Life is Short, Laugh More. Why Comedy Can Actually Help Your Marriages or Relationship
by Dani Klein Modisett, author of “Take My Spouse, Please” (Trumpeter Books) 8/27/15
Dani Klein Modisett is a comedian and writer who has been working in the comedy world for the past twenty years and taught Stand Up Comedy at UCLA. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Parents Magazine, LA Parent Magazine, Mom.me and the Huffington Post. In her new book “Take My Spouse, Please: How to Keep Your Marriage Happy, Healthy, and Thriving by Following the Rules of Comedy” Dani Klein Modisett shares how the rules of comedy can keep you and your spouse connected, and help get you through those inevitable tough times. In the book Dani interviewed dozens of successful long-term spouses, well-known comedians, comic writers, and marriage counselors. The book includes stories and contributions from celebrities like Jerry Stiller, Patricia Heaton, 30 Rock writer John Riggi, Everybody Loves Raymond writer Lew Schneider, comedian Bonnie McFarlane, and more. Dani shared with us some stories about what she learned from her interviews.
Neither my husband nor I had a big reveal for each other last week with the Ashley Madison hacking. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had strong fantasies about being with other people, particularly closing in our ten-year anniversary. We had gone away for the weekend as a desperate attempt to recapture some of the wild abandon that apparently tens of millions of people around the world are also trying to capture with strangers. Not that I don’t understand this impulse, it’s tough to access “wild abandon” with the person with whom you file your taxes.
Nevertheless we made a hearty stab at it that weekend checking in to a hotel off the 101Freeway in the West Valley of Los Angeles that rhymes with “Core Reasons.” They happened to be offering a two for one deal, music to the ears of financially strapped parents of toddlers. Problem was, as if we needed another one on top of all the loathing and disappointment we walked in with, the promotion was called “Double the Fun.” And…wait for it…you had to say this exact phrase out loud whenever you did anything.
“We’re here with double the fun,” we told the waiter at the faux Italian buffet.
“Yes, double the fun, that’s us!” we told the masseurs, plural. Luckily no cameras followed us into our ground floor room where I recall one fight when my husband yelled, as I stood there, Altman-esque in my underwear,”I’m not happy and I haven’t been happy for years!”
So of course I blew him. Twice.
Double the fun, people.
No I didn’t. I flicked away the water under my eyes, put on a skirt that felt too tight, and we went down stairs for sushi.
“Will you be joining us for Double the Fun?” the kimono clad waitress who had been dressed as a bar wench at the “Bangers and Mash!” brunch earlier asked us.
“Can’t you tell?” I deadpanned.
Who knows, maybe if I’d had a smartphone with me I would have uploaded a picture of my breasts to Ms. Ashley in the hotel room that night. But I didn’t. And there’re no pictures of Tod’s manhood on there either. Not that I checked the day of the leak.
Instead, after that disastrous night, I decided to buckle down, or as Tod says “double down,” and figure out how to make the marriage we were in a happier one.
Lying in the fetal position on the bed I thought about what lay people always say when they find out you’re a comedian.
“Really?” their eyes widen, “ Stand up! I could never do that! That’s the hardest thing in the world to do.”
Yeah. No. Apparently being in a happy marriage is a lot harder. Thirty nine million people can’t be wrong.
Since I had taught Stand Up comedy at UCLA for almost a decade, I decided to take a look at the syllabus for that class and see if some of the lessons I taught to help people do that “hardest thing in the world,” might be applicable to marriage.
By the time I finished the first page I knew I was on to something. Showing up, listening, paying attention to timing, letting go of a bad night, surrounding yourself with other positive people who want the same things in life as you, what marriage couldn’t benefit from these suggestions?
Three months later I sold a proposal to write a book about how to laugh more in marriage using these exact tools. And because my most important life lessons have always come from real people telling me their experiences in person, I also went out and interviewed couples that still make each other laugh decades after they walked down the aisle. Basically, if you had gray hair and were holding hands and smiling you were fair game for me.
This is where I had the most fun. I was given some very practical and often surprising advice. For instance, in the last few months, I seem to be auto-repeat of a suggestion former full time comedian and now co-E.P. of “The Goldbergs,” Lew Schneider gave me. “You’ll never regret what you didn’t say, but you may regret what you did say.” When he said this to me, he and his wife of 30 years, I cocked my head, like a dog hearing a sound they can’t recognize. Game changing, or in this case, marriage changing, for a person who thought the whole point of talking is to say the first thing that comes in to your head, especially if it can get a laugh.
Then there was the warning given to me by Emmy winner Patricia Heaton and her husband of nearly 25 years, the actor David Hunt, to never compare your marriage to someone else’s. “The grass is never greener over there. Never.”
Another illuminating moment for me came in my interview with the legendary Jerry Stiller, married to the late Anne Meara for 61 years. When I asked him, given that they were both comedians, if they ever felt competitive with each other Jerry said, “There was no room for jealousy, we needed each other.” Need each other? Blech. The last thing I want to do is need someone. You don’t become a comedian because you enjoy relying on other people. But there it was, simply stated, and confirmed by many of the couples I spoke with, in enduring, happy marriages, husbands and wives need each other and that’s okay. In fact, it’s good.
After three years of research I am here to report, my suspicions were confirmed. As couples we should take a page from the comedians’ playbook. Whenever and wherever possible, we should approach marriage with the same outsized courage that comedian’s too, only with a party of one, our spouses. We should be as rigorous about being present, listening to what is really going on with each other, and looking for laughs whenever possible as the most successful comedians are with a live audience, maybe even more so. And like comedians who continue to show up for gigs even after being booed off the stage, married people need the cojones to keep showing up for each other and telling each other the truth about what is going on in their hearts and minds and pants.
Sorry to rain on your infidelity parade Noel Biderman, but how about instead of cheating on your spouse, throwing all that time and energy in to the marriage you have. Double down my married comrades, or at least try doubling over in laughter together first.
“Take My Spouse, Please” is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and booksellers everwhere.
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