Why Laughter Is So Often Misunderstood in Couples Therapy

Tuesday, December 16, 2025. This is for my new clients, Sophie & J. Welcome aboard!

In couples therapy, laughter is often treated as a symptom of avoidance when it is frequently a sign of successful regulation.

That misunderstanding is more costly than it looks.

Modern couples therapy takes feelings very seriously.
Sometimes too seriously.

Laughter, in particular, has acquired a bad reputation in the therapy room. When couples laugh during moments of tension or conflict, therapists are often trained to slow them down, redirect them, or ask what the laughter is “covering.”

Sometimes that instinct is correct.

But often, it misses the body entirely.

With many couples, laughter is not dismissal or deflection.
It is regulation.

And when therapists misunderstand it, they can accidentally dismantle one of the most effective stabilizing forces the couple has.

The American Cultural Bias Against Laughter

Contemporary therapy culture privileges seriousness.

Insight is expected to arrive soberly. Emotional depth is often equated with gravity. If something matters, it should sound like it matters.

Unexpected Laughter disrupts that aesthetic.

It collapses hierarchy. It introduces ambiguity. It interferes with the clean arc from pain to insight that therapy is trained to recognize. As a result, laughter is frequently interpreted as resistance rather than information.

But research shows that the body does not always share in our cultural preferences.

From a physiological perspective, laughter is one of the fastest ways humans down-regulate stress.

It alters breathing patterns, reduces muscular tension, and shifts autonomic arousal.

In relational contexts, shared laughter can rapidly synchronize nervous systems.

Which raises an uncomfortable clinical question:

What if the couple isn’t avoiding the feeling—
What if they’re already regulating it?

When Laughter Is a Problem (And When It Isn’t)

To be clear: laughter can be defensive.

It can be dismissive.
It can be contemptuous.
It can be a way to trivialize pain or evade responsibility.

But not all laughter is the same, and therapy gets into trouble when it treats every instance as identical.

Clinically, it helps to distinguish between three broad forms:

Dismissive laughter, which erases impact.
Defensive laughter, which avoids vulnerability.
Regulatory laughter, which sometimes indicates surprise, and attempts to restore connection and safety. This is the part Sophie and J. struggled with.

The task is not to eliminate laughter, but to recognize which kind is present—and what it is doing in the system.

Laughter as a Form of Coregulation

Long-term couples do not merely communicate. Ideally, they can also coregulate.

Over time, partners’ nervous systems learn one another. They develop reliable ways of settling, stimulating, or stabilizing each other under stress. These methods are often procedural rather than verbal.

Laughter is one of the most efficient of these tools.

A couple may begin to laugh midway through an argument—not because the issue has disappeared, but because they suddenly recognize the pattern they are reenacting. The laughter does not end the disagreement. It keeps it from becoming dangerous.

Seen this way, laughter is not the absence of seriousness.
It is the preservation of safety.

Why Some Couples Therapists Are Prone to Misread It

Therapists are trained to listen for meaning in words. But some are less consistently trained to read physiology in real time.

When language and affect appear mismatched—when someone laughs while discussing something painful—the words are often treated as suspect rather than the regulation as successful.

There is also a moral undertone.

Seriousness is frequently equated with respect. Laughter, especially during conflict, can feel irreverent even when it is not.

In these moments, therapy can mistake emotional seriousness for emotional safety—and sacrifice the latter in pursuit of the former.

Neurodiversity, High-Functioning Couples, and Laughter

This misreading is especially common in neurodiverse couples and high-functioning partnerships.

For many autistic or mixed-neurotype couples, laughter functions as a primary bridge. It creates shared meaning without demanding rapid narrative explanation. It allows connection without linguistic overload.

It also can signal that the nervous system has registered a worthy new idea.

Similarly, high-functioning couples—those skilled at emotional literacy and self-control—often rely on humor to prevent regulation from turning into emotional flatness.

When therapy removes laughter without replacing it with something equally regulating, couples can leave sessions more articulate, more earnest—and less connected.

What to Listen for Instead

Rather than shutting laughter down reflexively, therapists can ask better internal questions:

Did the laughter reduce physiological tension?
Did it restore mutual orientation?
Did it interrupt escalation without erasing the issue?

If the answer is yes, the laughter may already be doing the work therapy hopes to accomplish.

The clinical task then becomes integration, not correction—helping couples understand when laughter supports connection and when it obscures it, without dismantling a functional regulatory tool.

The Larger Pattern

Modern relationships are not failing because couples lack insight. They are often failing because they have become over-regulated, over-verbal, and suspicious of embodied relief.

Laughter disrupts that seriousness. It introduces air into systems that have grown heavy with competence.

When laughter disappears from a relationship, couples often don’t notice the loss until conflict becomes slower, heavier, and harder to repair.

Final Thoughts

Laughter is not the enemy of depth.

When it is shared, attuned, and regulating, it is often evidence that something flexible and alive still exists between partners.

Couples rarely lose love first.
They lose lightness.

Therapy should be careful not to help them lose it faster.

Therapist’s Note

In couples therapy, it is tempting to equate progress with gravity. But regulation often arrives quietly, sideways, and without impressive language.

If you and your partner still know how to laugh together—even in difficult moments—that capacity is not incidental. It is a resource.

You are allowed to let something work before you fully understand it.

Science-based couples therapy is most effective when it strengthens the mechanisms couples already use to stay oriented to one another, rather than dismantling them in pursuit of some half-assed notions of theoretical purity.

If you are navigating conflict, emotional flatness, or the quiet strain that often precedes rupture, couples therapy can help you understand what your nervous systems are already doing—and how to work with them rather than against them.

You don’t need to be in crisis to intervene early.
You need to notice what still regulates connection between you.

If you’re ready to explore that, I’m here. I can help with that.

Be Well. Stay Kind. Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., Gouin, J.-P., & Hantsoo, L. (2010). Close relationships, inflammation, and health. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(1), 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.09.003

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Provine, R. R. (2000). Laughter: A scientific investigation. Viking.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Tronick, E. (2007). The neurobehavioral and social-emotional development of infants and children. W. W. Norton & Company.