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A few months ago I was on the phone with my newly divorced sister Brett, and she told me that her social life in Palm Springs had become hanging out with all couples.
And she loved it.
She's still relatively new to Palm Springs after many years of living in New York.
She hoped that when she moved to this new town she could find one building where a bunch of cool people lived, so she could have instant friends.
Kind of like the show Friends, actually.
She'd tell me, Meredith, I just want adult college.
But the reality was, there was no magic building full of instant best friends.
No Melrose Place.
At least not for her.
But what she did find were magic couples.
She'd find one couple, and then another.
Sometimes those couples would introduce her to other couples.
She realized that as her world grew in this brand new place, her best nights, out or in, were with two married people, with herself serving as platonic third.
Brett realized she was starting to become the happiest third wheel ever.
Brett had never been a person who had an aversion to hanging out with couples before this.
In fact, when she was in a couple, she often hung out with a lot of couples on her own.
But of course, that's a different mindset.
Because she was married for a long time.
Brett actually didn't have much experience hanging out as a single person with couples before.
As a divorced person, third wheeling didn't scare her, but she had no idea it would be so awesome.
And I was like dude, you're learning the lesson that I have known for decades, which is that being the third wheel, as a single person always gets a bad rap.
But actually, It can be the best, depending on the couples and you.
It seemed worthy to explore this concept how third wheels can be the best wheels to be and how to get the experience right.
This episode is dedicated to odd numbers, the unattached, and to the welcoming couples who truly believe the more the merrier.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
So as I was saying, Brett and I had this conversation months ago about her third wheeling lifestyle.
She said, why are single people put off by the idea of third wheeling with a couple?
Why do we even call it a third wheel?
How do you define third wheel?
Who's a third wheel?
Usually a third wheel is someone that's tagging along with a couple.
And in the world, it generally has a negative connotation.
Like, oh, poor girl.
You say girl.
Is it always girls?
Like, I don't know.
There are a lot of movies where there are third wheel dudes.
Like actually I saw a story in The Globe from years ago where somebody talked about Owen Wilson playing an incredible third wheel in whatever comedy was big at the time.
It doesn't have to be women, right?
It doesn't.
But if we're going to talk about, oh, poor girl, we are rarely saying, oh, poor girl to Owen Wilson.
Like, let's face facts.
The poor girl or poor anyone thing has never made sense to me.
Because in my experience, especially in my late 30s, third wheeling was actually amazing.
In that era of my life, friends my age were mostly coupled and they'd become grownups.
They were often in double income homes, sometimes with no children.
So as a third wheel, I was treated like a special baby, like a prize the couple had won and must care for.
Somehow it was never patronizing.
It was cozy.
The couples I'd hang out with, sometimes they'd pay for me because they were doing couple math.
At the end of a dinner, they'd say, oh, well, there are two of us and only one of you.
We might as well pay for your dinner.
And I'd be like, okay.
They were always worried about my temperature.
Are you hot?
Are you cold?
I always got to be the tiebreaker on things to do.
These couples also boosted me a lot.
They told me how great I was doing.
They never made me feel lonely.
So after talking to Brett I had to work backwards and think why do we feel bad about third wheeling or the concept of third wheels?
Some of it is what we're taught to believe about single people and odd numbers.
Movies and TV shows are certainly better than they used to be about highlighting the stories of single people.
But there's still an ongoing narrative that single people aren't finished and that when they hang out with a couple they're sad or in the way.
There's also the other version of this, which is that I often see shows about single people, but when they hang out with a couple on that show, the couples are shown to be boring and the worst company ever.
There's not a lot of mixing of coupled and single characters.
There are also natural dynamics at play that are real, especially when we're young.
When people first start their romantic lives, often in their teens or 20s, they have a level of interest and hormones that can make them absorbed with the object of their affection.
That means if you're the third person hanging out with a couple, it can kind of feel like being invisible.
I absolutely remember being in high school and hanging out with a couple and thinking they do not want me here.
I'm basically pretending not to see them kiss.
I'm not even sure they'd notice if I left.
But what about when you're older?
Let's say over 25.
I did a call out to readers of the Love Letters column asking for their third wheel takes.
Did they like being a third wheel?
Did they not?
Did they avoid hanging out with couples if they're single?
Some answers were positive about third wheeling, some very negative.
Many people said it takes the right circumstances for it to work.
What are the right circumstances?
Brett and I decided to work this out together with help from one of her couple friends.
Let's narratively go through the friends in Palm Springs you've made, for whom you delightfully.
Third wheel
Okay, you're my primaries first.
I've got Brad and Marco.
My second, shockingly, I think for me, is a straight couple.
And it's Bob and Molly.
We met one night at Coco Cabana where she has a home hanging out with her and her friends.
And then they invited me over for dinner the next night along with the same group of people.
And I would say even it was less than a week later And it was like you want to come over and, like you know, watch movies and hang out, meet dinner or whatever.
And I felt so comfortable with them that they were like oh, you want to like, should we watch a Nora?
OK, cool.
And I like fell asleep sitting up like on the couch.
And I think I even like spent the night that night, not in a sexual way.
I was just kind of like, OK, Jason and Franklin, my neighbors, Glenn and Gregory.
I met, obviously, because they're downstairs.
Oh, I would say now even Stephen and Byron.
These are two writer friends of mine, and it started with a friendship with Byron.
And that has grown past that.
And yeah, I feel very comfortable hanging out with them.
I feel comfortable with everybody.
Brett's tendency to befriend couples these days is partly Palm Springs.
It is a very coupled town.
Where there is one, there is often two.
One of the biggest success stories for Brett has been the first couple she mentioned, Brad and Marco.
Brad and Marco met years ago on Grindr.
They fell in love.
They began traveling together, realizing how much they loved to see the world.
They have some shared friends.
One close companion is Brad's ex-wife, who is also a co-parent to Brad's grown children.
But this is where we must define third wheels.
Brad and Marco have spent a good amount of time hanging out with Brad's ex-wife, who is single.
But I don't consider her to be their third wheel.
She's their family.
And that doesn't count.
To me a true third wheel friend, as we will define it today third wheel being in all caps with hearts drawn around the letters is a person who gets along almost equally with two people in a couple and is not related to them.
The third wheel loves hanging out with the couple.
The couple also likes the third wheel and respects that person, never making them feel like a hanger-on or ignored.
Brad and Marco both admit that until recently they didn't actually have any single friends who they both really shared, until one day a recently divorced woman walked into a hardware store.
That woman is Brett.
Brad remembers the meet-cute, like this.
I was working at ACE in patio department and she walked in.
A lot of people call it GACE because they always say it's the gayest hardware store in town.
And the patio furniture was over the top, crazy, you know, outrageous stuff.
And that brought a lot of people in.
And it was 530 and she walked in the store because she liked the patio department.
And we started chatting.
It was stores kind of, you know, closes at six.
So we start chatting and we just clicked.
I don't know what it was.
And we just start, we were laughing and having a good time.
And 20 minutes into it, I said, you got to meet my partner.
You two will hit it off like two peas in a pod.
And so we ended up exchanging numbers, but we talked until the store actually was closed.
People were waiting on us to quit our conversation.
And so we exchanged numbers and then eventually went out to dinner.
Brad had never come home before and said Marco, you must meet this woman I'd like us to hang out with.
But that's what happened.
Marco was curious.
Brad told him, you and Brett have both lived in New York.
You have a similar sensibility, maybe a complementary sense of humor.
They schedule a friend date as a trio.
This is Marco.
What was fascinating to me is she drove up as we were parking and she had the exact same vintage Mercedes convertible that I was driving at the time.
So we both had the exact same car, which stunned me.
It was significant because it was such an expression of my personality that car represented as well that I thought, oh my God, this is someone like me that has a lot of the same interests and sensibilities, that she would drive the same car.
Yeah, I just found it very interesting.
I should mention that when Brett bought a zillion-year-old Mercedes convertible for 5000 when she moved to Palm Springs, I found it deeply impractical.
But it was on her bucket list.
That car has since been totaled.
But now, in a very Brett way, I believe it was meant to be.
That the car existed so she could appeal to Marko.
Marco didn't think about it then, but one thing he considers now and is grateful for is Brett wanting to meet him and hang out with the two of them.
Not because he doesn't think he and Brad are a good time, but because back in the day, when Marco himself was single, he didn't hang out with a lot of couples.
He just wasn't interested.
Back then giving the choice of hanging out with a couple or other single people.
It was always an easy decision.
I don't want to say I didn't waste time with couples, but I was mostly hanging out with singles so I could be a couple myself.
And then when I was in a relationship as a couple, I was more focusing on that relationship.
Like I maybe didn't even have a lot of friends.
I think this is going to be my first rule in my guide to healthy and happy third wheeling.
Actually, let's not call anything a rule.
Everything we say today falls under the umbrella of tips.
Points to consider.
Marco reminds me, some single people who are single and actively looking, feel the need to spend every free moment looking.
So if that's you and you just want to hang out with other single people and go out and cruise, of course that's fine.
I would say it sounds like a lot of pressure on you, but I get it.
In Brett's case, she is a bit interested in dating, but at this point in her life she's probably more interested in fun.
So spending the evening with a couple doesn't represent time wasted.
I will also put out there for consideration that if Brett wants romantic love, her best path to finding it might be through a couple like Brad and Marco.
They've lived in Palm Springs for a while now, and if there's a straight dude around Brett's age, they will probably eventually meet him.
This brings me to another tip when trying to have a great third wheel experience.
Marco and Brad went through a 2020 lockdown together.
They've watched a zillion hours of Netflix together.
Years after meeting, they are no longer obsessed with each other to the point where they can't be cool with a third person.
They're in the exact right place to say, let's pay attention to someone else.
This is a reminder to give some grace to new couples who are obsessed with each.
Truly, it's a chemical thing.
But when looking to be a third wheel, I highly recommend finding a couple that's been together for a bit.
For Brad, Marco, and Brett, on all sides, the timing is right.
And there's chemistry.
It is rare that you meet somebody, and I think both of us really like her.
You know, we love to hang out with her.
And we just all get along like it's great when we're all three together.
I don't know.
I don't even have to explain, but we all get along.
What are some of the things that you've done together as a trio?
Oh, my gosh.
Well, we went to this.
What was that concert we went to?
It was a tribute band.
Oh, yeah.
At the Saguaro.
Yeah, they were doing Frank Sinatra songs.
And then we've gone to some outdoor movies, which were fun.
Yeah.
And we've been to the Christmas parade a couple of times.
And that was fun.
So because we've also gone to a lot of things where there have been big parties or something, where she's taken us to parties or we've taken her to parties.
Especially when I was younger, and especially I will say this for single straight women, and maybe more than just that.
Hanging out with a couple can feel bad because it shows you that you don't have what you want.
Or you can feel like your company is not valued.
I think that was a big thing for me when I was in my 20s, because it's not that I wanted to be coupled.
I just had a lot of friends who were becoming coupled and they were so focused on the other person that I was like am I here in this room?
Do you even want me here?
But I also think that was my baggage.
Like I was like oh well, now that they've found this person or now that they're into each other, I am just an accessory.
For those who might feel that way, is Brett an accessory?
I don't think she's an accessory.
I just think she is an amazing friend of ours.
And I think, like I told Brett, I described it with my kids.
I said, somebody asked me which one of my boys I love more or like more.
And I said, I love him equally, but differently.
And I told that to Brett.
With two friends like us, you can love us equally, but differently.
Marco has different interests than I do.
And she seems to relate with both of us in two different ways.
I like it a lot.
I think there are some friends of Brad's that maybe I don't care for as much as he does.
And likewise.
But with Brett I think it is different because we both feel like she's a close friend to each of us.
One thing that might have helped with this chemistry is that Brett met Brad and Marco when they were already coupled.
I have to wonder if she had been friends with one of them for years and the other had come into the picture.
Would it be the same?
I have found that It's easier to pull this off and find this magical dynamic when you meet the couple, when they're a couple.
So it's different when I have a single friend, a single woman friend, let's say, and she falls madly in love with some dude or some woman or some whomever.
And I'm like, oh, the dynamic with me and this person is one thing.
And it may or may not work with the three of us in a more close, intimate way.
That's OK.
I love meeting a couple that's already a couple because then you just slide right in there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I agree.
I'm also a dick, as you well know.
So there's the that where it's like that person better be off the charts exceptional, or it's going to be really challenging for me to wrap my brain around the primary relationship not being me and the friend.
But wouldn't you say you're less judgmental and this person has to be perfect, when you just meet the couple that already exists?
Because they already exist.
Like, you're not like, 100%.
You're going to date my best friend and come in here?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is easier when you're meeting the couple.
This is all touchy-feely and fine.
But it is also not shocking that my wildly outgoing sister has befriended two gay men who are madly in love with each other and find her to be good company.
It's only fair in this episode we get into the parts of third wheeling that can be more difficult.
For instance, when you're friends with a couple and one person in that couple gets mad at the other, what do you do?
Also, when you're a single straight woman and a third wheel to a straight couple...
How does it feel?
Is it different than it is with Brad and Marco?
Should it be?
For Brett, it's a nuanced answer.
Meredith is a constant, constant thing in my head of being like, tone it down.
Tone it down.
Stop.
Whatever you think is a way of connecting and bonding and having fun with somebody, stop it.
Just stop it.
Brett will explain more about complicated third wheeling when we come back.
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There were many moments in my 20s specifically where being around couples made me feel scared that I'd be left on some single person island where no one understood me.
It was partly because everything was new for everybody.
I had to give couples space to fall in love and settle down a bit.
I also needed to get older before I met couples who were confident in their own lives and interested in building a world of many interesting people.
Aging can be great for friendship.
There's another thing that made all of this easier for me specifically.
In my life, I've been into many men, for sure.
But there are also a zillion men that I adore just as a friend.
I don't really get confused about what category people fall into.
I've never felt like my platonic guy friends secretly wanted to sleep with me because they don't.
I also noticed that women in the lives of those men don't seem suspicious of me.
If anything, they might be jealous of the quality time their partner has with me while they're doing things like watching kids, but they seem to know that I'm not out to be with their husbands, and vice versa.
I swear, this is not moral superiority that I am doing right now.
I just never assume sex is going to happen in most situations.
So naturally, things just don't get weird.
My sister.
On the other hand, when she's in social situations, she's often assessing a room For vibes Brett radiates sexual energy a lot.
At a party, she's always going to be thinking about who's hot in the room.
For a long time, she felt really free to share this.
And this gets into a really nuanced conversation about how we think about our own bodies.
Brett used to weigh a lot more, whether it was the right thing to think or not.
When she did weigh more, she felt like she wasn't a threat.
She admits that when she was bigger, she felt comfortable flirting with someone's husband and being like, oh my God, you're so hot.
Because she was thinking, this person isn't going to like me anyway.
It's not actually threatening anybody.
To her, this was all fun and playful and it wasn't actually anything that was going to happen.
So it kind of didn't matter.
But she's lost a lot of weight, especially since moving to Palm Springs.
And now her interactions feel different.
And I think that now, When I'm hanging out with a straight couple, I'm far more conscious of leaning in more to the friendship with the woman.
I am self-aware about the energy, especially because I do have all of this sexual energy.
I get treated differently by doctors.
I get treated differently by so many people.
So it's like, be cool about how body positive society is.
Say those things, but also I know the difference.
And with that difference comes a respect and a boundary that she says probably should have been there all along.
With her straight married friends for whom she third wheels.
She sees them both as platonic companions.
She realizes she doesn't want to treat straight men like she might treat Brad and Marco and say, oh my God, you look so hot right now.
It just doesn't feel the same.
And it's not about I want to sleep with you.
There's none of that going on there.
It's just like how I connect with everybody.
But like that goes over way better even with like any woman, no matter what her sexuality is.
I have to be aware.
And then I think back at the way I used to be.
I know that the majority of the world sees me differently and therefore I have to adjust my behavior.
Do I like it?
I do not like it.
I don't like it.
I miss being able to just be Another thing.
However she perceived herself, up until recently, Brett herself was also married.
With straight people, she's also now thinking, wait, suddenly I'm legitimately single.
Okay, so, but...
This speaks to a difference between the two of us which we've long talked about, which is in that way that you're saying oh, even if I didn't want to have sex with these people, when you were younger, you were programmed to walk into a room and think ooh, what could be possible.
Who might assess whom in what way?
Like I have never understood the question of.
Well, would it be weird to third wheel with a straight couple and be with them all the time?
Because I'm like, why?
I am probably like inherently really good at at being a third wheel for straight couples, because I'm not fucking thinking about it.
And the vibes you're getting from me are deeply not sexual.
What's the opposite of sexy vibes?
I'm getting like, I'm the opposite of that.
Sibling vibes.
Sibling vibes, friend vibes.
I'm having gastrointestinal problems vibe and I want to tell you about it.
Before we get into more gastrointestinal talk.
All of this is to say Brett admits that as a more frequent third wheeler she tries to be very thoughtful when she's with her straight friends.
She also knows that she can think of friends' husband as cute without it having to mean anything.
This was always the case and is the case for humans in general.
Sometimes friends find each other attractive, but don't act on it because of friendship.
The boundaries are everything.
The other thing Brett has to think about something I've had to think about as someone who has third wheeled with so many is fights conflicts being a tiebreaker when it's uncomfortable.
Sometimes couples fight.
Sometimes they break up.
More likely they fight.
More likely they're secretly pissed at each other.
And if you are truly a third wheel who connects to both of them.
Do you run the risk of being in the middle of a conflict you do not want to be in the middle of?
How do you handle it if one person is like, actually, this other person is pissing me off?
Like, where are the lines there?
With Brad and Marco, I'll talk about them as an example.
If Brad and Marco have a problem, I don't think either one of them goes to other people.
I mean, unless it's a therapist or something like that.
I don't think that they're going to other people in their lives and venting or processing.
I actually think that for Brad, I am that person and marco doesn't really do that with me, but like brad does, and then brad, every single time, will do all the things and then have a guilt spiral and freak out about it and and just be like i'm putting you in such a bad position and like you need to talk to, like and i'm just like what do you think i walk around the planet thinking that marco is perfect in every way.
It is totally fine.
It is totally safe for you to say all these things.
And then I can do this dance like this is fine.
Part of Brett's comfort with this is that she's had a lot of her own relationship experience.
She's very empathetic about couples having weirdness and it not having to mean they're a bad couple.
This is one way third wheels can be a gift to couples who want support.
If a friend loves you and a partner pretty equally, they can hear your problems without jumping to your defense for no good reason.
They can want the best for you as a couple, maybe sometimes to a fault.
But they're not like other friends, the people who care about just you the most, who might say he sucks, go be single without truly rooting for your happiness and history as a duo.
I think, as a third wheel, it is in your best interest for these couples to figure it out and stay together.
So one of these people can go to a friend who knew them before they got together with this person and they might be very unforgiving and uncharitable to the partner.
Whereas because you have met them in their happy state, now going to you says I want someone who gets why I love this person.
So like you pick different audiences when you complain about somebody and they could go to the person who's like.
I don't even know that guy.
Fuck that guy.
But they're going to you and you spend time with both of them.
So that's a choice, too.
Like I think of the third wheel person.
Like you know some of the people I third wheel for in my life.
I know when they're coming to me, what they're really coming to me for is you love us.
Remind me why you love us.
Brett actually thinks of one couple in her life where anytime they fight she's like wait no, I love you.
Please be okay.
To couples, Brett and I both say know that your diehard third wheels are probably going to err on the side of positivity.
I will say that what you just said really, really resonated because Meredith, the truth is, when there are issues, bottom line and I've just really recently made this discovery is I want them to stay together.
It is like subconscious, where I will reframe things in a way that are super in favor of like them as a unit, or seeing what works in the relationship, or seeing what works in like the person that done you wrong in this particular set of circumstances.
And yes, it is because I love being a part of their, of that universe, so much that It's a lot of dynamics to think about for couples and for all of the wheels.
I wanted to do this episode about third wheeling to celebrate how wonderful it can be to be a non-sexual third with a couple.
I happen to think it's an underrated experience.
But please know this episode is not meant to tell anyone that you have to try this and like it, or that if you're single and don't have a couple to hang out with, you're missing out on yet another thing.
That is not my goal here.
This episode is meant to say that sometimes I feel like we can make assumptions about what an experience will be like and feel like, and what community is good for us.
We rule out people for no good reason.
We neglect to invite people for no good reason.
And, by the way, that was a common complaint I received in emails when I asked for third wheel experiences.
Many single people said, I'd be fine as a fifth member of a group on vacation.
I would love to be the third wheel at a dinner out.
But the couples, they don't invite me.
Couples, please consider that.
The truth is, there were absolutely moments in my life when hanging out with couples made me feel less lonely about being single than hanging out with single people.
And sometimes it was exactly the opposite.
But the more I was open to being friends with all people and didn't rule out their company based on relationship status, the more I found happiness.
We're all just looking for connection.
It can come in all forms.
One thing that tickled me a few months ago was that Brett called and said she was having her first colonoscopy as a single person out in Palm Springs.
Brett and I have to get a lot of colonoscopies because both of our parents had some form of colon cancer.
Brett had only ever been taken to a colonoscopy by romantic partners or by me.
Meanwhile, I've only ever been taken by friends and my cousins.
I was like, Brett, it's fine, as long as you're taken by someone you trust.
In case you don't know, colonoscopies involve being put in twilight sleep.
So you need a ride home, and sometimes you might be a little farty and weird.
So it's nice to be chauffeured with a loved one when you're done.
It's an intimate experience.
Brett called Brad and asked him to take her to her appointment.
And of course he said yes.
When Marco found out about it, he felt left out.
He says to Brad, can I go too?
I typically don't do mornings, but when Brett made sure that Brad had your phone number and was taking some precautions because it was a minor procedure, But still I thought you know, this is a bigger deal.
This is this is a big enough deal that I want to be there for her.
I also suffer from FOMO, you know, fear of missing out that I didn't want to miss anything.
Although a colonoscopy is not high on my priority list.
But I, you know, I went for the experience.
I got up.
I mean, she was surprised that I was there.
She was also surprised that I was dressed so sharply.
A sports jacket.
Well, I mean, if you're going to wake up and you're half asleep and your hair's standing straight up, good clothes make a difference.
So it worked for me.
And I actually had a good time.
Probably a better time than she did.
But yeah, I'm glad I went.
It was very sweet because... you know, our mom died of colon cancer and our dad had colon cancer.
So colonoscopies are always quite a bit fraught.
So the fact that someone could take her and then you both come and it's like like a night out, was really special to her.
I know.
I'm glad because, and I was kind of thrilled that Marco wanted to go too.
He got up, raring to go.
Now, as Brett and Brad and Marco grow as friends.
Brad and Marco have to wonder, what will happen if there's a fourth wheel?
Brett could meet someone, and then the group grows.
Maybe that person feels left out because everyone's so used to three.
When you think about Brett eventually coupling and I think about this with friends where there's these feelings of oh I hope this is somebody who can add to the group, as opposed to change the dynamic.
What do the two of you hope for selfishly when you think about Brett meeting someone?
Well, I hope that we get along.
And, you know, sometimes I think about her meeting somebody who's like I better check this guy out first, you know.
But I want her to be happy number one.
And I just hope that we can all get along and still hang out and still have the same dynamics.
Brett's, you know, she's a straight shooter.
And I just don't foresee a any different relationship, even if she was coupled.
I'm looking forward to, yes, another person that will be interesting and fun and add to it.
And more importantly, I'm looking for someone that will make her happy.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
This episode was produced by Jasmine Aguilera.
Story edit by Veronica Chow.
Sound design by Jasmine Aguilera.
Special thanks to Linda Henry and Brian McGrory.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage singlehood whatever, to loveletters at bostoncom.
When you send a question, you help people who are wondering the same thing.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
As I'm getting older, I'm seeing a lot of people riding on the bike trails here with e-trikes.
And I'm thinking, you know, a third wheel actually adds stability and balance.
And so, you know, it comes off almost like a negative term, a third wheel.
But in reality, a third wheel can add balance and safety.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
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