Women always say they like a man with a good sense of humor. What exactly does that mean?

When anyone says they want someone with a "good" sense of humor, what they really mean is that they want someone who shares their sense of humor.

Bingo, JD!

Being able to wisecrack about small stuff may seem important to *her*, but the real effect is what it does for *him*-- gets him to loosen up and make her feel more comfortable.
I learned to do this with a client I was supposed to be dating-- according to what other people were telling me. The woman is SOOO dead-serious all the time, when I began making off-the wall jokes, I realized the power it was giving me. Some of it was pretty good.
Our dating didn't get far, tho.

A sense of humor is not knowing jokes. It's that essential asset that keeps all of us from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It is the ability to find the humor in the little letdowns (and even sometimes, the most cataclysmic events) that affect us all.

This is not to say that if she tells you next month that her father is in a coma, you crack a witticism about him becoming the new California state vegetable. But it does mean that the unrelated minor pitfalls need to be treated as the trivialities they are, and not life itself out to get you by heaping on frustrations in the face of a tragedy.

Patrick, I was going to chime in, but I like the way you said it.

"Women always say they like a man with a good sense of humor. What exactly does that mean?"

It's just boilerplate that people put into personal ads, kind of like all those people who enjoy long walks on the beach in Nebraska. It means nothing.

I'm so tired of the cultural norm of women wanting a funny guy, as if we're these dumb, passive broads looking for a man to do all the creative lifting in the relationship. I like to make guys laugh--I like to be the funny one. Women, rise up and claim a personality! You too can be interesting and not just a lump of flesh waiting to be activated by the scintillation provided by someone else.

Amy, I realize what I wrote was pretty garbled, and I appreciate your thoughts. I'm not under the delusion that men find funniness in a woman sexy, nor is my interest in being funny related to my interest in attracting a mate. The "cultural norm" I was referring to was women saying they want a man with a sense of humor (LW's intro: "Women always say they like a man with a good sense of humor."), which gives me the mental image of a dumb, featureless vagina sitting around waiting to be activated by the creative male. I hate that image and its implications. When I exhorted women to be funny themselves, you may note that I didn't tell them to be so to get a guy. It's just nice to have a personality yourself, guy or no guy.

Humor doesn't get you that far as a woman, in relationships anyway.

Amy, perhaps most men don't care all that much if they share the same sense of humor with a woman they're involved with, but that's definitely not the case with me. It's one of the most important things to me. The last woman I was really crazy about had this wonderful dry sense of humor and that's one of the main reasons I fell for her.

I'm funny -- I earn a good bit of my living being funny. But a funny woman often puts off men

Again, maybe that's true for men in general but not for me. A "funny woman" would only put me off (or would not be attractive to me) if her sense of what's funny was different than mine. I've never been put off by a woman who I find to be funny.

I'm with JD on this one. I find a good sense of humor in a woman not only very attractive, but invaluable. I could never be serious about a woman whom I didn't find funny. I tend to consider non-funny people a bit dumb.

And Willow, because I'm interested in finding women with a sense of humor, does that mean that I'm a dumb, featureless penis sitting around waiting to be entertained? Certainly not. Two people within a relationship are capable of both being funny. Why would someone with a personality of their own be interested in someone who didn't have one?

Despite what I wrote about boilerplate in personal ads, I think that looking for a sense of humor in a mate serves a self-defensive purpose. By a "sense of humor", I don't mean the person has to be a stand-up comic, just that they recognize humor when the come across it, and they generally react to it like normal people do. Now, there's a lot of room there for individual variation. But my observation has been that people who totally lack a sense of humor -- they don't recognize humor when they come across it, and/or they consider it a pointless waste of time, are often severely personality-disordered. A nasty thing about the Cluster B personality disordered is that, while they may not appreciate ordinary humor, they often find cruelty and meanness to be uproaringly hilarious and entertaining.

whistleDick, your comment made me giggle. No, of course I don't think you're dumb or featureless for wanting a woman with a sense of humor. I should draw a distinction between looking for someone who can recognize and use humor and looking for someone to entertain you. What gets me riled up is, for example, when you're watching The Bachelor, and some vapid woman says she's looking for a man to "make her laugh." Not someone with whom to discover a rich source of childlike joy and companionship, but someone who will put on a show to charm her.

The woman looking for someone to "make her laugh," and the idea that the guy is supposed to be the funny one in the relationship, gives rise to, or at least is correlated with, that awful trend in the movies where the guy gets to be interesting, cool, specific, and zany while the woman gets to be Girlfriend, Wife, or Mother--three shades of the same bland.

I'm so happy to be in a relationship that is silly and fun, where I make my bf laugh at my immature antics. But I hardly ever see my counterpoint on the screen. Hence, my posts above, but thank you, whistleDick and JD, for loving the funny.

whistleDick, your comment made me giggle.

whistleDick 'n' Willow, postin' on a blog
k-i-s-s-i-n........grog?

What gets me riled up is, for example, when you're watching The Bachelor, and some vapid woman says she's looking for a man to "make her laugh."

Willow, I know what you mean by that. I've seen women use that phrase in personal ads and while I don't think it always means they are humorless and expect to be entertained by the guy, it does kind of come across that way (to me anyway) so I find it a bit of a turn-off.

*

...does that mean that I'm a dumb, featureless penis...

Good thing we have the insult "You stupid dick!" to hurl at people because "You dumb penis!" just doesn't have the same effect.

I'm funny -- I earn a good bit of my living being funny...

Amy, I love wordplay so I always enjoy the headings on your columns. The heading for this column is probably in my top ten.

I was listening to an interview recently where the interviewer was discussing humor in potential mates. She said that wanting a sense of humor in a mate isn't about humor, it's about wanting someone who has a realistic perspective. Someone who can look at life, and themselves, and laugh most of the time is more likely to be a sensible person who can roll with the good and the bad than someone who can't.

And it doesn't take a PhD in psychology to figure what sort of humor indicates a person has this mature sensibility versus a cruel, hard, inflexible nature. It does take some life experience though, usually.