You don’t have to be humorless to not enjoy every joke you hear. We’ve all been in a situation where you make a joke that was meant to be harmless but unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings. There’s always some risk involved with telling a scandalous joke when it involves people you don’t know that well. With your close friends and family, it’s far easier to gauge whether a joke will cross the line or hit too close to their insecurities. Likewise, it’s much easier to forgive a friend for an off-color joke when you know their intentions were pure compared to a stranger, whose bad joke can much more easily feel like an unfounded personal attack.

When you get offended by a joke, there are a couple of options. If that offense is particularly strong, you might want to fire back at the offender, letting them know you won’t take it sitting down.