Back in my teens when I would regularly browse through the dating personal ads in our local free paper, I would regularly notice this 'GSOH' abbreviation and couldn't work out what it meant. Somehow I later realised it stood for 'Good Sense of Humour'.
Humour has often been a problem for me. I vaguely remember being around the ages of 5 or 6, other kids in the playground sharing jokes with each other and with their parents, waiting for the first school bell to ring, and I had no interest or understanding. A few years later I would enjoy various TV game shows, such as Big Break or You Bet, and never quite understood why the presenter had to use the first five minutes to make jokes, rather than simply get down to business right away. As a teenager, I continued to find jokes an irritating nuisance and a waste of time, especially if it was a wind-up aimed at me. My attitude was 'don't joke with me!' No doubt I would appear very standoffish, though not only was I completely ignorant of how this came over, I also couldn't care less at the time.
However, considering that the vast majority of the time I couldn't make any sense of the jokes, and it sounded all Greek to me, going right over my head, can anyone really be surprised by my attitude? If the things that are supposed to be funny don't make sense to you, how else can you possibly view them other than a total pointless waste of time?
With all that said, I have and always have had a sense of humour, and found certain things to be funny. I always liked Mr Bean for instance, my favourite espisode being Room 426, because it shows him acting in a public hotel, and I get to see exactly how the public reacts to his odd behavior and the bizarre events taking place. The bits where he's just on his own aren't so interesting for me.
My sense of humour I feel has always been more situational based - I like the ridiculous, if you want to summarise it. i.e. such as 22 year olds marrying 100 years old, convicted terrorists being 'let off the hook' and allowed to walk fee. Family members will know what I'm referring to here.
Its Not About Whether You Have a GSOH - It's About Expressing it
The great irony in British society, is that although jokes are meant for a laugh, the issue of having a sense of humour is something taken very seriously. Probably over 90% of dating profiles, or answers to questions regarding what you're looking for, include something along the lines of 'good sense of humour' - without any clear definition of what a GSOH actually is.
I remember on one of my past Plenty of Fish dating profiles (for the record I'm not using this dating site at present), I said that I had a 'good sense of humour' - because in my own mind I have and standard neurotypical humour is boring. As usual I wasn't getting many replies to messages, and when I asked about this in the forum, another member suggested that I offered no evidence to show that I had a GSOH, and that I should demonstate some humour in my profile. This made me think, that when people say they like someone with a good sense of humour, either in a friendship or dating context, what I think they are really saying is 'I like someone who can express humour within a social context.'
The problem I feel I have often had, is that my particular type of humour does not organically slip into general conversation - it rather has to be explained and requires a specific platform and a willing listenership to explain it. That's not to say that I never say anything humorous in a social context, or that there are no instances where I find something funny in a social context, far from it. I do have a number of good friends of whom I seem to be able to make them laugh just by being myself (in a good way). I also find that I can engage with humour to a degree when giving a talk far more easily than in conversation, probably because I have time to think and plan what I say in a talk.
Another thing that strikes me, is how so many people, often seemingly less intelligent than myself, are capable of understanding jokes almost instantaneously in a social setting. Jokes are often based upon words with more than one meaning or similar meanings, and understanding them requires you to connect quite a few dots (plus often the assumption regarding certain general knowledge) all in a flash! Once in a while I will just happen to get it, but how so many people are able to consistently get these jokes and respond with a good comeback all within a few seconds is beyond me!
Misunderstood
This may purely be my own perception, but all too often I feel I can be misunderstood for being 'quiet' or 'shy' or as someone who has no sense of humour at all, simple because my brain cannot process the jokes and banter fast enough, and that my true sense of humour doesn't organically slip into everyday conversation, but rather requires a platform to explain it, and possibly also, for me to have previously built up the type friendship with such a person who may be listening for that person to appreciate it. Very often humour is dependent upon the context of the person sharing the joke or funny story.
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