Connecting to Relationship Humor

​It was recently Valentine's Day. For some it's a great week of being with the one you love. For other's it's the constant reminder that you are an unlovable creature wreaking of desperation and the failure of your mother's eye. But if you are doing stand up, you're probably feeling tempted to do relationship humor. And I mean the dating, marriage, sexual kind of stuff. The more tormented the material the better, they say. But here's the thing, if it becomes too mean spirited you find yourself turning the crowd against you or isolating yourself from from a portion of the crowd. That's fine if you have a fan base, but if you're trying to become a regular at a venue, you'll have to play both sides, if only to create an atmosphere that keeps them wanting more and the bookers happy. So here are things to "think about" - as opposed to hard rules - when talking about relationships on stage. 

Dress the Way You Want to Be Seen
When doing any type of relationship humor, you need to dress the part. If you want to be the slacker who doesn't understand your girl, dress like that. Want to be the mom who takes charge in the marriage, then look like you can take charge. Too often we lose the ability to sell a joke because we say we are X but look like a Y. The first half of my career, I was a sloppy and poorly dressed middle age guy who couldn't get a date. After my heart condition and dropping my first 50 pounds, the sweaty mess look didn't apply to me. All my jokes about women didn't work. I had to scrap them. When I started joking about dating women I met on Bumble, I wasn't doing well, until I started wearing a suit jacket and collared shirt. Suddenly, the crowd BELIEVED I was dating multiple women on dating websites. Just a small adjustment, but the clothes you wear have to match the way you talk about your love (or lack of) life.

Be Prepared To Annoy Half the Crowd If You Side With One Sex Too Much
I'm always amused when a comic trashes men or women exclusively and then looks at the crowd and goes, "Come on, we're at a comedy show!" Yes, and comedy shows have...wait for it...BOTH men and women! The real secret is to take a bit and tease one sex for 80% of the time, and then you want to put the punchline on the other sex at the end. If it is only one sided, you'll find that the balance is lacking, and the crowd will feel uncomfortable laughing, except the groups of guys or group of ladies out together. 

One trick is to this with political or religious jokes first, so the audience trusts your structure. You're trying to get the crowd into a "trance" to know when to laugh or applaud. After a few years you shouldn't be too surprised by the results. So if you make fun of Republicans, then make fun of Democrats at the end. George Carlin and Bill Maher do this really well. "Republicans are evil, and Democrats are stupid" is their template. If you mock Christians for 80% of the time, throw atheists under the bus. Pete Holmes does this perfectly with his deconstruction of the "we come from nothing" argument. 

This way when you take on one sex, the crowd becomes excited to see you go after the other sex at the end. Jim Gaffigan does this really well. "My wife is a genius but she nags and makes me do stuff and yells at me...but I'm also so lazy." That's the template to getting everyone on board.   

When you start to build a fan base, or the show has a particular theme that allows for a complete one sided thrashing on one group, then the stage is yours to do as you please. But, for the newbie, you might want to pepper the set with a few twists that get everyone on board. 

Don't Get Too Sad on Stage
I've been working with a few comics lately, and I found myself making the same note: Your tone is sadder than it is funny. While comedy can come from a place of pain, the end result must have laughter. Whether it's a surprise self realization, a silly act out, or just a classic exaggeration/comparison punchline, don't forget to end with the crowd laughing. I've made this mistake so many times, that some jokes I buried because I realized I wasn't over the situation. Some of it was classic relationship stories, but some was stuff I later worked through in therapy.

It's why I always say COMEDY ISN'T THERAPY - because there's no treatment. Comedy, when done destructively, becomes a loop in your head, like a sad character in a Bruce Springsteen song. Stand up takes the mud of pain and spins it into comedy gold. Speaking your truth is "part" of the journey - the other part is finding humor through your own red flags and misunderstandings.      

Final Thoughts
Relationship humor is one of the fastest ways to get an audience invested in your set quickly. In the words of Larry Flynt in the film The People vs. Larry Flynt, "...sex is legal [and] everybody is 'doing it' or everybody wants to be 'doing it.'" When you have an evergreen topic that deals with something everyone has an opinion on, it naturally builds tension and interest. The key is to keep it truthful and believable, while finding that balance in traditional stand up tricks of the trade. 

​If you find your relationship material isn't working, you can try one "hail Mary" play I used to do in my earliest years. I'd ask the crowd if they believed what I just said. Especially at bar shows. One guy yelled out: "It's too obvious! You look like you don't get laid!" This helped me reframe the jokes as I'm trying without actually working on me. That point of view changed everything. Today my dating material is trying to get comfortable with women actually liking me. As you grow, your point of view expands. So keep in mind the dating and marriage jokes from a few years ago should be more meaningful and richer by now. If they aren't, then go back to the source of those stories and jokes and find the new truths you neglected years ago when first starting out.