wish he had his hair.” Just joking, cause she kind of knows I'm sensitive about it.
Just giving you a little—
—a little twinge.
But it really does hurt.
I’m like, “Shut up!” And I’m there rubbing my hair for good scalp stimulation. Other than that, I think it's mostly me joking to her because I can be very sarcastic at times. So I guess it's just being sarcastic about things that she does “wrong.” “So-and-so.” Just be like, “Babe, you could have done that better,” just in a funny way—like a sarcastic way. But she'll take it seriously and she'll be like, “Well are you being serious?” Cause I think she's not as sarcastic as me sometimes.
Oh sure, yeah.
And then she's like, “Oh, are you being serious?” Or like, “Did I do wrong or are you just joking?” We've been together for close to two years. I still don't think she's got that tone down.
She doesn’t always know. Well, women, we can be sensitive too. Some days you can totally just give us the hardest time and we'll laugh with you, and other days you barely say anything and we're like, “You're going to die now. You can't do that. And you're going to die now.”
“Don’t say that to me or you’ll get hurt.”
Big butt jokes are never good. I highly recommend never making any kind of funny quip about the size of your girlfriend’s.
What if it’s a nice size?
It doesn't matter.
No?
Well, I mean, it can't be a joke. You can't say like—yeah, it has to be like, “That is the best ass on the entire planet. Thank you for allowing me to be near it.” That's about the extent of it.
If I'm ever joking, it's never valid.
No, cause you're a smart man and you want to live.
I want to live and I want to potentially be with her in bed.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
One of the most common things that I see when I work with couples is that one couple feels like they're not being respected by the other. And certainly when you always poke fun at your partner, especially in front of other people, in front of an audience, that can contribute to them not feeling respected. So while it's fun to have a little mild jab here and there, we really have to be careful because certain people are just a little bit more sensitive too to these types of jokes. It's always a safer bet to either make a self-deprecating joke or to direct the humor outwards at somebody who is not your partner.
I'm Dr. Judy and this has been “Well, in my opinion.”
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