My fiancée Mercedes and I met in the same way that many couples meet – through a mutual friend. In the beginning, Mercedes, Victoria, and I would go out for dinner, movies, mini golfing, etc., and everything was completely, totally, undoubtedly peachy keen. When Mercedes and I began dating, though, something shifted. The three of us still hung out regularly, but now there was a strange tension, a new awkwardness, a peculiar feeling in the atmosphere that definitely wasn’t there before. As far as I could tell, the only thing that had changed was a title – Mercedes and I went from friends to girlfriends. But according to Victoria, a lot had changed. According to Victoria, she was now a third wheel. And she wasn’t happy. 

Somewhat devastated by the accusation of third wheeling one of my best friends (I HATE making anyone feel out of place), I began troubleshooting with Victoria. What was she feeling? What changed? And most importantly, how could I fix it? After some long, much-needed heart-to-hearts, I finally understood. I stopped denying that third wheeling existed (for months I treated it as her problem) and started examining my behavior. And I learned a few ways to make these tricky group situations not so tricky. More Here...

Last summer I was at a family BBQ, trying to convince my cousin that black bean burgers are just as good as regular burgers, when my cousin Sarah asked to speak with me. She pulled me over to the side and held my hand as she whispered, “I have a big problem.”

Sarah had gotten close to her friend Jessica’s ex-boyfriend over the last few months.  So close, that she started having feelings for him and invited him to the family BBQ. The problem was that Jessica was also coming to the BBQ. More Here...

One night while drinking at a local sports bar with my fiancée and our friend Shelb, my phone lit up. My eyes scanned the text – it was nothing important – and then my fiancée reached for my phone. I didn’t think anything of it, but Shelb’s face twisted; she sat back in her chair, sighed, and said: “Wow, you two seriously need some space.” Though she said it in a half-serious-half-joking way, we were still caught off guard. I felt comfortable with our level of space and privacy, but Shelb’s statement made me call it into question. Were we too close? More Here...

My father thought I’d be pregnant by the time I reached my fifteenth birthday. I know this because my mother repeated the last words he told her before they separated over and over during my adolescence. It was easy for him to say that. After all, he moved back to the Dominican Republic and left my two sisters and me to be raised by a single mother who barely spoke English and worked minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. My father thought we’d end up raising ourselves, end up in some older boy's beds, drug addicted, with an infant as our prize. My mother, however, would not let that happen, reminding us of this every time she thought we were straying off the path.

One time during high school she received a postcard saying I had not been attending my math class. “Have you been cutting school?” she asked me while shaking the postcard at me. “No! I think that was a mistake. They do that all the time,” I told her nonchalantly. She looked into my eyes, accepted my answer and walked away. The next day, during math class, my teacher received a note asking me to go to the main office. I walked into the main office and found my mother staring at me, the postcard she had been shaking the day before in hand. “Good,” she smiled, “just making sure you are where you’re supposed to be.” More Here...