The Third Thing

You got the invite to be in the wedding party, and you said yes before you knew what you were signing up for: the matching robes, the bachelorette weekend, the speech, and a group chat with people you’ve never met who all love the bride as much as you do. Or you didn’t get asked to be maid of honor, and you’re finding a way to smile through it. Weddings are love days. They are also full of drama....

Your friend cancels again. They go quiet for a week. Or you're the one who has to text "I can't make it today" for the third time this month. Mental health is already living in your friendships, whether anyone has named it or not. This week, Danyelle leads a conversation about what happens when we stop trying to fix each other and start learning to sit with it. We talk about th...

Can Men and Women Really Be Friends? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is where it gets interesting. When Harry Met Sally told a whole generation that "sex always gets in the way", and the friends-to-lovers pipeline has been reinforcing that idea ever since. So what happens to the real, full-body love you feel for a friend when the culture says that kind of intimacy only belongs...

Every relationship or friend group has had this moment: your favorite person is dating someone you can't stand. Maybe it's just a values mismatch, or maybe it's something heavier from controlling behavior to verbal abuse, or worse. Either way, the question is the same: what's actually your job here, and where's the line between being a good friend and trying to run someone...

You already know how to show up for a friend: feed them a home cooked meal, celebrate their wins or birthdays, meet their tears with grace. Now flip it around and look at how you treat yourself when no one's watching. This episode moves from the external work of friendship into the internal: what's actually happening in your nervous system when you people-please, fawn, or go quiet to kee...

Everybody has that friend who remembers the birthdays, plans the trips, sends the text first or the friendship where they're the one always reaching out (which one are you?). Naming that out loud feels uncomfortable no matter which side you're on. But what if the imbalance you're keeping score of isn't actually about being cared for less? Michelle and Danyelle get into one-side...

You haven't had to walk into a room and introduce yourself in years, and then suddenly you do, and every old insecurity shows up at once. Making friends as an adult isn't just logistically harder than it was in middle school or college. It's a different game entirely, and most of us are playing it without ever being taught the rules. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle break from...

Season Two opens with the episode we've been wanting to make since day one. Queerness has been a thread running under every conversation on this show, and this time Michelle and Danyelle pull it into the center. Danyelle grew up with two moms who fought on the front lines for marriage equality, and never had a coming out story of her own, queerness was just always an option. Michelle didn&apo...

Ever wondered what actually happens in a tarot reading? Not the vague, Instagram-caption version, but a real one, with real questions, real doubt, and cards that don't let you off easy. In this bonus episode, Danyelle gives Michelle a live reading using the Crow Tarot deck, right as Michelle is heading into a trip during a stretch of financial uncertainty. What comes up is the Five of Pentacl...

We finished Season 1. Ten episodes, recorded and released, exactly the way we said we would. In this bonus episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what that actually took to pull it off. This isn't our typical episode, it's a real-time check-in between two best friends navigating what it means to build something new together. We talk about the shadow work that recording a podcast...

You know that friend you keep meaning to text back? The one where you scroll up in the thread and realize it's been six months, then a year, then you've lost track? There was no fight or blowup, just the silence that crept in until one day you looked up and they weren't in your circle anymore. That's drifting. This week, Michelle and Danyelle unpack the quiet ending nobody talk...

You've never told your best friend what you actually make. Or you have, and you watched their face change. Money might be the last real taboo in friendship, more off-limits than sex, more off-limits than politics, and it's quietly shaping who feels safe going to who for what. Michelle and Danyelle trace their own money stories back to childhood, growing up feeling scarcity in a wealthy a...

📍 Content warning. This episode includes a discussion of a suicide attempt starting at 6:09 and running through 8:42. Please take care of yourself while listening. Skip ahead if you need to. If you or somebody you know is struggling, the 988 suicide and crisis line is available 24-7 by call or text.📍  You left the friend group chat on read for six months and it wasn't a fight, it was just l...

Boundaries are everywhere in conversation right now, but almost no one talks about how tangled up they are with shame, especially in friendship. This week Michelle and Danyelle get into it: where their earliest boundary memories come from, why setting one can feel like a rejection, and how they've actually negotiated real boundaries with each other over the years. They introduce the BEAT fram...

Attachment style usually gets talked about in the context of dating and romance. Rarely do we turn that same lens on friendship, even though it shapes those relationships just as much. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle break down the four attachment styles, secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized, and where they come from developmentally. Then they turn the framework on themselves, gettin...

Friendship breakups are one of the most painful experiences we can go through and one of the least talked about. There's no ceremony, no bereavement leave, no socially agreed-upon way to grieve someone who is still out there, still living their life, but no longer in yours. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle give friendship endings the space they almost never get. From the slow, quiet out...

Here are the show notes for Episode 4: Race is something every interracial friendship encounters, but most of us were never given the tools or the language to talk about it honestly. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle go somewhere they've been circling for 26 years: a real, unfiltered conversation about race as it has lived inside their friendship. From growing up in Marin County, one of...

What if friendship deserves the same care, commitment, and investment that we give to romantic relationships? In the very first episode of The Third Thing , Michelle and Danyelle introduce the concept at the heart of the podcast: The Third Thing . While we often celebrate romantic love and assume familial love will always be there, friendship is frequently treated as optional. Yet some of the most...

What if friendship isn't the supporting character in your life story? What if it's one of the most important relationships you'll ever have? In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle explore the inspiration behind The Third Thing and why they believe platonic love deserves far more attention than our culture often gives it. Using their own 26-year friendship as a lens, they discuss how...

Conflict is something every relationship encounters, but most of us were never taught how to navigate it well. In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle explore the ways they learned conflict growing up, how those early experiences shaped their friendships and relationships, and the communication tools they've adopted to create more connection and less defensiveness. Together, they break down th...

Podcast launching June 16th! There are three kinds of love. There's romantic love, the one that gets the songs, the movies, the couples therapy, the date nights, and all the vacations. There's familial love, the one you're born into, that shapes you before you even know what love is. The relationships that are expected to last forever.  And then there's The Third Thing: Friends...