What would life be like if we couldn’t laugh?
Mark Twain called humor “mankind’s greatest blessing,” while Jimmy Buffett described it as critical to our mental health in his song “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” where he said: “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.” (On an interesting side note, I thought this last quote was from Robert Frost and apparently it has been widely misattributed to him. Somewhere in the heavens I feel my Great-Uncle Billy, a devout Jimmy Buffett fan, is smiling widely.)
But not all humor is equal.
Sometimes humor can be the tie that binds—or the one that cuts. In some friendships, this shows up in a “frenemy”—someone who calls themselves a friend, but whose behavior and humor undermine you.
After writing about humor as a defense mechanism for some and an aggressive tactic used by other more narcissistic and manipulative personalities in my upcoming second edition of Ten Keys to Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle, I was fascinated to read a study that looked at humor’s role in friendships when narcissism is present.
The authors (Altmann & Sauls, 2025) focused on measuring the two main categories of narcissism, grandiose and vulnerable, with uses of adaptive versus maladaptive humor in friendships.
As a recap to anyone not familiar with these types of narcissism—both types have a sense of entitlement and grandiosity yet grandiose types tend to have more superiority, manipulation, and exploitation, while vulnerable types are often more defensive, hypersensitive, insecure, dependent, and marked by swings from shame to grandiosity.
Adaptive versus maladaptive humor is a lot like it might sound, yet in my work, it can be super difficult to detect in social settings when everyone is laughing and putting public pressure on the targeted person to laugh and not be too serious.
Fortunately, the authors of the study cite Martin et al.’s (2003) humor framework that describes adaptive (healthy) styles of humor as affiliative, where humor decreases tension, elicits bonding and camaraderie—and self-enhancing, where the person is able to take a more resilient humorous perspective about life and circumstances. The maladaptive types of humor (the ones that cut) include aggressive humor, where there is mocking, ridicule, and it comes at someone’s expense—and self-defeating, which is self-deprecating and often used to get attention and reassurance.
The authors found that grandiose narcissists tended to use affiliative and aggressive humor but viewed themselves as using positive forms of humor while viewing their friend’s use of humor as more maladaptive. The authors pointed out that this is in line with grandiose narcissists’ propensity toward devaluing others to maintain their sense of superiority. Meanwhile, the vulnerable narcissists were more likely to use self-defeating humor and view their friends and their humor styles with a more idealized perspective.
When thinking about friendships, humor and frenemy detection—it might help to remember that healthy friendships engage in humor that invites genuine shared laughter. But humor that repeatedly places one person as the brunt of the joke can be a form of social dominance—and a red flag that you might be dealing with a grandiose narcissistic frenemy.
Like a comment is made at your expense where everyone laughs and puts you in the place of joining along while inwardly feeling the sting of embarrassment or humiliation.
If you react, the defense quickly follows:
“Relax.”
“I was just joking.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“Can’t you take a joke?”
Because laughter provides social cover, this type of humor can be especially damaging as it allows someone to undermine your dignity publicly or privately while avoiding accountability.
If you object, you are labeled humorless or overly sensitive. If you stay silent, the humiliation stands—and the confusing relationship with the frenemy persists.
But recognizing a frenemy pattern matters—because dignity and psychological safety cannot coexist with humiliation, control, and manipulation, no matter how cleverly they are disguised as humor or friendship.
Real friendship doesn’t confound or require you to shrink, perform, or laugh at your own expense to belong.