Being a Third Wheel

Last night I was out at a local festival with a good friend of mine. Let's call her J. J and I are very similar in many respects - tomboy-ish, recent teacher's college grads, similar sarcastic sense of humour, etc. As a result the two of us get on really well and have a tendency to get off on tangents that other people don't always follow.

Anyways - last night we'd already been hanging out for probably about two hours when we added someone else to the mix. A friend of J's asked her if she would take their friend out for something because he'd been sitting at home alone, depressed and bored. J and I are both social people and don't have any problems adding other people when we go out. In fact we usually do. So this guy ended up meeting us at the festival and we meandered together and also ended up going for drinks after at a bar.

Walking to the bar he stopped us and said "No offense, you both seem really cool but I kind of feel like a third wheel."

We legitimately felt bad and immediately tried to temper the fact that the two of us kept getting caught up in our own conversations. Neither of us are the type to get super annoyed by such a comment because we are aware we get wrapped up in our own little world and we need someone to point it out to us - otherwise we forget they're even there.

But here's the other thing - we both did feel awkward about it because she barely knows this guy and I didn't know him at all. The only reason we invited him was because J's friend asked her to. She's maybe met him a handful of times and he's always been talkative before. And the cold hard truth? She invited him as a favour because she felt bad. In fact her comment in my car when we left was "I need to learn to say no."

Having three people go out together when there's one of the three who doesn't really know either of the other two particularly well is not going to work overly much. The two who know each other well will dominate the conversation and then you end up with the dreaded third wheel. This is when you need the buffer zone of at least a fourth person who maybe only really knows one of you.

We did feel bad though - particularly as we were letting our girly sides out a bit when we were looking at the different booths at the festival and because both of us were discussing our love lives or lack thereof. But we'd already been at it for 2 hours and found our stride and couldn't quite alter it mid-race, ya know what I mean?

So this is my PSA to all of you - if ever you find yourself going to hang out with two other people you don't know particularly well, but you think they might know each other well - get there at the beginning and nip it in the bud. Especially if it's girls. Don't let them get into girl talk mode before you've even arrived. You'll be bored and feel awkward and then it will make them feel super awkward and bad.