The Big Apple Circus
Photo by Ingo Ellerbusch on Unsplash
I was reading Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 2, when Carl was entering the circus battle (if you know, you know). For everyone that is not currently obsessed with this book series, the important part is that it reminded me of the time Andrew and I went to the Big Apple Circus and became part of one of the clown sketches. Yes, you read that right.
I’ll spare you the details, but it ended with one of the clowns sitting next to me with his arm around me while Andrew stood in the center of the circus and pulled a tablecloth out from underneath a fully set table. We apparently played our impromptu parts so convincingly that people came up to us afterward and asked if we were part of the circus: jury is still out on whether or not that's a compliment.
The circus was just one of the many fun dates we had when we first met. By the time we got married, we had accumulated so many mini adventures that we named every table at our wedding after one of our dates. I think I wanted to do that because I was proud of who we were together and of the life we had already started building. Each table represented a story, and each story was evidence that we had been willing to go somewhere new, try something different, and occasionally risk being mistaken for circus performers.
More than 10 years later, we still go on fun dates, but it is also very easy to slip into what is comfortable. The fuller our lives become, the more appealing it is to sit together on the couch in our comfies, eat dinner, and watch a favorite show. There is nothing wrong with that because comfort is one of the gifts of a long relationship: you no longer have to make every moment impressive or memorable because simply being together is enough.
But comfort and novelty offer us different things, and healthy relationships need room for both.
A review published in May 2026 argues the importance of self-expansion in relationships. Early in a relationship, nearly everything creates an opportunity for expansion because we are constantly encountering new perspectives, experiences, places, and parts of ourselves. Over time, that rapid discovery naturally slows. The researchers argue that doing novel and challenging activities together can help reinvigorate a relationship by reconnecting that feeling of growth and discovery with the person beside us. The review draws on experiments, daily-diary studies, and other research supporting the connection between shared self-expanding activities and relationship quality.
The activity does not need to be extravagant, expensive, particularly dramatic or include clowns (unless that's your thing, no judgment). The research is less about constantly planning spectacular dates and more about resisting the assumption that we already know everything there is to know about the people we love. When you do new things or visit new places together, you're not just learning about those things and places, but you learn who you become in those circumstances. Before that day I had no idea that Andrew could walk into the center of a circus and commit fully to an unexpected role; those moments revealed pieces of us that an ordinary dinner might not have uncovered.
More than a decade later, there is comfort in knowing each other so well, but there is also something valuable in remembering that neither of us is finished becoming. There are still new ways to see each other, new stories to collect, and new versions of ourselves waiting somewhere outside the usual routine.
This week, whether it’s with a significant other, friend group, or your family, consider doing something together that you normally don’t do. It does not have to become one of the best nights of your life, and it does not even have to go particularly well. Sometimes the events that go sideways become the stories you remember most. The point is simply to step outside what is familiar and give yourselves another opportunity to discover who you are together now; and if people afterward ask whether you are part of the circus, you probably did something right.
