I think that there’s a certain degree of risk, though, in projecting the values of the here-and-now to other operational environments. Some cultures/families/milieus would have it that you should never have a relationship with anyone who makes you laugh, because that indicates insufficient seriousness. Can that work? I don’t know, personally, but the rules of the game are prone to changing once you shift bases.

It is difficult to cast yourself out of your time and place, or even into another current milieu. I have known, as an outsider, families that were eminently successful, and yet which felt like I was entirely alien to, simply because of how they interacted with each other in my observation. It was like watching a nature documentary describing the behavior of an insect colony, or something equally out of my experience.

People are so widely variable that it’s nearly impossible to make a general pronouncement on what is “normal”. In one situation, one milieu, things might be one way–And, in another, entirely different.

Teasing out the rules of the game is what drives many of us nuts, with regards to a lot of this interpersonal stuff. You learn the rules by osmosis, growing up, and think “This is how it is…”. Then, you find yourself transplanted into another set of conditions, and discover that all the rules you thought hard-and-fast are now totally erroneous.

But never laughing together is not the worst thing. Never laughing at all is worse. People who can’t laugh are broken.