Benefits Of Happiness

The Benefits of Laughter
Why laughter may be the best way to warm up a relationship.
So much of our attitude about life and our capacity to meet life's challenges depends on the quality of therelationships we have, especially our most intimate relationships that when they go sour, life tends to feel bleak. Because the quality of our relationships has a powerful effect on physical and mentalbalance, as well as our sense of satisfaction in life, it's important that we keep our relationships rewarding and fresh.
The data on divorce provide compelling evidence that we are not succeeding atall. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce--cohabitation couplings are far likelier to end badly--and of marriages that endure, many are less than happy.
Most people know the value of a goodrelationship and, no matter how often they have lost at love, keep on hoping. As a result, advice on how to make relationships work fills shelves and shelves of bookstores and hours of talk-show time.Some of it is even good, the product of careful research on happy and unhappy couples.
Final del formulario
But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good relationship, thereis one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy, yet is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of: Laughter.
It's a safe bet that most of the laughs marriedcouples get come from TV laugh tracks, not from each other. They don't emanate from the relationship. More important, they don't feed it. And if the jokes that make the rounds by email are any gauge,often they are at the expense of it.
But homegrown laughter may be what ailing couples need most. Uniquely human, laughter is, first and foremost, a social signal--it disappears when there is noaudience, which may be as small as one other person--and it binds people together. It synchronizes the brains of speaker and listener so that they are emotionally attuned.
These are the conclusions of...