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For years I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight.
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It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
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Hello, everybody.
I'm Gemma Speig and welcome back to The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
Sometimes we have these episodes where i just go i cannot believe we have never spoken about this before.
We are like 300, maybe even 400 episodes in and we have never spoken about this topic.
Today, we're going to talk about friendship trios.
We know from countless studies and even so many episodes that we've done just how important our friends are, not just for our mental health but for our physical longevity even.
But what kind of happens?
What changes when it's not just you and another best friend and it's not a huge friendship group either?
It's like this weird middle ground three people, the trio.
That can get and I know we've seen examples of this like really complicated, not just because friendships are in themselves complicated, but because of this unique platonic triangle dynamic.
It can be a beautiful one.
You know, you get to call two people your best friend.
It can also get really, really messy.
One person always kind of made me feel slightly left behind or distant or like despair.
There are moments of jealousy and resentment.
And I guess it's really easy to see why.
It's not just two people navigating and bouncing their emotions between each other.
Suddenly it's like almost a bit of a project to keep three different bonds going at once, plus the entire friendship of the three of you at a whole.
This is a perfect segue into a story that inspired this episode, from a listener who wrote in with an experience exactly like this, looking for some advice, and i asked her can i share this story for this episode?
And she said yes, please.
So this was her message i need some advice on whether it's time for me to leave my toxic friendship trio.
Some context me and my best friends have known each other since we are eight years old.
We're 24 now.
We all went to college together and we've obviously had our ups and downs, but always remained thick friends throughout it all.
We even dated best friends.
My friends were bridesmaids at my sister's wedding.
It has kind of been a fairy tale friendship situation in many respects until Last month.
Last month me and one of my friends had a small falling out after she showed up two hours late to my birthday dinner to go on a date with a guy.
A second date, might I add.
I expressed I was angry, and then she proceeded to not talk to me for three days, but did speak to our other friend.
We semi-made up but she didn't exactly apologize and then flash forward to last weekend.
I call up the girls to see what their Saturday plans are, and the friend who remained neutral tells me that they are on a trip together with two of our other friends in New York City, and they had simply forgotten to tell me.
I was devastated.
We do literally everything together, And they know that going to New York was a dream of mine, since even before we met.
They said they made the plans in the three days me and my other friend were fighting.
I hate to admit it, but I lost my cool and we haven't spoken since.
I can tell I've been blocked from seeing their Instagram stories and I'm feeling so lost angry, devastated and hurt.
Please, any advice?
Am I in the wrong or how do I salvage this friendship?
I think this dynamic is the perfect example of what we're going to talk about today.
And I think to give the listener a little bit of advice to begin with, like your reaction to both those situations of firstly, your friend not showing up to dinner and then this trip, like That's fair to me.
The exclusion like honestly, at this point feels deliberate, especially since you said you'd made up in the meantime.
You said you'd been talking to them in the meantime.
And you were the one who was originally offended or I guess like wronged.
I think it's also hard because listening to that, like your friend saying, we just forgot to tell you.
How can you forget to tell someone, let alone your best friend, that you're on a plane to their dream city without them, when you otherwise talk like every single day?
I think your frustration is totally justified and you need to probably seriously consider what kind of apology you want, that you need, that you deserve, and whether you are willing to be the one who instigates that and reaches out or who waits.
And I definitely think that at the very bare minimum you need to send like a full kind of Dear John, like hard on your sleeve message of like I'm really hurt.
And yes, my reaction may not have been neat and tidy, but it's because of how deeply I feel about you guys and about our bond and our friendship, and also about the situation.
I do feel like, you know, you need a proper apology.
And can those people give you that?
We're going to talk through that in this episode.
Like that is my most basic in like very, very minor advice to you.
But I think the concepts and the psychology we're going to discuss as we go further into this episode are are probably going to answer this question for you.
Are you going to be able to move forward?
What is the dynamic of the friendship so far, or as it is now, and is it worth salvaging?
We're going to discuss what it really means to be in a friendship trio, the role of the third wheel, how people often choose a specific role in a friendship trio and how those roles evolve over time and, most importantly, how to avoid and how to deal with conflict when it inevitably comes up.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
Honestly, friendship trios I think they're pretty special.
And I know like that probably doesn't sound honest given the story we just heard.
But when we look at the pros just for a second, you know, you basically get two best friends.
It works really nicely on a practical level.
Like if one friend is burnt out or if one friend is busy or going through it, there's double the support, but also double the options.
Double like, the people to hang out with.
Arguably, it's more fun.
There's more personality strengths perspectives, more things to kind of contribute to your worldview.
The in jokes are also like arguably a lot better as well because there's more shared.
And something I don't hear people talk about a lot is there's something uniquely affirming about watching your two best friends love each other the way that you love them.
You know, it's one thing to know that you think somebody else is wonderful.
And it's another thing to see that mirrored back by someone else you also deeply love care about.
So they do have the potential to be these amazing like ecos ecosystems of friendship, but i think they are sabotaged by a few basic things.
I will say most of the psychological research on close friendships or close relationships that you will come across is about dyads, so pairs of people, best friends, romantic partners, You and one other.
The sociologist George Simmel.
In the early 1900s he was actually one of the first to say, like hang on, what about a triad?
What about a group of three?
That isn't the same dynamic as a dyad plus an extra person thrown in there.
The relationship behaves very differently because there are three people.
And Simmel focused a lot on how the exact number of people within a relationship and a friendship just completely changes the dynamic of the relationship itself in a really unique way, like a chemical reaction.
In a dyad, this is the most intimate kind of relationship or friendship you can have.
It's also the most fragile.
If one person walks away, the relationship simply ceases to exist.
It is reliant on both of you choosing to be in the friendship and to show up and to make it work.
All the attention, all the conflict, the repair, the reassurance moves directly between the two of you.
So there's kind of nowhere to hide.
There's no buffer.
In a dyad, also, there is no majority.
It's just two individuals who need to work things out as people.
In a triad however, a group of three, the group can actually survive the partial withdrawal of one member, like the relationship between any two people, is supported by the third person but can exist by itself and this makes the entire group kind of stable and supposedly, according to the research, a lot harder to break.
You know, if two friends argue, the third person can step in and be a mediator, or if one person leaves, the remaining two can continue the group.
Social network researchers, particularly two researchers, Kenneth Goh and David Crackheart.
They explore this with their idea of semelian ties.
And this is basically a close social tie that is embedded completely within a three-person network.
We form a similian tie when two people have a strong and mutual relationship with each other and they also have a strong and mutual relationship with a third person who they have in common.
What comes out of that is actually four relationships, not just one.
When you have two people in a relationship, you have one relationship.
When you have three people in a friendship, you actually have four.
So you might be very close to friend A, who is friends with friend B, who then becomes your friend, your C.
This creates an AB, BC and CA relationship, but also an ABC relationship within one small group.
Four relationships for three people and for one person larger relationship, and that's incredibly complex.
Something interesting that actually occurs in friendship trios is that every member typically takes on their own unique role.
I think there are three main roles in every friendship trio.
This isn't necessarily scientific, it's just something i've noticed by talking to people in my own life and with my researcher.
The first is the bridge builder.
Every single friendship trio has an organizer, has the center of command.
They have this one person whose kind of calendar is like the guiding force of the friendship.
They start the group chats.
They remember the birthdays.
They buy the football tickets.
They book dinner.
They tend to do a lot of like the practical maintenance that keeps these really intimate ties active and sustained.
Then there is the emotional anchor.
This is the person who everyone seems to turn to when things are tricky.
They are very emotive.
They're a deep feeler.
They're an advice giver.
They also often end up being the mediator, the group mediator.
I've noticed that the one person Who manages the emotions of the group is normally the one that's most likely to fall between the other two parties and is most likely to have to really deal with other people snarking about the other person and dealing with the other people venting about the other person in the group.
They might not do a lot of the practical load, they do a lot of the emotional load.
So there's upsides and downsides with each role.
The third role I often see is what I call the wildcard role. or the energy bringer.
These are the people that are just essentially the chaos.
Like they always have an outrageous story.
They always make the last minute plans.
They always have the unhinged voice notes.
They might be less practically consistent, less emotionally consistent, but they are a source of what I would say is a huge amount of the group's fun spontaneity, maybe even entertainment.
Now, of course, these roles can overlap.
The organizer might also be the emotional anchor.
The wild card might also be the bridge builder or the organizer.
In a healthy trio, these roles are actually shared around.
So there isn't one person doing all the emotional work all the time or all the planning all the time.
But we tend to kind of fall into, if you're in a friendship trio, one of these three groups.
And this dynamic can explain why trios matter can actually feel so comforting when they are working, because everybody is kind of playing their part.
It also kind of explains why small changes can feel really impactful, because this entire social equilibrium will start to feel imbalanced if one person is angry or frustrated and stops playing their role.
If the planner suddenly stops planning, things are going to fall apart.
If the energy giver gives too much chaos, Everybody else is going to be frustrated.
If the emotional anchor feels exhausted and doesn't feel supported themselves, they're going to stop wanting to be somebody that the other people can come to.
The hardest part and the thing I think damages friendship trios the most, is that dynamic when a minor like frustration emerges and it starts to impact how every single member starts to see each other, specifically when two people start to hang out without a third.
Like the story we heard at the beginning.
This is like the thing that I think destroys most friendship trios.
That's where the feeling of being the third wheel starts to creep in.
And this is like make or break.
This is when I think we see them collapse.
I'm going to explain exactly why.
Stick around to hear about it.
We'll be right back after this short break.
New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.
I am Matt.
And I'm Joel.
We are from the How to Money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more and make sense of what's going on out there.
If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen.
Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally.
And I'm Hari Kundabolu.
It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
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Hey there.
This is Dr Jesse Mills, Director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast.
Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions.
Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken.
But what if the real work isn't physical at all?
To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety and emotional pain.
They were never taught to name.
In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved.
Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion.
Third wheel, the term third wheel.
It's honestly such a brutal phrase, but it captures a feeling I think most people recognize.
It is this sense of being there, but not actually feeling wanted.
Not feeling needed in a situation.
Like the third wheel of a bike.
Like we all know the bike can function just with two.
The third wheel knows the bike doesn't need it.
What we're really describing though, is social ostracism, that feeling of being ignored, excluded or kind of sidelined out of a social group.
There has been actual research on what this does to us psychologically, mainly by one American researcher called Kipling Williams.
He and his colleagues basically created this experimental condition called cyberball.
It's become very well known.
This is what cyberball is.
It's an experiment or experimental condition where participants are put into a group and they're told to throw the ball back and forth with two or three other people, either online or in person.
They could be in a room.
They could also be doing it as like a video game.
At first they toss it to you and you toss it back to them and everybody's getting a bit of the ball.
Then in this experimental condition without explanation, all the other players just stop throwing to you.
The other two people, the other three people, what you don't know is that they're imposters.
The game carries on.
You are never thrown the ball again.
Like even talking about that feels like a school sports nightmare.
But this study is really important in seeing the effects of being left out.
And there was a meta-analysis of I think like 120 specific cyberball studies.
I think there was like 12000 participants in these studies overall which found that even this small artificial exclusion created a really large mental effect.
Participants felt panicked, they got angry, they started crying, they got confused.
Sometimes they even reported like literal physical pain.
But And this effect, this deeply psychological effect, this happens even though there was no big drama, nobody was hurt, there was no insults.
Just quietly being left out was enough to have a significant impact on these people.
Let's bring that back to the trio, to our friend at the beginning of the episode.
If this reaction in this cyberball game happens with strangers...
Who you don't know at all.
No wonder you're feeling so upset when it's your best friends.
And they, metaphorically, stop passing the ball to you.
The initial pain of exclusion, like that's just the first layer, right?
The second layer is the self-interrogation that comes with that.
We could also call this like social specific rumination, but it's when you've been excluded, and then you start to look for an explanation within your own behavior.
So you start to replay conversations, you blame yourself, you're scanning all your memories for what went wrong.
You're hyper-analyzing your behavior.
From an evolutionary standpoint, this might make perfect sense even though it's really frustrating.
You basically want to know where you went wrong and how you can fix it.
For most of human history, your survival depended on being part of a small group.
For food, for protection, childcare information.
Being socially excluded meant you would have less access to those resources, less protection and a higher chance of literally dying.
So it makes sense for natural selection to kind of build a brain that is hypersensitive to any signs of rejection, especially in a group and even long before actual abandonment happens.
In the 1995 paper titled Need to Belong it's one of our essential readings the authors argue that belonging and feeling seen and included is just as fundamental as shelter, as security, as warmth.
A lack of belonging is linked to literal health problems increased risk of getting dementia, increased risk of getting sick more often, virus susceptibility.
Researchers later took this further and they argued that social exclusion is processed using the same systems in our brain that handle physical pain.
Basically, evolution has co-opted the pain system to ensure that we pay attention to threats to our sense of belonging and to being excluded.
Feeling like the third wheel and having a deeply painful reaction to that is not stupid.
You are not overreacting.
There is scientific evidence here that this is like this sucks like biologically, your body is is primed to push back against this and it really does.
I like it hurts us on a physical level.
I think it gets even more complicated with three people rather than with the big group, because You now have the minimum number you need for alliances.
In conflict situations, there is always going to be an odd one out.
Or when people are disagreeing, there's always going to be somebody who's left out.
You can't split three evenly.
Simple maths.
Either the group splits three ways or more often two pair off.
And this is when the fact that there are three of you and there is an quote unquote, spare or an extra bonus member at any given time.
That is when this becomes a deeper unraveling for dynamics like this.
There is a 2021 paper literally called Friendship Jealousy.
Tools for Maintaining Friendships in the Face of Third Party Threats.
That was published in I think it was the Journal of.
Must have been the Journal of Social Psychology.
And what this paper shows so well is how, when there is a third person, when you can see the threat of you being replaced, you act differently.
Across 11 studies, researchers found that often friendship jealousy is uniquely triggered, not just by
The idea that your friend might not like you anymore or could be taken away, but by third party threats.
So not just the idea of losing your friend, but losing them to someone else is more painful.
And it makes us especially sensitive to cues of being replaced by the third person in the friendship.
Because we can see this person.
We can literally...
We know that this person is a nice person.
We know that these people have a good bond.
It's very easy for us to imagine them existing and going on without us.
Friendship trios, they just make this so apparent.
And so there is this additional level of competition around who is getting the most contact time, who is getting the most enthusiasm, who is everybody hanging out with more or less that kind of lingers, and it motivates what we call friendship guarding behaviors, these efforts to protect or keep the friendship between you and the one other person safe when you perceive that the other person, the third person, is trying to take them from you.
And how this manifests is again back to those behaviors.
Suddenly, now that you're insecure, you stop telling the other person about your plans.
You stop including them.
You stop talking to them.
Even though you know it's wrong, even though you love them, when you feel a sense of threat sometimes, it's just how we naturally behave.
And underneath all of this is...
This like quieter, I think, running calculation about fairness.
Here is where I'm going to introduce one final framework here to show why friendship trails can be so difficult.
It is called the equity framework of relationships.
This framework was developed by the researchers Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher and they suggested that in close relationships we care a lot about the balance between what we give so time care love, money even and what we get support appreciation reliability, that gratitude back, especially when there are other people involved in that same relationship.
When that balance feels off, so when you feel like you're not getting the same amount as that person, who's not getting the same amount as this person, who's giving that person more This ultimately leads to that fear about again being replaced.
It leads to relationship guarding behaviors.
It leads to ostracism.
That is what contributes to friendship breakdown.
It's all interconnected and it all comes back to this deep human desire.
We want to feel important.
We want to feel seen.
We want to feel like we matter in relationships, and Is that just harder when you have a friendship trio?
Is it just impossible to ever equally balance that, just because of the nature or maybe the number of the friendship?
Is that the outcome here?
Like, do we just need to kill off the friendship trio?
Do we just like not have social technology yet to have friendship trios?
Personally, I actually don't think so.
I know I've been quite pessimistic.
I don't think so.
I want to be optimistic here.
Myself here, like I'm in a really healthy state. fun, fulfilling friendship trio.
I have been for like almost four years, so I want to believe that it's possible.
But I think some of the reasons I do think it works come down to how that friendship operates and what I've kind of learned from also some of the mistakes we've made and the ways that we've kind of made the trio as healthy as possible.
And I want to kind of share a what those are with you guys who are in a friendship trio and wanting to make sure that, like you've still got your friends in five years, or that you guys don't have some like awful, heinous friendship breakup.
So my first tip or way that I think friendship trios work, is when you are able to acknowledge that sometimes you are just going to be jealous and And sometimes what's worse is that jealousy is maybe going to be justified.
A healthy trio is not one where nobody ever feels left out.
Hopefully you feel that way 95 of the time, but there are going to be times where it's just unavoidable.
Even if it is not true.
Somebody might just perceive that they are being left out or that they weren't invited or that there was some hidden conversation happening, even if it's not true.
And a healthy trio is is one where those feelings are survivable because you a feel a deep sense of trust in the other people, that they they're not doing that to you, And B because you maintain direct communication rather than simply relying on the mediator to manage communication.
Or rather than just not saying anything at all and expecting it to be okay and for somebody to read your mind.
You know what I think is a huge sign of true emotional maturity and frontal lobe development, especially in our 20s?
It is not being afraid of conflict, because you know that avoiding it hurts everybody more from a practical level,
Maybe you've even learnt that lesson the hard way a few times.
One of the easiest traps that trios slide into is that they have side conversations rather than shared ones.
It definitely feels safer in the moment to be like, oh my god, this person is really annoying me.
She really pissed me off when she did that.
But over time, little alliances do start to form.
People start second guessing what's being said about them when they're not there.
You start to think like if I'm having those conversations with that person, they're probably having those conversations about me.
And so there's like this low level paranoia.
Basically, what we are describing here is the stage right before resentment.
And we know from many key leading relationship institutes and experts that resentment erodes relationships faster than probably nothing else.
Whatever your impulse is to shove it down, to ignore it, you have to fight against that impulse.
You have to swallow your pride and you have to say something because two options come out of that.
A you get through it unharmed, you patch it up, you understand each other better.
Now you, I really don't think you know somebody, especially a friend, until you've had a first fight, and so it's kind of a rite of passage.
You guys get through it and it's amazing.
Or b you say something and you realize like this person was never going to be able to survive tough times with me anyways, And I can stop tiptoeing like this was never going to work, because here is this opportunity.
We have to work through it and they're not taking it.
So I think, if nothing else and this is going to sound so barbaric but if nothing else it's efficient.
It's just purely efficient to talk to people about your problems.
Okay, so we are going to take one more short break here before we get into my final three tips for maintaining friendship.
Trios
The next one, by the way, is probably the most important of them all.
So stay with us.
New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.
I am Matt.
And I'm Joel.
We are from the How to Money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more and make sense of what's going on out there.
If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen.
Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally.
And I'm Hari Kundabolu.
It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be.
I like to sleep in late and sleep early.
Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight.
You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that.
We break down the topics you want to know more about.
Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy.
We human beings, all we want is connection.
We just want to connect with each other.
Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were.
It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow.
It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help.
I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons.
This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief relationships and the patterns we inherit.
But don't have to repeat.
Here, we slow down.
We listen.
We learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation.
If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion and purpose.
Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journeys.
Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Della Rocha on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.
Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike Della Rocha and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
Hey there.
This is Dr Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom podcast.
Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions.
Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken.
But what if the real work isn't physical at all?
To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety and emotional pain.
They were never taught to name.
In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved.
Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion.
If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath.
Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
That I really recommend for flourishing friendship trios.
It's like a tongue twister.
Flourishing friendship trios.
That's not that bad.
It's allowing the central or core person to change over time.
Trios are... naturally dynamic like we've talked about these roles there will be phases when one person is more central whether that is because they are I don't know going through a breakup or because they're you know the ones who are organizing everything or I don't know like Maybe they're like they're getting married or the ones with like the most energy at the time.
Transitioning this over time and letting people flow into different roles and flow into like, different seasons, and be the one that takes on more and be the one that takes on less, I think prevents the resentment creeping in when you feel like you always have to show up in a certain way.
If you feel like this is kind of weird and you're like, wait, things are changing.
Wait, this person is making is isn't making as many plans like blah, blah, blah.
Maybe it is your time to step into that role yourself.
It is easy to see change, as this thing that is like life ending threatening is going to ruin the friendship.
But if nothing major or dramatic has happened, it may be that like you're just resettling into a new way of relating to each other, or just your new roles.
So accept that change in your friendship is going to happen and just see how things fit.
It's like romantic relationships.
People need to take turns being different versions of themselves in the relationship, right?
It is super normal.
So you have to accept that just like you have to accept jealousy.
My third tip might sound a little bit counterintuitive at first, but I cannot also stress the importance enough of investing in the individual friendships first.
You might hear me say that and be like, wait, hold up.
Aren't we talking about how friendship trios always collapse because people feel left out?
Yes, sometimes.
But if we think back to the concept of similian ties, the trio is built on three strong connections plus the fourth big one.
If these individual connections aren't well maintained, if you and the other person separately don't know each other or aren't really hanging out with each other well enough, the trio is going to start to weaken, simply because the ties that make it up are weak as well.
Obviously, don't take a private bloody trip to new york and not tell the other person, because that's insane but like, go and grab coffee just with one friend sometimes, or go for long walks just with the other friend.
It also stops you from becoming dependent on one person to carry the dynamic.
If you're close to both people in the group, then this is good practice.
It's not weird.
It shouldn't be uncomfortable when one of you isn't available or when one of you just wants to do something with the other person.
What it does mean though, is that you've also you've got to be okay with your friends doing stuff without you from time to time, Because back to that big T word like you trust that you also have spaces where you are central to, and each relationship is equally as strong as the next one.
Really, it's a trust exercise.
We're coming back to this again and again.
At the end of the day, you have to know in your deepest of hearts that these people love you.
They're not going to leave you out.
Your friendship can survive change.
Now, to wrap up this episode, let's return to the dilemma at the beginning.
And what happens if none of this is working, your friendship is just falling apart.
It is in like a tailspin, like it is going down.
What do we do then?
What do we do when we're unsure, if we want to continue the friendship trio or the friendship singular?
My advice is for this person again, but also for all situations like this in general, is When you find yourself in a dynamic like this, where something has happened, a situation has occurred, please talk about it as quickly as possible.
Do not ignore that advice.
Do not let an emotional wound fester.
If it has gotten to that point where, like you guys, are at a stalemate, be the bigger person and reach out.
And I know you probably don't want to hear that.
You probably hate hearing that.
But really the question is this.
Is this friendship worth it to you?
Is it worth saving?
How long have you been friends?
Have you made similar mistakes in the past and been forgiven?
Is this something I think that we can recover from?
It doesn't have to be a mutual decision.
But if you decide like, hey, yeah, I actually love this person.
I'm going to regret not trying to fix this.
I care about them enough to do the hard thing.
You've got to follow that instinct and you've got to do it.
Prepare to be honest.
Go in it with like your heart on your sleeve.
But I think you cannot fix...
And you cannot get out of this if things aren't in the open.
You need to seriously be like, this sucked.
And I'm really upset.
And I'm going to let you guys also deal with the consequences of your actions through my emotions.
I do want some kind of apology.
I do want some kind of acknowledgement.
But it doesn't mean that we can't get over this.
Everybody in this situation, and I think this is what friendship trues and friendships in general.
Every single one of them will acquire this at some point.
Somebody needs to swallow their pride.
And if they do acknowledge it and they sincerely apologize, don't forgive them straight away.
Go away for a few days.
See how you feel.
Has that apology helped?
What kind of changes are you expecting?
What is going to be the line you don't want crossed?
And move on from there.
If they don't apologize, if the radio silence continues, if they don't, take accountability.
I'm sorry but I just don't think it's in your hands anymore and I think that's nice that you know you tried.
You were the one who was the bigger person.
Maybe you just need to let the friendship rest for a bit.
Nobody else can draw that line for you, but I think some red flags that often signal that the trio is doing more harm than good are when you do feel chronically left out.
You do feel really anxious rather than excited or happy before seeing them.
After spending time together as well, you know, you regularly leave feeling smaller than when you arrived.
You feel ganged up on, you feel belittled, you feel isolated.
You might also feel kind of ashamed or overstimulated.
Like you really had to put a lot of energy into this rather than just seeing your friends.
And I think the biggest sign that the friendship is done is when you just don't like who you are when you shop with the group.
Maybe because it is making you feel defensive or jealous or needy.
I think a lot of this is because often when we know something is wrong, we can sense it.
When we know people are trying to exclude us, we can sense it.
And so we become very hypervigilant out of fear, and that just makes us feel all these kinds of really irritated emotions to do with the friendship trio that just like bleeds in and destroys everything.
If this friendship is making you feel exhausted rather than lighter, it's simply not worth it.
And there will be more people out there who value you and value your time and will be receptive to you now that you have more time for them rather than for these people that might not care about you.
The practical side of leaving can be really difficult.
You know, you often feel like you're losing two friendships at once, plus the friendship of the three of you.
And I feel for you and I'm really sorry.
It doesn't mean the door is closed forever.
What I would say is, if you find yourself in this situation, try not to ghost, don't just disappear and stop replying to your friends, like it sounds like our listener's friends are doing to her.
I know that that might be tempting and I think throughout this conversation there's been obvious easy routes that we can take, but you don't want to give people ammunition to say that you didn't try or say that it was your fault.
You don't want to give people ammunition to justify shitty behavior.
The best you can do now is focus on living with the knowledge.
I did what I could.
I tried.
There are no good and bad guys, but I'm definitely trying my hardest to be good in this situation to the people I love.
Don't be too hard on yourself.
Again, you did your best.
I will also say this, one final word of advice.
Their decisions and their actions will not be without remorse.
If you've found a deeply important friendship trio are otherwise exploding.
Like, not to sound threatening, but they will regret it.
They will.
Someday in the future.
They are going to think about you and they're going to think about the memories you're probably contemplating as well right now.
And they're going to say to themselves, like, Oh my god, I really missed that person.
I think I really screwed that up.
Sometimes, what makes these situations hard is because we start to drive ourselves crazy, thinking like did they ever even care about me?
Did I waste all this time?
Kind of like we do with an ex.
And they do.
And they did.
And they will continue to care about you.
It's up to you whether you want to leave the door open.
I think that you should.
I think there's always chances for redemption in, even if it's not tomorrow, if it's in 10 years, or at least for reminiscing.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope that it was informative and is helping you if you're in a hard time or situation like this.
Our question for today, if you have made it this far, thank you for listening.
Thank you for being a loyal listener.
In the comments below, what is your favorite depiction of good friendship in a movie or tv show?
I'll go first.
Mine is goodwill hunting, for sure all-time favorite movie depicting friendship.
But drop yours below.
Make sure you're also following us on instagram or wherever you are listening.
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Give us a five star review if you feel called to do so, And thank you, as always, to our researcher, Libby Colbert, for her contributions to this episode.
She is marvelous.
I don't know what we would do without her.
Until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, and we will talk very, very soon.
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