Dear Jared,
My boyfriend is a typical jokester, and most of the time, it’s my favorite quality about him. He always knows exactly what to say to make me laugh, and it’s not something I want to call a problem — except I think it’s getting a little out of hand. It kind of puts a buzzkill on the romance when all he does is joke, but you can’t exactly ask your boyfriend to stop being funny. How can I nicely let him know I want him to be a little more serious (sometimes) without him feeling like I’m asking him to change his entire personality for me?
Sincerely,
LOL STFU
Being so partial to OMGROFL comedy myself, this is a tough question. But it’s also a question in which you’re not alone. There’s a fine line between making dead-grandma jokes at your nana’s funeral and making you cough up Diet Sprite at Applebee’s with dead-grandma jokes a few months down the road.
And it’s a difficult conversation to have with someone who makes you laugh even while slapping your ass and jokingly making you call him “Sally.”
Or is that one of those times when it’s a buzzkill?
This looks like a situation where we’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of the relationship together. Does his inability to ever be serious affect your relationship so greatly that you just can’t deal with it anymore? Is that the only bad quality about him? Who’s getting the last laugh?
We all have our bad qualities. Some of us curse like a felon. Some of us listen to Ke$ha. And some of us drink directly from the OJ carton while scratching our asses with the fridge wide open.
Laughter, as they say, honey, is the best medicine, and I can see his affinity for laughter all around is one of the things that attracted you to him from the start.
If making you laugh is his worst quality, consider yourself lucky. And if it’s become too much for you, mention it to him. Make the hard-to-have conversation into a quasi-serious pun. Speak his language, and maybe both of you will LMAO all the way home.
Have a question for our resident sexpert? Send Jared an e-mail at Jmisner@alligator.org. Your name will not appear in print or online.
