found this while poking around the web today. I don't know if this has been posted before, but if is has... then it's worth doing again! 🙂
_______________________________________________________
Couples Who Laugh Together, Last Together
Special for eDiets
by Hara Marano
So much of our attitude about life and our capacity to meet life’s challenges
depends on the quality of the relationships we have, especially our most intimate
relationships.
When they go sour, life tends to feel bleak. Because the quality of our
relationships has a powerful effect on physical and mental balance, as well as
our sense of satisfaction in life, it's important that we keep our relationships
rewarding and fresh. The data on divorce provides compelling evidence that we
are not succeeding at all. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce --
cohabitation couplings are far likelier to end badly -- and of the marriages that
endure, many are less than happy.
Most people know the value of a good relationship and no matter how often they
have lost at love, they keep on hoping. As a result, advice on how to make
relationships work fills shelves and shelves of bookstores and hours of talk-show
time. Some of it is even good, the product of careful research on happy and
unhappy couples.
But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good
relationship, there is one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy,
yet it is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of:
laughter.
It's a safe bet that most of the laughs married couples get come from TV laugh
tracks, not from each other. They don't emanate from the relationship. More
important, they don't feed it. And if the jokes that make the rounds by email are
any gauge, often they are at the expense of it.
But homegrown laughter may be what ailing couples need most. Uniquely human
laughter is, first and foremost, a social signal. It disappears when there is no
audience, which may be as small as one other person, and it binds people
together. It synchronizes the brains of speaker and listener so that they are
emotionally attuned.
These are the conclusions of Robert Provine, Ph.D., a neuroscientist who found
that laughter is far too fragile to dissect in the laboratory. Instead, he observed
thousands of incidents of laughter spontaneously occurring in everyday life, and
wittily reports the results in Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Penguin Books).
Laughter establishes -- or restores -- a positive emotional climate and a sense of
connection between two people, who literally take pleasure in the company of
each other. For if there's one thing Dr. Provine found it's that speakers laugh
even more than their listeners. Of course levity can defuse anger and anxiety,
and in so doing it can pave the path to intimacy.
Most of what makes people laugh is not knee-slapper stuff but conversational
comments.
"Laughter is not primarily about humor," says Dr. Provine, "but about social
relationships."
Among some of his surprising findings:
• The much vaunted health benefits of laughter are probably coincidental, a
consequence of it's much more important primary goal: bringing people together.
In fact, the health benefits of laughter may result from the social support it
stimulates.
• Laughter plays a big role in mating. Men like women who laugh heartily in their
presence.
• Both sexes laugh a lot, but females laugh more -- 126% more than their male
counterparts. Men are more laugh-getters.
• The laughter of the female is the critical index of a healthy relationship.
• Laughter in relationships declines dramatically as people age.
• Like yawning, laughter is contagious; the laughter of others is irresistible.
One of the best ways to stimulate laughter -- and it's probably the most ancient
way -- is by tickling. Tickling is inherently social; we can't tickle ourselves. We
tickle to get a response. Or to entice the ticklee to turn around and become the
tickler.
Not only do most people like tickling -- ticklers as well as ticklees -- most
recognize it as a way to show affection. What's more, adolescents and adults
prefer to be tickled by someone of the opposite sex.
Tickling is probably at the root of all play and it is inherently reciprocal, a giveand-
take proposition. In other words, it exactly represents the basic rhythm of all
healthy relationships, not to mention it triggers sexual excitation in adults.
But tickling declines dramatically in middle age. People begin a gradual "tactile
disengagement," reports Dr. Provine. Tickle, touch, and play, so critically
intertwined, all go into retreat, although these behaviors are at the root of our
emotional being.
So the next time you have an argument with your mate, don't walk out of the
room and slam the door. Try tickling your partner instead. The most ticklish
areas, in descending order, are the underarms, waist, ribs, feet, knees, throat,
neck, palms.
It won't make problems go away. But it can set the stage for tackling them
together.
_______________________________________________________
Couples Who Laugh Together, Last Together
Special for eDiets
by Hara Marano
So much of our attitude about life and our capacity to meet life’s challenges
depends on the quality of the relationships we have, especially our most intimate
relationships.
When they go sour, life tends to feel bleak. Because the quality of our
relationships has a powerful effect on physical and mental balance, as well as
our sense of satisfaction in life, it's important that we keep our relationships
rewarding and fresh. The data on divorce provides compelling evidence that we
are not succeeding at all. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce --
cohabitation couplings are far likelier to end badly -- and of the marriages that
endure, many are less than happy.
Most people know the value of a good relationship and no matter how often they
have lost at love, they keep on hoping. As a result, advice on how to make
relationships work fills shelves and shelves of bookstores and hours of talk-show
time. Some of it is even good, the product of careful research on happy and
unhappy couples.
But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good
relationship, there is one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy,
yet it is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of:
laughter.
It's a safe bet that most of the laughs married couples get come from TV laugh
tracks, not from each other. They don't emanate from the relationship. More
important, they don't feed it. And if the jokes that make the rounds by email are
any gauge, often they are at the expense of it.
But homegrown laughter may be what ailing couples need most. Uniquely human
laughter is, first and foremost, a social signal. It disappears when there is no
audience, which may be as small as one other person, and it binds people
together. It synchronizes the brains of speaker and listener so that they are
emotionally attuned.
These are the conclusions of Robert Provine, Ph.D., a neuroscientist who found
that laughter is far too fragile to dissect in the laboratory. Instead, he observed
thousands of incidents of laughter spontaneously occurring in everyday life, and
wittily reports the results in Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (Penguin Books).
Laughter establishes -- or restores -- a positive emotional climate and a sense of
connection between two people, who literally take pleasure in the company of
each other. For if there's one thing Dr. Provine found it's that speakers laugh
even more than their listeners. Of course levity can defuse anger and anxiety,
and in so doing it can pave the path to intimacy.
Most of what makes people laugh is not knee-slapper stuff but conversational
comments.
"Laughter is not primarily about humor," says Dr. Provine, "but about social
relationships."
Among some of his surprising findings:
• The much vaunted health benefits of laughter are probably coincidental, a
consequence of it's much more important primary goal: bringing people together.
In fact, the health benefits of laughter may result from the social support it
stimulates.
• Laughter plays a big role in mating. Men like women who laugh heartily in their
presence.
• Both sexes laugh a lot, but females laugh more -- 126% more than their male
counterparts. Men are more laugh-getters.
• The laughter of the female is the critical index of a healthy relationship.
• Laughter in relationships declines dramatically as people age.
• Like yawning, laughter is contagious; the laughter of others is irresistible.
One of the best ways to stimulate laughter -- and it's probably the most ancient
way -- is by tickling. Tickling is inherently social; we can't tickle ourselves. We
tickle to get a response. Or to entice the ticklee to turn around and become the
tickler.
Not only do most people like tickling -- ticklers as well as ticklees -- most
recognize it as a way to show affection. What's more, adolescents and adults
prefer to be tickled by someone of the opposite sex.
Tickling is probably at the root of all play and it is inherently reciprocal, a giveand-
take proposition. In other words, it exactly represents the basic rhythm of all
healthy relationships, not to mention it triggers sexual excitation in adults.
But tickling declines dramatically in middle age. People begin a gradual "tactile
disengagement," reports Dr. Provine. Tickle, touch, and play, so critically
intertwined, all go into retreat, although these behaviors are at the root of our
emotional being.
So the next time you have an argument with your mate, don't walk out of the
room and slam the door. Try tickling your partner instead. The most ticklish
areas, in descending order, are the underarms, waist, ribs, feet, knees, throat,
neck, palms.
It won't make problems go away. But it can set the stage for tackling them
together.
