How do you know that the person you are seeing is the right one to spend the rest of your life with? He (or she) may be physically attractive, sociable, hardworking and reliable. But does he make you laugh? There are many things that help make a long term relationship work. One of them is having sense of humor and the other is living with someone who shares that sense of humor and can make you laugh when times are difficult.

What Kind of a Sense of Humor

Psychology Today posted an article noting that a sense of humor is crucial to success in dating. They report a study of humor and dating success.

Humor is one of the clearest markers of a successful social interaction. You can use it as an ice breaker, and sharing a laugh with others is a good sign that you’ve hit it off. Humor might be even more important in dating, where it reveals something about you or your potential partner’s intelligence, and also signals mate quality.

Affiliative humor was the only kind of humor that correlated with dating success. This is where you enjoy humor with others, tell jokes, share anecdotes and so on. Making fun of yourself (self-deprecating humor), teasing and ridiculing (aggressive humor) and thinking everything is funny (self-enhancing humor) all failed to help relationships succeed. Does he make you laugh? If so he (or she) is probably using affiliative humor and that is likely to help your relationship succeed.

Make Her (Him) Laugh

Elite Daily suggests that if you want her heart, make her laugh.

No matter who you ask, every woman will tell you the same thing: She wants a man who can make her laugh. It’s a universal fact for all those who enjoy laughing – which, as far as I know, is everybody. Is that all a woman is looking for? No. But her finding you funny increases your chances with her three-fold.

Laughing is a universal language on its own. Some people speak the same language and others don’t. The thing about humor is that having a different sense of humor is basically a permanent thing. I’m guessing it is possible to find different things funny over time – as we clearly do with age – but changing your entire sense of humor once you are an adult isn’t likely, if at all possible. When a guy can make a woman laugh, she at least knows that they’re speaking the same language. That’s always a great place to start.

If you want your relationship to succeed think of things that will make your partner laugh. And keep a sense of humor yourself. No matter how funny your friend is you need to be receptive!

Keep a Sense of Humor

The Huffington Post talks about six signs that you have a good sense of humor. We like the one about self-acceptance.

Not all of us can be like Jennifer Lawrence (although we wish) – a person who is so open to their faults they publicly make fun of their pitfalls – but people with a light-hearted attitude do practice more self-acceptance than most. Good-humored individuals embrace their flaws and laugh them off (and let them go) in a healthy way. And it’s something others should work toward: Self-acceptance is a key to a happier life, but it’s not always practiced all that often.

Does he make you laugh? If he does it also means that you have a sense of humor and like yourself.