Who do you live with? In other words, who do you think, perceive, and act with? The common name for those you live with is “family and friends.” Casual phrases such as these obscure the depth of sharing your life with someone, however. Especially in friendships, the wonder of sharing life with someone is often lost on us. But we should not let the element of choice in friendship deceive us into acting as though friendships are contextless.
Like many good things, friendships require tending and nurture in the appropriate environment. One of the best environments for real friendship is the “third place”—a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s.
Third places imply first and second places. The first place is home, where you physically live. You sleep and eat there more often than not. It is a place of return. It is also a very intimate and guarded place—you do not let just anyone into your home. Your spouse and children (if you have these) live there; it is a place for intentional gatherings with friends, subject to invitations.
The second place is your work—where you act to provide sustenance for yourself, as an economic actor. You may have friends there, but the relationship is cast through the lens of your primary activity at work—performance of the functions for which you are paid.
The third place is extraordinarily different. In a 2022 Atlantic article, the third place is defined as “a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where conversation is the primary activity.” Third places are wholly voluntary social associations centered around some not necessarily economic good or around providing a neutral framework for conversation. Churches, libraries, bars, barbershops, clubs, cafes, bookstores, and parks all fall into the category of third places.
Evidently, church is more than a place for social association—but it is not less. At church, we congregate to share an activity that is not immediately necessary for our physical survival (the worship of God). In libraries, we read books and discuss them (and now that libraries carry more different kinds of materials, all sorts of activities and conversation arise). In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes the inn as a third place, most likely referencing his friends the Inklings and their third place of choice, a pub called the Eagle and Child:
Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze, and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life—natural life—has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?
Unfortunately, modern America has seen a decline in third places, as attendance to them decline and many of them fold under lack of upkeep. Now, our primary third places are not physical places at all—i.e., the internet. Bars, of course, are still frequented—but they are not the same centers of conversation and village life as the old-style inn or pub was. Neither the internet nor modern bars are exactly conducive to friendship. Friends can be made, but it is different. Whether you are drunk, or can only see someone’s words on a screen, you are much farther than you would be from them in a café chess game.
Third places provide contexts in which we can know people as people, not as family or fellow-workers. In days gone by, no one spent significant time at a barbershop solely to get their hair cut, but to be friends with one another. Without those places, there is significantly less opportunity to have friendships.
To be sure, the internet is a third place—but what a third place! It teems and seethes with pornography, advertisement, propaganda, anger, and vainglorious showmanship. It provides little hope for the kind of wholesome friendship Lewis describes—full of rich delight.
Another issue we face today is treating a third place not as a third place: all third places can be used in the spirit of personal gain to the exclusion of friendship. By all means, go to church to worship God. But some just get up and leave afterwards, as though they came for a fill at a gas station and are off to a business enterprise in five minutes. Some go to barbershops merely to get their hair cut and leave without a word to those beside them or serving them. Cafes and bookstores now primarily sell coffee and books—instead of acting as centers of neighborhood life.
You might actually be in a hurry or tired after church; you may just need a haircut; sometimes you just need coffee and a book. There is nothing inherently wrong with using third places for their activity and not their community. But what are we missing out on by only using them so? What friendship, what love and joy are we forfeiting because we see these places just as opportunities for self-service? Third places are not Walmarts—but we treat many like they are.
So we have two problems we can correct—the dwindling existence of third places and taking proper advantage of the places we have. So go on! Find a barbershop or a club; talk to people who would want to engage in such an enterprise.
So many in our culture value friendship yet feel cut off from it—perhaps simply having the courage to initiate will enkindle others to seek friendship with you.
Friendship cannot exist without a context in which people can admire each other for who they are and spend their days living together. Third places provide exactly this. Think about how you might be neglecting third places in your life already. Stay late talking to people at church; loiter a bit in your favorite section at the bookstore. Who knows? At your local third place, you might just find a friend for a lifetime, someone who will have “the golden sessions” with you again and again.
