Throughout my entire life, I’ve had a plethora of friendships, each with its own particular dynamic. I’ve been in huge friend groups, I’ve had “guy best friends,” I’ve had friends I talk to every day and some I barely talk to once a month. While these friendships come, go, or stick, the ones I’ve been happy to let pass by are the friend groups between 3 people. Inevitably at one time or another, we’ve all found ourselves in a triple friendship. At first, it seems perfect, you’re able to be friends with two people you truly enjoy being around and who support you. However, after a while, the inevitable roles each person plays in a friendship of 3 can easily take a toll on the friendship. Here are the 3 roles I’m talking about:
PERSON 1: The dividing factor
This is the person that brings the 3 individuals together. Whenever I’ve been in a 3-person friendship there is always one dividing factor- this person basically created the friend group. Without them, the friendship between the 2 others would not exist, they might not even know each other.
PERSON 2: the best friend
Between the 2 other people that aren’t the dividing factor, there is one of them that is just slightly closer to person 1 than the other. Sometimes this person is just closer because they’ve known each other for longer or maybe because they have more in common, either way, there is just something in between person 1 and 2 that is more tight-knit.
person 3: the addition
While person 3 may not have been as close with person 1 as person 2 is, they get along with both and are kind of like the cherry on top of the friend group. Whoever is the 3rd person may feel left out if the first and second friends hang out without the third.
The most prominent three-person friend group I’ve ever had began in middle school. My closest friend (at the time) and I became really good friends with another girl. One day we realized we were all friends so we started hanging out with all three of us. While at the start my closest friend and I started as the “best friend” and the “dividing factor,” it turns out that I ended up as “the addition.” As we’ve gotten older, these roles continue to change and our dynamic continues to shift, leaving us where we began: friends separately, not altogether.
At first, bringing two friends together to create a friend group of 3 sounds convenient, but in the end, the tensions and conflict due to the dynamic always prove difficult. The imbalance of 3 creates these alternating “roles,” ultimately always leaving one friend feeling out of the mix. Experiencing these friendship dynamics has led me to keep my friendships or friend groups balanced, hoping to illuminate the disparity among friends.