Hot, Holy & Humorous

Does He Make You Laugh?

Couple laughing in bedroom -- with blog post titleMy husband has two kinds of humor: dry and silly. Both crack me up.

I fondly remember an instance not long after we met when we were sitting with a bunch of people (probably our church singles group) and he uttered a joke. It was a very dry line that was a play on words, and no one else seemed to get it. They didn’t even react. But me? I was twisted up in stitches. His sense of humor drew me in and made me want to know him more.

The other kind of joke I adore is pure silliness — like changing up song lyrics to say something completely ridiculous. My husband and I even trade out lyric lines sometimes, him adding one line and me coming up with a rhyme that goes along. If you walked in on us in the midst of this, we’d look like total geeks. But we’d be smiling.

I suspect the laughs we share outside the bedroom is one reason why we have a shared sense of humor inside the bedroom. We’re not above coming up with dorky initiation lines or quirky word play to make one another chuckle when it comes to sex.

Look, I already think sex is funny to begin with. Just imagine trying to explain it to an alien who doesn’t copulate this way: “So the husband and wife get naked, kiss and grope for a while, then they get into this position where she is . . .and he is . . .” Um, what?! Surely, God could have come up with something more dignified.

But you know what? Overly dignified people don’t throw their hands up and scream on roller coasters or do the Chicken Dance at children’s parties or eat chocolate chip cookie dough straight from the Pillsbury wrapper. In other words, they’re missing out on some of the fun of life. So I for one am glad God made sex a little on the side of playful.

If you accept that sex is at least a little humorous, and if you and your husband know how to laugh together, it seems only natural to let some of that humor invade your marriage bed. So how do you introduce laughter in the bedroom?

Laugh together, not atFirst, do not harm. You’ve heard that, right? So I figure it’s best to start out with the caveat that if it’s funny to you, but hurtful or irritating to your spouse — it’s not funny. If you’re the only one laughing, rethink the punch line. And insulting jokes — regardless of how cleverly you stated it — have no place in the marriage bed.

Above all, this should be a place that is pleasurable for both husband and wife and pleasing to the Creator of sex, our God.

Access your innate funny bone. Yes, you have one. Remember as a child when you had giggle-fests with friends and siblings? Or snorted at knock-knock jokes? Or did silly dances and fell down in fits of laughter?

Why did we stop doing that? What is it about becoming an adult that made us get so serious?

Sure, we see more and know more, and the full reality of life can make us contemplative and even sad at times. The Bible says, “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). But even that same book says there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh” (3:4). So lighten up sometimes! Take some deep breathers and get yourself to the relaxed, welcoming state that encourages laughter.

Laugh at your own bloopers. Have you even seen the “blooper reel” for a TV show or movie? I think we could have one for our marriage beds too. Sometimes we have those embarrassing oopses where things don’t quite go as smoothly as we’d hoped.

If you trip, stumble, say the wrong thing, make an unusual noise (yes, sadly, farting can happen during a sexual encounter), or otherwise do something that makes you or your spouse feel foolish, laugh about it — together. You’re not on camera or being graded on a 10-point scale. You mess up, you laugh, you move on.

Make the mutual decision to give each other grace and grins when things go awry. With an upbeat attitude and a hearty chuckle, you’ll recover and have a wonderful time.

Be intentionally playful. Bring your comedy act into the marital bedroom. There was a great TV show called Make Me Laugh in which comedians were given three minutes to make a contestant laugh in any way they could. For every minute the contestant lasted, they got a dollar. I still remember a few of the absolutely crazy things these comedians did. Maybe you could take a night and make your spouse the contestant, you the comedian, and see how long it takes to get them laughing.

Crack a joke. Wear a silly outfit. Do a crazy dance. Jiggle something (assuming, like most of us, you have something on your body that jiggles). Work up the craziest initiation line you can think of. Go for broke.

Get you smile on, and then get your sex on. (Which, well, also makes you smile.)

Play a game. I will never forget this one time that my husband and I were playing a board game designed for the marriage bed and he did this thing where he ________, and we both laughed until we cried. Yeah, not going to fill in the blank. Private moment!

But the point is that games often get you smiling, so feel free to play one in the bedroom. Get your kids’ twister game and re-purpose it for a little naked limb-tangling, or grab the Nerf guns and have a foam dart battle, or play Strip ___. (I like Strip Battleship — sink a ship, and your opponent loses an item of clothing.) There are probably a hundred or more games you could play with your spouse in the bedroom, or simply buck naked wherever, that would get you both laughing.

And remember this is the best kind of game — where you “win” even if you “lose.”

Use word play. This is by far the thing that enters my marriage bed the most, probably because I love a good pun. Now if I gave you examples, I’d be letting you steal our thunder — because hubby and I are pretty good with this.

But I suspect you can turn regular phrases into your own suggestive, sexy ones with a bit of imagination. It helps if you’re willing to refer to each other’s body parts in playful ways. (Of course, remember the first caveat above. And treat your spouse’s body parts not just with humor, but with honor.)

Okay, fine, here’s one example I found on the Internet: “Let’s have sex while we’re camping. It’ll be really in tents.” Get it? In tents, intense? Sure, a ba-dum-bum would help. But you grasp the idea.

Now what suggestions do you have for introducing laughter in the marriage bed? And how does your husband make you laugh?

12 thoughts on “Does He Make You Laugh?”

  1. While staying overnight at a friend’s house in Swaziland as a young boy, I still remember his parents (also missionaries) having a friendly pillow fight together after breakfast—I’d never seen a married couple do that before—and they weren’t newlyweds, either. They had fun!

  2. I actually got a kick out of your closing “ba-dum-bum”, when I fully expected a “bah-dah-boom”. But then again, that is sooo cliché. As my English teacher of long ago once said, “Each to his own, said the lady as she kissed the cow”. Now THAT’S funny! 😉

  3. I do believe that a sense of playfulness is essential to great sex. We still laugh about the time when we were dating and cuddled up, but trying to stay pure. “I’m so enjoying spooning you,” said one. “I don’t want to spoon you, I want to fork you!” said the other of us. Or another time (after the wedding) when it was so late, and we had a busy next day, but I sensed he was a little interested in amorous activity but was hem-hawing around a bit until I just stated, “If you want to try something, I’ll say yes….” We enjoy banter and giggling but this camaraderie provides safety and freedom for intimate and passionate moments, too. He’s the best!

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  5. We laugh a lot. I won’t get into details, but we both like flirty play on words, silly jokes, and just letting loose and being silly and laughing about it.

  6. Just a couple evenings ago, we were looking at budget things for the year and I made a perfectly innocuous statement related to budgets–something along the lines of ‘this isn’t really hard, you just have to know what goes where’. His reply was ‘yep, just like on our honeymoon night’, which gave my remark a whole different meaning! We both enjoy wordplay and puns as well, so it got a good laugh. 🙂

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  8. Laughing together is great… in general, people shouldn’t take themselves so seriously. Being able to laugh together and at yourself is a sign of humility.

    Linked to this post here.

  9. Honesty St-Jacques

    I love your posts. My husband is actually the one who shared this blog with me. He’s a Christian man himself and enjoys sharing things like this with me. He and I have always been very playful, inside and outside the bedroom. I think it’s fun that way. You never have to wonder if the other thinks you’re being “childish” because you’re just so close and it’s an amazing feeling. I love that we share this kind of intimacy. I know we will always be like this. We’re young now and I can’t wait to see what the next 60+ years of my life will look like.

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