Dating

Over the weekend, my friend, who has been seeing this guy for about 3 weeks, was supposed to go out on a legitimate date with him. She hasn't gone on a real "dinner date" in a long time, and even though she is comfortable around the guy, she felt incredibly awkward and kept trying to figure out ways to cancel.  When describing the situation, she would make up stupid excuses as to why she shouldn't have to go, and my friends and I just sat there and told her to shut up and go. After a few minutes, he happened to come to where we were coincidentally, and they began to talk about when they were going to meet up. The awkward switch turned on, and my friend could not stop giggling and laughing and smiling.
She kept using the words "awkward" and "uncomfortable" to describe how she felt about "this kind of stuff," and the second he walked in you could tell that is exactly how she felt. She looked so nervous, and whenever he asked her a simple question about when to meet up and where they want to go, my friend kept laughing and smiling while responding with a stupid question. It was such a weird situation to witness that the entire table stopped what they were doing and started focusing on their conversation, and then WE felt awkward and all started to laugh.

Based on my friend and the table's reaction, it is clear that laughter is a definite tool that people use when they feel uncomfortable. When the table and I laughed, it was half out of feeling so awkward having to watch the interaction, and it was half out of relief that we didn't have to be the ones going through what the couple was going through at that point. Listening in on the conversation, we could not help but laugh and say to ourselves "oh my god this is so awkward," something that I find myself saying a lot. Many of the situations I find myself and others in support the idea that people laugh when they are nervous and uncomfortable, and that they use it as a sort of mask to hide how they really feel. But, in reality, it just makes how uncomfortable they feel more obvious, and the situation even more awkward...