Gemma Spake

You know, if one person walks away, the relationship simply ceases to exist.

You know, 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, like 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 Crackhart, they explore this with their idea of similian 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.