Five minutes with Bob · Posted by Bob · October 11, 2026

Old Wine in New Bottles

Over time, when you know someone better than almost anyone else in the world, you can predict what they will order at a restaurant. Their reaction to a movie before the opening credits have finished is predictable. You know which story they will tell at a family gathering, perhaps even the precise moment when everyone is supposed to laugh. There is something beautiful about this kind of familiarity. It is what makes a relationship feel like home. However, there is another side to it. When we can predict almost everything about someone, we sometimes stop discovering anything new about them. And that is an interesting little paradox of love: the very familiarity that makes us comfortable with someone can also make our time together less exciting. In the early days of a relationship, whether with your spouse, a close friend, or even a sibling, there was so much to discover. A new restaurant became an adventure. A conversation could last for hours. You learned things about each other that you had never known. Then life took over. Work, household responsibilities, errands, familiar weekend plans. One day began to resemble the next. You were still together, still caring for each other, still sharing your lives. Nothing was necessarily wrong. The relationship had become comfortable enough to run on autopilot. I recently came across the expression ‘recreating the S-curve’. In business, it describes the need to find a new phase of growth before an existing one begins to lose momentum. A company cannot always rely on the same product, methods, and customers to keep growing indefinitely. At some point, it needs a fresh direction. It struck me that relationships might share something with this idea. A relationship, too, can settle into a comfortable pattern. What once felt exciting becomes overly predictable. The same activities produce the same conversations, and both people begin to know exactly what to expect. Perhaps this is a good time to discover a new way of experiencing the relationship. Imagine a couple who have eaten at the same restaurants for years deciding to explore a cuisine neither has tried before. Or two old friends who usually discuss work and family discovering that they both enjoy learning to play chess. A husband and wife might take up a dance class, even if neither has much rhythm. Two siblings might go shopping together for something completely unrelated to their usual errands. Friends who have spent decades talking about the past might discover a new hobby that gives them something unexpected to talk about in the future. The activity itself need not be remarkable. What matters is that neither person knows exactly how it will unfold. There might be laughter, a little awkwardness, a surprising talent or a shared discovery. For a while, the two people are no longer simply following a familiar script. They are creating a new experience together. And that can change the conversation. Instead of discussing something that happened years ago, they have something new to remember. Instead of knowing exactly what the other person will say, they have a reason to be curious. A familiar person can surprise us when we meet them in an unfamiliar situation. The quiet friend might turn out to be a brilliant dancer. The spouse who dislikes surprises might discover a passion for spontaneous road trips. The sibling who has always seemed serious might be the funniest person in the room when trying something new. And perhaps the most enjoyable surprise is discovering that we, too, are capable of being different around someone we have known forever. Love does not always need grand gestures to feel alive. Sometimes, it needs a new setting, a new shared experience or simply a different reason to laugh together. The history remains. The affection remains. But a new chapter begins. Maybe that is what recreating the S-curve looks like in our personal lives: not abandoning the comfort we have built, but allowing a little room for the unexpected to enter it. What new experience can you think of that could possibly create an S-curve in the relationships that matter to you? Happy Sunday, Bob