Gemma Spake

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 that you're in 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 what'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.

gratitude back especially when there are other people involved in that same relationship when that balance feels off so when you feel 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.

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?