Thirds

7 September 2008 at 2:00 pm (Love & Relationships) (, , , , , , , , , , , , , )


I’ve always chosen to keep my friends separated. I did this because of a bad experience I had YEARS ago in highschool. I learned my lesson and applied it. But this year, I decided to let it go and amalgamate friendships. Why not? I was grown now. A completely different person from the teen back in highschool. Funny thing is, I’d changed but the situation hadn’t.

I have work friends, school friends, friends of friends, ex boyfriends that are friends and so on and so on. But I keep them all separate because having a third is always trouble. There is MAJOR truth to the saying “three’s a crowd”. I heed that saying.

When you have a friendship of two people and a third person is introduced you run the risk of “chatting”. If there is a fight between you and your friend, you run the risk of the third being the “go to person”. You run the risk of being the ousted one. You run the risk of being talked about. You run the risk of losing your initial friendship. Some people may say that’s juvenile or immature thinking. I say otherwise. If you love your friends and deeply cherish your friendships then this would be of concern to you. You’d think grown people wouldn’t HAVE to worry about such things but I was recently reminded that I do. And I was recently reminded why I keep my friends separated. But I wont get into that on here. Onto something else.

Let’s use Facebook as an example. People see you on someones wall, or in someones album and they see your tag and they want to add you. They are curious for whatever reason. I personally don’t add randoms unless someone sends a note along with. People add me more than I add them, truthfully. I rarely send out friend requests. I just don’t need nor want people in my business like that. So, I’m careful about who I add. But I’ve had people (mutual friends) ask me “how do you know this person?”  or “why did you add this person?”  I’m sorry.  I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to add someone JUST because they knew you or that I had to ask first. At first it was amusing. Now its just stupid. If I see someone become friends with someone I know, I don’t care or ask questions. I know how Facebook works. The only time I’d be curious is if it was my ex-boyfriend or someone I was currently dating or liking or what have you. But even then, I wouldn’t ask. LOL. I don’t have control over who adds whom. For any of MY friends reading this, understand I don’t seek out your friends list for your friends. Chances are hugely great that if you see a friend of yours on MY list, its because THEY added ME. **Sorry, I went off on a little rant there**.

The other kind of third that I hate are relationship thirds. I used to love playing matchmaker. I used to love setting up my friends. I was SO good at it. But I haven’t been able to do that since graduation. Sadly, these days, most of my male friends are exes. Which isn’t a bad thing. It just means that while I wouldn’t mind hooking them up with my girls, my girls aren’t really trying to date men I’ve been with. And to an extent I can understand. I’m over them so it wouldn’t be awkward to me, though it might to others. I have to respect that, so I no longer initiate matches. I’m not against doing it though. If I think two of my friends would compliment each other, I do everything in my power (even sneakily), to get them together. But not everyone feels the same way. My girl told me that when two of her friends talk she likes to stay out of it. I agree. I understand her position. You don’t want to end up stuck in the middle. But then there are some other people who say things like, “I would never hook up you with so and so and etc etc”. And I often wonder why? I wonder if it’s because these people have feelings for the third or what? Jealous because the third didn’t like them or choose them?

I’ve noticed that when two friends start dating, the third party then feels left out. I often feel tension results. One would think there would be nothing of the sort unless feelings or emotional attachments were somehow severed. But this is only in theory. It’s not fact. I haven’t had to deal with this type of situation as yet. I hope I never have to.

But regardless, I think I need to go back to my highschool way of thinking. Sad as that may sound, I may have been onto something all those years ago. I think I need to keep people separate. Let people have their friends and their lives and they can let me have mine. Otherwise, the outcome seems pretty grim. And no one wants that, right?

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