I have a friend who believes that two funny people should never date but what he really means is he doesn’t want to date a funny girl. It seems the most important thing to guys is to date someone who will laugh at all his jokes. And that’s how it usually plays out, you laugh at all his jokes good or bad and then he likes you. Because in my experience, men inherently believe that they are meant to be the funnier one in a relationship. See when looking for a partner a funny guy is attractive but a funny girl is competition. 

I once went on a date, granted in hindsight the worst date of my life, and the moment I told him I did comedy he launched into his own standup set. And I sat there for fifteen minutes listening to this unfunny male drone on about women and school and sex and money, he cracked himself up. I just kind of stared at him, not laughing, very confused on how I had provoked him to do this. He then said “this killed” and I asked him “where?” and he said “when I showed my ex”. He then of course asked me to show him some of my material and when I said “I’m good” he insisted I “show him in private”. Lucky enough for me that day never came. 

Now this is not an isolated experience all of the women in comedy I know have also dealt with men and their intense connection to be the “funnier” one. A lot of my friends have actually insinuated that having partners who believed to be funnier than them slowed down their own work in comedy. One of my very talented friends in my comedy troupe recalled “Dating and doing standup is really hard, I would self filter and ask ‘What do I not want my girlfriend to hear?’” which is often the case. Comedy is inherently personal, you are putting yourself on the line for ridicule but ridicule at the hands of someone you are intimate with is a whole nother ball game. We are constantly walking this fine line between too funny and not funny enough, this grey area of figuring out what is appealing as a funny woman and what is pushing the standards men have set into place. 

I remember in elementary and in middle school people would call me a “funny girl” and I never felt like that was a compliment. Being a “funny girl” meant I was an ugly girl and the boys would never like me. At the time I really could’ve cared less I was a little preoccupied playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, but these things stick with you. I was basically a clown in the eyes of men, and last time I checked being a clown is not a turn-on. I think people also use the word funny as a cop-out to not look at women deeper they can get away with just saying “Oh, you’re funny” when comedy is actually really complex, good comedy is smart and well-rounded. My close friend said, “I asked my boyfriend what his favorite thing about me was and he said that I was funny, and it felt like that’s such an easy thing to say like he couldn’t come up with anything else”. While so many of the women I know have so much to offer they are often just boiled down to “funny” and disregarded due to the fact. 

My ex-boyfriend was very funny. He did great impressions that made me laugh and he loved all the same comedy movies I liked and our senses of humor seemed to really mesh. But anytime I would tell him about something I was working on for my comedy troupe or a project I wanted to do he would always accuse me of basing it off him or using his ideas. As if I could never have a good comedic thought on my own. But of course not because he was the funny one out of the two of us. 

There is something deeply embedded in the male brain that fires off when a woman comes close to something that they feel tied to. And a lot of men are tied to this idea that they make the jokes and the women they spend their time with laugh at them. But the trouble is I’m funnier than the guys I’ve dated but they never let me occupy that space in the relationship. So from here on out I’m not laughing at jokes I don’t think are funny and it may have made me ugly in middle school but that makes me hot today.