The person allowed to stop being funny has been offered a fuller kind of company.

Being the reliably funny one is a role, and roles are hard to put down while people are enjoying them. The performance is genuinely offered and genuinely wanted, but it also fixes a position: you provide the lightness, everyone else provides the rest. Company that does not require it is rarer and much more restful, because it means being wanted for something other than the service.

With the funny person in your life, let one silence sit without filling it. If you are that person, try an evening of being ordinary and slightly flat with someone safe.