Friends Dating Friends...

Being The Third Wheel

     I was asked by one of my friends to write a blog addressing what it is like to be a third wheel and advising those in that situation on what should be done in order to keep the peace...
     So what happens when you know two of your closest friends like each other as more than friends? I'm sure if one is placed in this situation, many questions may run through one's mind... Should I get them together? Should I try to keep them from getting together? Will they ever actually date? How long will they last? When they date, what happens to me? When they are over, what happens to my relationship with each of them? Well, most people have several categories in their brain: Friend, Enemy, Acquaintance, Possible Relationship, Crush, etc... So, when someone has a crush on someone else, they automatically place that person in the "Crush" or "Possible Relationship" category. That person is no longer in the "Friend" category, but you are. Because of that, as the third wheel, one has to realize that one is now in fact the third wheel. The dynamic is totally different, whether one realizes it or not. The person who has the crush on the other friend first no longer sees the situation as "Oh, we're all good friends!". Unfortunately, often times, that person will begin to only focus on the person they have a crush on. This is either because they want something more to happen, or simply because they can't help but focus on that person.
     When the other person realizes that they too have a mutual crush, there is pretty much no turning back, at least for most cases. When your two friends begin to date, most of the time, things will never be the same between all three people involved. The two people in the relationship will understandably want to hang out with each other a lot- alone. That means there is not always going to be that friend time for everyone to just relax and have a chill time. So, as the third wheel, if you speak your mind, two things can happen. Things could change and you could begin to hang out with your dating friends, or nothing can happen and you will stay upset, and you must learn to accept the new situation. The best advice for a third wheel is that if you feel left out, you should have a conversation with your dating friends. In any friendship or relationship in your life, communication is key. That sounds like such a cliche, but it is the truth. You can't expect for things to be fixed or improved if others don't know that you are upset. Always let your friends know your feelings. You may also want to let them know how you feel before they begin to date. This could completely get them thinking about how their relationship will affect others. So, if you begin to hang out with the couple, start bring other people into your group, that way you are never left out and you always have someone to talk to since your dating friends might be too caught up in each other. If your friends don't work to change the fact that you are being left out, then it is best to move on. However difficult this may be (or however difficult you think this may be), you must find other friends. You can't work towards two people who don't value you enough to work towards you.
     The hard part comes into play when your two friends break up. Do you stay friends with both of them? Well, your intentions should always be to stay friends with both people. A lot of times when people break up, they are able to stay friends and be cordial to each other, but sometimes that is not the case. Sometimes exes despise each other so much that they can't even stand to be in the same room with each other. Then what do you do? Stay friends with both of them, especially since you were friends with them before anything even happened. What ever you do, do not choose sides. That will only result in you losing a friendship, which is not what you are trying to do. The absolute best thing you can do after the break up is have a talk with both people, whether they are in the same room at the same time or not. Let each of your friends know that you are not going to take sides and that you fully intend to stay cool with both of them. Most of the time, they will understand and you can maintain good friendships. But sometimes, one or the other, or both, may become jealous and drift away from you. That is just something you are going to have to accept. There comes a time in your friendships when you have to cut your losses and when you have to understand that it is not worth it to work towards a friendship when the other person is not working towards it. That's not fair, and what are you really working for anyway? If someone is not working towards being your friend and keeping things okay with you, then what have you got to lose at that point? You have already lost your friend.
     This post pretty much describes the worst case scenario, but there are times when everything runs smoothly. Some people truly live by the saying, "Once a friend, always a friend". In that case, the only thing your really need to understand is that you are incredibly lucky that the dynamics of your friendships didn't change.
     Good luck to all of my third-wheelers out there, and understand that you are not limited when it comes to friends. Friends can come from everywhere, so just because one of your friendships might end, that doesn't mean you can't find that companionship anywhere else...

Thank you so much for reading, it really does mean a lot to me!

-Brandon

Blind Dates...

Good idea? Or bad idea?
     I would probably never go on a blind date, and at this age, not many of my friends would either...
     The reason I am deciding to write about blind dates is because right now I am at Starbucks with my friend, and there is a boy and a girl sitting on the couches on an apparent blind date.
     So, the girl got here first. She was here for so long that my friend and I began to question why she was here by herself. It was quite awkward. After almost an hour after the girl had been sitting by herself, her blind date showed up. Now, I don't know what his reasoning for being so extremely late to the date was, but apparently she was okay with it. To me, even though I have never been on a blind date, showing up late seems like something one definitely should not do. Maybe he had a good reason though... Or perhaps, she was early.
     Anyway, they seem to be getting along well, despite their difference in appearance. (The blog before this talks about looks and dating, so go read!) They have pretty much just been talking about school and discussing proper subjects one should talk about while on a date. The conversation is staying pretty light, which is a good thing. You never want to get too deep the first time you meet a potential partner because what you talk about could immediately scare them off. Who knows if this relationship will work out for them or turn into anything, but for them the experience is going pretty well so far. According to their body languages, they actually seem quite into each other. If only I knew what was really going on in each of their minds...
     UPDATE! A couple of the guy's friends just walked in... They walked over to the guy and he started talking to his friends, completely ignoring his date, for a good 5-10 minutes. Immediately, the girl's body language took a turn for the worst. Blind Date Nightmare. She looked down at her cup and began to play with the sleeve. It was obvious that she did not know what to do and that she was in a seriously awkward position. After the date-boy's friends walked away, he continued to talk to his date about what he and his friends were discussing. At this point, at least from an outsider's point of view, the girl is majorly not interested. It gets better... The guy began to continue conversations with his guy friends from across the room. The girl was behaving even more awkwardly now. After the guy's friends left the building, the date went back to normal. The date-boy should have introduced her to his friends. However, he probably thought that by doing so, he would have scared the girl away. Also, how would he even introduce her? I guess it can be embarrassing to admit to your friends that you are on a blind date... But it really shouldn't be. Going on one doesn't mean you are desperate!
If you are going to go on a blind date, it is appropriate that you go on them with people that your friends have set you up with and not just random people you meet on the Internet. Obviously, the main reason is because placing yourself in that situation could be dangerous. However, there are several other reasons why you should not go on random blind dates. Your blind date could turn out to be someone completely different than the person they presented his or her self to be on the Internet. Not good if you are only attracted to the person they are on the Internet. 
     I do not suggest that teens go on blind dates. It isn't safe, and dating just really isn't that important! During your teenage years, you should focus mainly on your grades and your friends. Have fun and don't worry about trying to find someone to be in a relationship with... You have your whole life for that!

Thanks for reading,

-Brandon

When Considering Someone To Date...

Do Looks Matter?
     The deep and profound answer to that question would be no, however if looks do matter to you, that doesn't mean you are superficial. When you are looking for someone to date, the first thing you notice is what someone looks like right? If you are going to be in a relationship with someone, you must be attracted to them. If you think that sounds superficial, then read further, because there is an explanation for that statement. Everyone is attracted to different types of people and looks. So what is beautiful to one person, might seem ugly to another. Just as what is ugly to another person, might seem drop dead gorgeous to another. That doesn't leave anybody out. 
     Now, a new question is should looks matter? Well, I can't and won't give a definite answer of yes or no, because I'm not even sure of that answer myself. However, I do think that if you are looking to date someone, you should at least give them a chance, even if you aren't 100% attracted to that person. Once you get to know someone's personality, you might end up becoming more attracted to that person because of who they are on the inside. I definitely don't think that you should rule someone completely out just because you don't like the way they look.

Thanks for reading,

-B

What Have I Been Up To?

Since I Clearly Haven't Been Up To Blogging...

     Every single month, I try to get out as many blogs as possible. Of course, this is dependent on my schedule and my amount of energy to actually think outside of school, but I always try to keep my readers entertained and informed. During the month of May, I took somewhat of a break- I only posted one blog. I guess you can say this is because I completely lost all of my motivation to actually do anything. There were a few scandals I had to deal with at school, and let's just say that I was fully preoccupied. Everything had my attention except for my blog (which has been quite unusual for the past couple of years). Since Day 1 of having this website/blog, I have always claimed to keep things 100% real on here and I have claimed to not allow any topic to be off limits. So, here we go. Let's discuss the events that have occurred in my life that have kept me away from my blog...

     Scandal at School

     Typically, I would never want to put this kind of business out there for the public to see, but the reason I am choosing to do so is because I know I learned a huge lesson from this event. Maybe my readers will learn from it too so that they will not have to make the same mistake... Most people who know me well know that I am a writer and most definitely NOT  a reader. Sometimes I enjoy reading, but I would much rather write. And when I do read, I prefer for it to be on my own terms and not on the terms of a class or teacher. Hopefully some of you can already relate... This past school year (my Junior year), we had to read a book for English class. I was not thrilled about this at all. Therefore, I did not participate. I chose to not read and I planned on passing by asking about the book and learning about it from others instead of from the book itself. About every week or so, we had a quiz over a given amount of pages of the book. I chose to cheat. Every day that we had a quiz, I would simply walk up to my teacher's desk, look at the questions that were on the quiz, and go to the people who did read to ask them if they knew the answers to the questions that would be on the quiz. Every time I went up to my teacher's desk to look at the questions, I chose to not do it discreetly at all. I guess I found it not as wrong to cheat if my teacher knew I was doing so, so that's what I did. Over the multiple times that I looked at the quizzes before anyone else got to see them, my teacher would only smirk at me and not once did she ever reprimand me for my obvious wrong-doings. Because of this, it was clear to me that I would get away with receiving a free 100 on all of my quizzes, until we had a quiz one Monday. I had planned on using the same tactics I had previously used on every other quiz in my English class. However, this time I couldn't find the quiz. My teacher was outside of her room so I decided to dig around and search for the quiz a little bit. I still couldn't find it. So I gave up and went to my desk. I thought to myself, Maybe I can guess and still get some of them right, it's not that big of a deal. Then, my friend entered the classroom. I told her that I was not able to find the quiz on my teacher's desk and that I was going to fail. I figured it was fair enough. I didn't read, so I would basically get what I deserved... Then my friend found the quiz. All of my thoughts of fairness seemed to fly quickly out of the window and my friend ended up taking a picture of the quiz on her phone so that we could look at the questions. The first picture was blurry, so she ran back to my teacher's desk to take another picture. That picture was also blurry. With a quickly decreasing amount of time before the late bell would ring and we would have to begin our quizzes, I desperately thought of a way to get a clear picture. I gave my friend my phone and she ran back, once again, to my teacher's desk to take a picture of the quiz. This picture was perfectly clear. We looked at the questions, we discussed them with the students who actually read, and we found ourselves prepared for the quiz. We took the quiz, and I knew the answer to almost every single question. The quiz took all of the period to complete, and by the time I turned it in to my teacher, I felt a nice sense of accomplishment. I had cheated my way through another quiz. Of course, I shouldn't have felt accomplished because of this, but I did. In my advanced classes, I fall upon the percentage of not-so-smart students. Yes, I am incredibly intelligent, but compared to some of the other students in my classes, I was considered almost stupid. This made me feel like I constantly had to prove myself to others; I was caught up in everyone else's opinions of me. This was sad because I used to preach and preach and preach about how you shouldn't care what others think of you, but I suddenly forgot about all of that. I would do anything to show others that I was smart, and my grades were for sure ways to get my peers to directly see results of my intelligence. So they thought. I pride myself in being real, so how could I have attempted to be so fake? I did not care about being fake or real, I just wanted my peers to view me as if I were on their same levels of intelligence. This is why I found cheating to not be so bad. After class, I walked to my truck in the parking lot and before I could even remember where I parked, I got a phone call. It was a call from my friend in English class, the same friend who helped me cheat during the quiz I had taken only minutes before. My friend told me that after class, she had to go back to the classroom because she forgot something. Well, when she got back into the classroom, my teacher approached my friend with news that she was aware of our cheating. Our teacher told my friend that she was informed by other students in our class that we had taken a picture of the quiz and that we cheated. My heart dropped when my friend told me this, and I quickly tried to think of what I could do to make the situation better. There was nothing I could do. I went home and went about my evening as if nothing had gone wrong that day. Perhaps the situation would just fade away. I shouldn't have thought this way, but I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it especially because the next day during English class, my teacher didn't even say one word to me about what she had found out. I thought the whole thing might just blow over, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. Well, the next day came and I had started to hear things. None of these things came from my teacher's mouth to my ears. I began hearing from my close friends that my English teacher was talking to her other classes about my cheating. Oh hell no, I thought. As most of my friends can probably visualize, I began to lose it. My eyes got big and I just wanted to burst out of control because of my sudden anger towards the fact that someone was spreading my business around. My friends were always quick to inform me that my teacher wasn't mentioning my name to her other students, but I did not care about that. My peers were smart enough to put 2 and 2 together, and what made the situation worse for me was knowing that she knew they would be smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out that I was the one my teacher was talking about. I felt betrayed by my teacher who I used to get along with so well. I tried to reason why she would be acting this way, and I discovered a likely possibility: She felt betrayed as well. What I did was sneaky. How could I go behind my teacher's back like that? She had so much trust in me (so I thought), and now every ounce of it was gone. Then, I thought some more. Does she really even have the right to feel betrayed? She had known that I was cheating on all of these quizzes. There's no way she didn't know. There had even been a time when I was looking at the questions before I was supposed to and she asked me what I was doing and I told her with out hiding anything about my actions! If there was a time for my teacher to feel betrayed, it should have been the very first time I walked up to her desk to cheat. I was over that moment of sympathy very quickly. However, I still knew that what I did was wrong. But I still didn't think being gossiped about by an adult was proper punishment either. A day after I heard of my teacher's gossiping, I had her class again. I thought that she would mention something to me for sure that day. I was wrong. She didn't say one word about cheating to my entire class. When I got home that day, I couldn't take it anymore. I hate being in a place of "I don't know", and that is exactly the place I was in. I decided to come clean to my teacher about the situation, even though she already knew. I'm not sure if she knew that I knew that she knew, but I decided to own up to my mistake and sincerely apologize for it. I wrote her an email explaining what I had done and describing just how sorry I was for betraying her (even though I felt it was a little unfair for her to play the "betrayed" card). Within minutes, she responded with "Thanks for the admission". She went on to tell me that she was still trying to decide how she would handle the situation. Okay great. I'll take it for now. That means there is still hope. Oh, how I was wrong... Friday, my teacher announced that we would be grading our quizzes. She handed them back, and everyone got their quizzes except for my friend and I. She chose a student to read the key out loud while she took my friend and I into a separate room. I thought she was just going to talk to us about how disappointed she was and how wrong it was for us to do what we did. Oh, how I was wrong. My teacher told us that what we did was wrong, and she knew that we knew that. Then she went on to say that because we cheated in front of the whole class and because the situation became that of a very public one, she felt almost forced to follow through with complete disciplinary action. Okay, I can take it, I thought. Then, it hit me like a ton of bricks. My teacher told my friend and I that that disciplinary action would include a possible removal from the National Honors Society club, a zero on the quiz, and a notification to our principals of the situation which would result in either detention or in-school-suspension. Oh! And she threw in that this incident would be placed on our record. I was furious. I could have flipped over every desk in that room and ripped off the paint from the cheap walls with my bare hands, but I stayed calm. I stared off into the distance and remained completely silent. This was unusual behavior for me. I would have usually lashed out and spoke my mind, but I just wanted the situation to be over with, so I kept quiet. My friend tried to reason with my teacher, but my teacher's actions showed me the true type of person she was, so I found that arguing was not worth a thing. Immediately after school ended, I called my mom and told her about the situation. Yes, I was told that what I did was wrong, but I was not in deep trouble at home. Maybe this was because I had already experienced a lot of punishment by not knowing the "outcome" of my situation for a week. Or maybe it was because I had already experienced punishment by my teacher gossiping about me to my already judgmental peers. What ever the case may be, I was reassured that yes, I was wrong- but I was not the only person who was wrong in the situation. To cut a long story a tad bit short, over the next few weeks, I was exhausted. I was exhausted because of several reasons. I felt betrayed by my teacher. I felt betrayed by my peers who had told on me. I felt betrayed by the students that told my teacher they "saw the picture of the quiz" when they know for a fact they did not. I had deleted the pictured the day we took the quiz and did not send it to anyone. I had English last period, there was no reason for me to send it to anybody! Anyway, I was exhausted. My teacher and many others were just keeping me in the dark. No one was telling me anything regarding my upcoming punishment or anything. I couldn't handle being in that place of "I don't know" and I felt extremely unmotivated to do absolutely anything. I deserved to be punished for my cheating, but I did not deserve to be kept in the dark like this. I'm not sure if anybody (including my teacher) knew exactly the toll this whole situation was taking on me. Or did they? The answer to that became even more unclear when we had a National Honors Society meeting about a week after my incident became public. I was not kicked out yet, so of course I attended the mandatory meeting. The meeting went well, until the very end of it when my English teacher decided to share some words. She talked to a huge lecture hall full of students about how wrong it was to cheat. She said that as people who were a part of National Honors Society, we should not try to cheat our teachers and our fellow students out of a grade. She went on to say that cheating was a very dishonorable thing for someone to do and that Honors Society was for honorable people. Did she just imply that I am not an honorable person because I cheat on quizzes even though she used to seem to not care that I did so? Yes. What a confusing point of view my teacher seemed to have. When these statements were made in front of some of my most intellectual peers, it seemed as if everyone was looking at me and my friend. They knew exactly why my English teacher had said what she said. This was absolutely humiliating. Was she just trying to bring me down now? Who knows... A couple weeks later, my friend and I had meetings with "officials" and we were both kicked out of Honor's Society. We also received a certain amount of detentions, but I was pretty okay with the outcome. I was just glad it was over. So to get back to the point of this story, this situation kept me in the dark for the whole month of May. Yes what I did was wrong and I should have never felt anything positive towards that action, but I did not deserve to be kept in the dark and I did not deserve to be humiliated. The moral of this story? Don't cheat. Cheating just is not worth it and I would never wish what I went through because of it upon anybody. But, when you do slip up and make a mistake (not necessarily cheating), own up to it. That is the only thing you can do to try to make the situation better. I learned a lot from this experience and overall, I guess I am glad it happened to me. I did not cheat for the rest of the school year, nor do I plan on doing so for the rest of my school career. 

     

    Work

     I have an amazing job at the mall that has also been keeping me busy. I love working where I work. My coworkers are completely amazing and what I do is enough to keep me thinking while occasionally getting the opportunity to stay social with people who are incredible and fun to be around. My job really remains sure to keep me busy, but I love it. I hate sitting around and not doing anything at all, it just isn't productive to do so. 

     So school and work are pretty much the main two reasons why I have been missing from my blog for the past month or so... But don't worry. The writing portions of my brain and soul have been fully rested and I am more than ready to dive back into this passion of mine. I never contemplated giving up my blog or not... So here's to the future of my website. It will only get better from here!

I really hope that you all learned something from my story about cheating. I did not write it to put anybody on blast or to blame anybody else for my actions. I just hope that at least one person out there reading this will learn from my mistake. If that occurs, I will have done my job.

Thanks for reading, 

-B