How to Change Your Partner Through Humour

In one way or another,  we spend a good deal of our time in relationships
trying to change our partners.
Didn’t you just call your mum like an hour ago?
So?
What?
I’ll see what else is gonna be a say.
Lots of things.
Anyway, it’s none of your business.
Hi, mum.
Ya?
Hnh, yeah.
Huh, no.
What?
No, you can’t wear that shirt.
What’s wrong with it?
Look, uhh,
you can’t be this funny funny guy all the time.
Please, can you just wear something appropriate to the event?
No! Why are you such a killjoy?
I’ve got my own style. I like it.
Our efforts to change our partners are seldom very successful.
Too often, the partner just swiftly feels attacked –
and refuses the insight.
But there is one option to try:
Attempting to change someone through humour.
All of us are slightly unbalanced and mad.
Yet we don’t see it and get offended
if anyone dares to point it out.
The best way to bring about change is to pick on what’s most extreme
and rather than delivering a lecture about it,  exaggerate the exaggeration –
until even the partner recognises their own loss of balance.
We need to try to get a laugh out of the partner about stuff they’re normally deadly serious around.
Their laughter won’t just be a sign they’ve been entertained.
It’ll be proof they’re acknowledged an attempt to reform them.
What – what’s going on?
Nothing.
Eh, wh, what are you wearing?
Oh, oh, oh, this.
Hah, hah, ahm, well, I decided that I was fed up
of us having arguments about your obsessive cleaning.
And you know what,
I’m just gonna give it up.
And I’m going to live in a biochemical hazard suit.
You know, limit the spread of my bacteria
around your precious apartment.
The best way to get someone to see that they have overreacted
is not to sound mature and reasonable.
It’s to continue to pump up the issue
until the over-reaction becomes so outsize and so clear,
the other person starts to laugh.
Oh. It’s for me then.
Yes.
That’s for me because of my obsessive cleaning.
Well, you would have missed of it. I’m gonna do…
Ah.
Do that?
Yeah. Hold on to it.
All of us have abandoned proportion in some area or another.
What time do you wish to book the taxi for tomorrow?
Emm, what time is the flight?
Ten.
Eight o’clock should be fine.
Eight? Are you joking?
Why are you so neurotic about airports?
I’m not. I just
wanna make sure we’re punctual. That’s all.
Kathy, that’s everything.
Right here.
What are you doing?
Going to the airport.
What? The flight is out tomorrow just 10 a.m..
Yeah, I know. I’m worried about missing it as well.
I was thinking about what you said.
All the things could get wrong.
I thought probably best get to the departure lounge
a good nine hours before the flight leaves.
So, umm, I just…
What?
Oh, hang on. That’s the taxi. I’d better go.
See you in Scotland.
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh,
otherwise they’ll kill you.” -GEORGE BERNARD SHAW