Never have, and never will need money, gifts, food or any other material item from anyone. That, my friends, is freedom.

Honestly, I thought that was pretty funny. Why? Well lacking any serious emotion towards marriage and monogamy, it doesn't seem that bad to me. Less of an emotional betrayal and more turning the other woman, who's stupid enough to walk up to her benefactor in front of his wife, into a shared attribute. And it makes the woman seem more powerful in deciding to share her husband's usually private affair with herself (though I doubt most people would see it that way).

But frankly? Making fun of the emotional depth of rich people is always funny. They're not the neighbours next door, they're faceless, soulless millionaires.

Its really funny, but it looks like the husband is just showing his complete dominance over his wife, one in which he can even make out in front her with his mistress.
Is there anything wrong with this? Not inherently, and the wife seems to be ok with it. It would be nice if everyone was this honest with there affairs.

The comment the husband makes to the wife about no more shopping trips to Paris, etc. etc. makes it appear that she was the last mistress to the last wife. Prenup!! Ooops!

Speaking as a former mistress I found it kind of funny. In a sad way a mistress does belong to both husband and wife.

Speaking as a former mistress I found it kind of funny. In a sad way a mistress does belong to both husband and wife.

The joke was OK; what's worth commenting on is the couple's relationship. Clearly, there was a rock-solid prenup. The rich man knows exactly where he stands with his gold-digging wife, and is enjoying taking advantage of it. Probably got the idea from their friend Jim.

The Anon at the top sounds like they're referring to Nirvana. Traditionally, the Buddhists saw it as wanting nothing, like Anon. But I think the rich man found a better way - having everything, and enough of it to share.

I didn't find the joke all that funny.
Of course what makes something funny is an unexpected punch line, in this case the wife replying, "Oh, ours is prettier".
Infidelity is such a volatile subject that it makes good subject matter for humor. Allows us to poke fun at a painful subject in a generic detached format.
I have found few people man or women who like being the butt of a joke or cheated on; even if they contributed to the infidility. Our egos just can't sustain it.

I thought it was funny. It made me laugh. Or more precisely, it made me guffaw, once.

Humor comes from incongruity. The stereotypical expectation is that we live up to our principles: in this case, that we don't allow infidelity in marriage. But, says this joke, there is an asterisk.

Also, jokes derive their wit from brevity. A joke explained is never funny. The wife's thought process is never explicated, but it's both implied and obvious.

At the same time, this joke was also cynical and probably misogynistic. Perhaps that contributes to its effect, too. (Sadly.)

It might take a library full of books to explain or define "what is funny."

That said, this particular joke shows the choices that are made in life.

The husband has chosen to marry and support someone that he loathes.

The wife chooses a life of acquiring possessions.

The punchline is that the mistress becomes another possession of the joint marriage (in the wife's mind).

The story works because it plays on the stereotype and evolutionary psychology tenet that women are attracted to wealthy, powerful men and men are attracted to young, beautiful women. Put another way, men obtain prestige through wealth and women through beauty. The wife realizes the real reason she was or is attracted to her husband(i.e. he is wealthy/powerful) and chooses to stay with him as a result. The fact that her husband attracts the more beautiful mistress confirms that he is the more powerful man and therefore the more desirable husband. Moral to story: If your husband has a young, beautiful mistress, you chose your mate well.

Infidelity is not funny.

While the punchline is unexpected, anyone who has experienced the ramifications of infidelity will be unlikely to find it amusing - unless the promiscuous relationship is not built on mutual trust and monogamy.

Social Exchange Theory is an economically based psychological relationship theory that fits this "joke" well. The theory suggests that relationships function based on the perceived evaluation each individual in the relationship makes regarding the costs and benefits of remaining in the relationship.

Perhaps the wife perceives the costs of leaving her adultering husband as too great, and values material possessions more than fidelity and mutual trust in a relationship.

Shallow stuff really.

I don't think the joke is that funny, neither the punch line surprising. Before the wife gives her response she sees a family friend who freely has his mistress out in public as well. To me this jokes indicates how much of a follower we trully are and how easily we can be persuaded to keep going down the path of destruction when we are faced with the challenged of the unknown. The blind leading the blind.

I thought the joke was funny only because I saw it as ficticious, nothing I could even remotely imagine happening in the "real world". Put it on a Hollywood screen with perhaps Pierce Brosnon as the extremely handsome, appropriately egotistical and newly married 007-type role. (The World is not Enough?) I can see his wife played by Kyra Sedgwick, exactly as the warm and wise Lace character she played in Phenomenon as the star of this "movie" rather than the leading lady. Why? Lace the wife may have drawn her lines with a feather, but they were strategically placed. The mistress? Indeed pretty and seductive but only until her true nature is revealed by the shedding of her "showgirl" feathers - of which Pierce is deathly allergic. He survives but never fully recovers. The mistress flees in guilt to find a good psychiatrist and Lace remarries more for companionship than love. The moral: No one is immune from the acts of infidelity.

I actually think this joke would be funnier without the husband's lecture on not getting a lexus. (There would have to be some other way to segue to the end.) What makes it funny to me is that, the wife doesn't want her husband to have a mistress, *and* if he does have a mistress, of course she wants it to be better than other mistresses. Perhaps it's about internal versus external values and how competitiveness makes us choose things that are destructive to ourselves. You could make the same joke about a mother visiting her son in prison, and wailing about how much money he stole, and then on the way out, meeting another mother whose son held up a grocery store for a thousand dollars. "Really? *My* son stole a hundred thousand dollars."