There comes a time in your life when you open your eyes and see that virtually everyone around you has entered a happy relationship. You won’t notice it immediately. The realization will sneak up on you. Like a frog slowly boiling in a pot, it doesn’t really register.
But one day, an extra pair of feet have graced your home… And no, I’m not talking about welcoming home a child — your roommates haven’t quite entered that phase of their lives. I’m talking about your roommate’s new boyfriend. He is here to stay.
Movie nights with your friends evolve from screening the “Sex and The City” movies into two man missions where your friends’ boyfriends do that thing where they say “OMG I CANNOT believe that you haven’t watched “The Life of Brian” yet!” and then you have to rent “The Life of Brian” on your TV. For your friends, this movie night is the best of both worlds. They are hanging out with their friends and their boyfriends. But for you, remaining single, you are hanging out with your friends — and also their boyfriends who aren’t quite your friends. You are left with two options this movie night: go hide in your room at 8pm and try to sleep through the sound of laughter and happiness emanating from your living room, or suck it up, sit in the cuckold chair in the corner, and laugh along with them. Despite the fact that you are crashing what is essentially a double date, you decide to take a chance on being the circumstantial cuckold. And you know what? You don’t regret it.
Third wheeling is generally thought of as the worst case scenario for any time spent with friends, but I can confidently say that it really isn’t all that horrible. If you suck up the initial discomfort, push aside your pride, and let yourself be adopted by a couple, you find strange improvements in your day to day life. I have aligned myself closely with couples since the start of my time at college. I don’t know whether it is my trainability, loyalty, or aversion to strange men, but there is something about me that lends to my presence as something akin to the role of canine companion in my friends’ romantic relationships. As a career third wheel, I find myself being toted around like a dachshund in a ludicrously capacious bag to meals and meetings. From an evolutionary standpoint, this indeed tracks. In an economy where couples can’t quite afford to have children, dogs are the next best thing to save a relationship. Forget baby trapping! It’s 2025, we are beagle trapping baby!
In the college context however, being the appointed third wheel in a relationship is a sweet deal. You get out of class, and if your friend’s boyfriend is busy, you study with your friend or grab a coffee to keep them company in their state of limbo between times with and away from their partner. Their boyfriend will eventually join the two of you, and at the end of the day, your friend’s partner is just another person to know and keep you company. Through third wheeling you can expand your social circle without having to do any work. What is your friend’s partner going to do? Be rude to you? They can’t. You are their partner’s friend and it’s never a good look to be rude to your partner’s friend. The terrible thing about having great taste in friends is that, inevitably, other people take notice, and they also happen to take a liking to them. Only then they start dating your friend. When you trust your friends’ judgement in who they choose to date, you understand that their partners function mainly as distantly removed friends. Allegorical cousins, if you will.
I’ve had plenty of good times with third wheeling. When you change your perspective on third wheeling you realize that it’s better than the alternative: hanging out with no one. In friendships there is the fear that once your friend becomes involved in a relationship they will abandon you in favor of romantic relationships. I once had a friend tell me that they hoped I wouldn’t manage to get a boyfriend until either the end of senior year of college or after I graduate that way I would still have time to hang out with them. Luckily for me, I don’t believe that narrative in the slightest. My friends have modeled a healthy approach to maintaining balanced relationships that facilitate friendships beyond time devoted to their partners, so I never really had to worry about being abandoned.
Friendship is something I value and prioritize, (shocking, I know.) and competition is something I detest. I would never want to fight to spend time with someone, I would rather just stay in someone’s life for as long as they’ll have me — regardless of whether or not their partner is also a part of the time my friends will give to me.
One night while driving to a dinner, my friends were joking about the ‘double date plus Courtney’ movie nights that frequently occur with couples at my house. Another friend outside of this fifth-wheel dynamic took a moment to ask me whether hanging out with couples ever made me sad. I concluded that third wheeling with my friends and their partners could never make me feel as alone as actually being alone would.
Third wheeling doesn’t really inspire much anxiety regarding my own singleness, and I don’t believe that it should for anyone. In thinking about the idea of actively pursuing romantic relationships, there is something strangely terrifying about the idea of speaking loud enough in hopes of one specific person to hear or take notice of what you are saying. I tell these long-winded and oftentimes pointless stories but find that it’s really difficult to find someone who wants to listen all the way through. It’s rare that I’ll start a story and finish before someone ends up losing interest. That’s why I am grateful for all of the friends I have who’ve put up with me for as long as they have. To be invited to third wheel is arguably a compliment in and of itself. At the end of the day an invitation to enjoy the company of your friends is an invitation to enjoy the company of your friends.
Why worry about a hypothetical lacking when, in reality, you can find that you have such an abundance of demonstrated friendship already? I’m a storyteller through and through. A boy could stare at me a second longer than he should and I could compose a wedding march from the silence of his gaze. But I never really count on these delusions. It’s nice to know that until I have a partner of my own, I won’t have to sustain myself on the hope of future hypothetical relationships to rescue myself from some impending sense of incompleteness. The relationships that are already present in my life demonstrate so much love and I garner so much from the time I am permitted to spend with my friends — and sometimes also their partners. Why dismiss an opportunity to spend time with your friends because you might be forced to confront your friends’ security and happiness in their own relationships with their partners?
Take it from me, third wheeling doesn’t really have to be that deep, it can even be really fun. If you third wheel hard enough, your roommate’s boyfriend might even buy you milkshakes to make up for the amount of time he spends with his girlfriend in your house. Just remember that as the third wheel you have special rights and are entitled to boundaries from your friends’ relationship. Your roommate’s boyfriend will never be able to force you to watch through the “Star Wars” franchise the same way he has subjected your roommate to it. As a third wheel, you are never required to laugh at a “Monty Python” movie. Know your rights.
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