When Three’s a Crowd: The Dynamics of Friendship Fallout

From a psychological standpoint, group friendships, especially ones that grow out of intimate dyads, require careful emotional navigation. Without expressed feelings, understanding, and care, roles can become blurred, and even the most loving friendships can begin to unravel.

In exploring the story of Mia, Sabi, and Priya in my last post here, three friends fall out after a subtle but emotional shift in their group dynamic gives way to a disintegration. Here’s a brief recap of what happened:

Mia and Sabi had been close friends since their teens. In their 30s, they became friends with Priya and added her to their group chat. Mia and Priya grew closer, with inside jokes and separate plans, hurting Sabi. When Sabi asked Mia privately to introduce her to a coworker she thought was cute, Mia texted her refusal on the group chat, saying the coworker wouldn’t be right for Sabi, and Priya backed Mia up. When Sabi expressed hurt feelings, it broke up the friendship.

Here is what was happening beneath the surface, and what we can learn from it:

1. Shifting Loyalties and Emotional Hierarchies

In every group dynamic, emotional hierarchies naturally form, often in unspoken ways. These hierarchies determine who feels “closest,” who initiates plans, and whose approval matters most. When a dyad turns into a trio, those implicit rankings get disrupted, and someone almost inevitably ends up feeling like a third wheel, either from time to time or completely.

In Sabi’s case, her original closeness with Mia was diluted as Mia grew closer to Priya. Even though all three chatted daily, Sabi sensed a growing bond between Mia and Priya that she wasn’t invited into.

These shifts often evoke feelings of abandonment or invisibility, especially when the original pair isn’t given space to acknowledge and process the change in friendship closeness. Unlike romantic relationships, where conversations about closeness and felt distance are more commonplace, these communications rarely happen amongst friends.

2. Unspoken Expectations and Emotional “Contracts”

Friendships operate with invisible emotional contracts: I’ll be here for you. You’ll choose me when it counts. You won’t humiliate me in front of others. These expectations are very rarely voiced, but certainly deeply felt.

When Mia refused to introduce Sabi to her coworker, she may have believed she was protecting her. But Sabi’s emotional contract of trust, support, and non-judgment with Mia as a close friend was violated the moment Mia shared her private request with Priya, while also questioning her readiness to date, particularly in front of a relative newcomer to the friendship. Sabi didn’t expect to be judged by her close friend or have her private request aired in a group chat.

While Sabi later tried to repair the damage by reaching out privately by apologizing for any misunderstanding, acknowledging their good intentions, and explaining how she felt, Mia severed the friendship instead of apologizing, while Priya showed her support of Mia. Here, Mia and Priya had already created their own contract of Sabi being the wrongdoer, distancing themselves from her instead of repairing a bond with a known friend. Instead of seeking to understand or apologizing for airing a private request, Mia became defensive, and Priya emotionally sided with Mia, including overlapping talking points to display her loyalty, instead of pausing to consider Sabi’s feelings.

When emotional repair is one-sided, the relationship is rarely healthy and sustainable.

3. Projection and Psychological Defenses

As tensions rose, Mia and Priya accused Sabi of wrongdoing and playing the victim. This response may be a defense known as “projection,” reflecting their own psychological discomfort in the situation. Freud proposed that defense mechanisms protect the ego from anxiety caused by internal conflict, and projection is just one defense mechanism where we attribute to others the very feelings or fears we’re struggling with ourselves.

In the story, we can see projection clearly: When Sabi finally voices her feelings as a result of their actions, they accuse her of being dismissive, misunderstanding, and a victim—ironically mirroring the very things they themselves are doing: dismissing her requests, refusing to understand her wants and feelings, and deflecting from the power imbalance they helped create while suggesting they are the victims of an accusation of bullying.

These kinds of blame-shifting behaviors are common in group conflicts, especially when responsibility isn’t taken for the emotional damage done.

4. Compounding Misunderstandings

One key issue is that Sabi didn’t voice her discomfort with Mia and their increasingly distant friendship early on, and subsequently didn’t share her discomfort about a private request. Instead, she deflected with light-hearted jokes. Deflection, like joking, is also a defense mechanism, usually used when fearing confrontation or to diffuse tension to mask one’s true feelings. By the time Sabi expressed her hurt openly, it may have been viewed as an attack rather than an opening for dialogue. And when she later offered empathy and a chance at reconciliation, her efforts were dismissed.

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Delaying communication leads to a whole host of misunderstandings, which can compound: When difficult feelings go unspoken, frustration builds. Rather than leaning into understanding Sabi, Mia and Priya turned to each other for validation, reinforcing their own interpretations of Sabi’s behavior. This creates an echo chamber, solidifying a shared narrative where they felt unfairly accused and making it easier to justify their defensiveness. Instead of hearing Sabi, they came down harder, mistaking her honesty for an attack.

According to Alper Güngör, “the members of echo chambers are less blameworthy than the received view takes them to be.” In other words, because friendships involve inherent favoritism, Mia and Priya not only felt justified in staying within an echo chamber, faulting Sabi, rather than challenge their shared negative beliefs about Sabi, but it likely strengthened the relationship between Mia and Priya as well.

Stuck in a Trio? What You Can Do

If you’re noticing a shift in your own friend group dynamic, you can:

1. Name the Change

If a once-close friendship is expanding, name it. “I’m glad we’re building new friendships, but I want to make sure ours still feels strong.” That kind of honesty can allow for open communication down the road in case the friendship starts feeling more distant.

2. Check Your Needs

Ask yourself: What do I expect from this friendship? Evaluate your own wants, needs, and feelings, and how, if at all, they are being met and respected.

3. Don’t Silence Your Feelings

A genuine friendship should allow for honesty of opinions and a quick apology for wrongdoing, even if it simply acknowledges hurt. “I didn’t mean for it to come across that way. I’m sorry” is often enough to reopen the door to connection.

4. Notice Defensiveness as a Signal

If you feel defensive, ask yourself why. And if someone is hurt and your first reaction is to invalidate them, ask: What part of me is feeling threatened right now?

5. Take Space

If you feel a friendship or friendship group has changed and your needs are not being met, or you are not being treated in a respectful way, take space to recenter. Taking space doesn’t always mean a friendship ending, but if it does, while it can be difficult to walk away from friendships, feeling respected, even if it’s just self-respect, can be a greater reward than keeping unhealthy relationships.

What can we learn from this? Friendships, especially when they expand to include new people, require ongoing communication and effort to quickly fix misunderstandings. Understanding group dynamics at play, recognizing when psychological defenses are taking over, and being willing to have difficult conversations are key to preserving friendships, even as they grow and expand.

True friendship means not just sharing joy, but also having the bravery to say, “I don’t feel supported by you,” and the humility to say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

That alone can make the difference between disconnection and repair.