Men are hung up when it comes to expressing emotion toward each other. That doesn’t mean the emotion doesn't exist, as indeed it does, but it lays in wait of a time for release.
Unfortunately our society is more free willing with women's emotions and men are relegated to role playing in free form, mainly in an alcohol induced setting, where the drink loosens them up and the real male escapes. So do the feelings and its a damn shame that society inhibits expressions of friendship and affection between males so readily.
Professor Geoffrey Greif, the author of a book called “The Buddy System” writes that the rise of the man crush is bringing men's culture full circle.
"The word homosexual didn't even exist until the late 1880s or 1890s," Greif says. "The founders of our nation would write letters to their male friends saying 'I can't wait to see you again. I love you; I can't wait to get together with you'. Somewhere over the last 125 years, it became no longer okay for a man to present himself that way."
So what about this so called “same-sex crush” or maybe even the term “bromance” as it’s sometimes called. Can males embrace this inner need in the outer realm of a society that is for the part infantile in it’s acceptance of true male bonding.
Have you ever noticed commercials or movie themes that have as a main backdrop, close male on male interaction. For the most part there are always females juxtaposed in those themes at some point. This is done to minimize the impact of male on male expressions of affection. The quips and references to such affection are only on the screen for a split second and then the female comes from the background to the forefront.
As a society we feel very uncomfortable presenting males as loving toward one another without the implication of some type of “ gayness” in their associations. We fear the “bromance” as feminizing a man. Why?
Men’s reluctance to literally embrace each other is both a product of enculturation to an underlying moral code which devalues overt expressions of affection between males. This type of mentality stems from the misconceived notions of what masculinity entails and the harsh and puritanical background of our country which portrays males as strong willed father figures, lacking in emotion and bound by illusory theological doctrine which espouse dominant themes of a “ strong willed male with iron shoulders.” There is no room for the ‘feminization' of males in this culture, whether it be a cultural implant or drawn from the personification of the biblical male.
"There is a wholesale feminization of friendship," explains Michael Kimmel, a sociologist at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and author of The Gendered Society. *
For much of the 20th century, most people believed that men were too out of touch with their feelings to make friends. True intimacy was for women and sissies. We’re still struggling with that in the USA and will for some time, but there is hope. In increasing numbers, males are opening up to their real feelings and less hesitant to embrace their brother. That's the true nature of friendship without constraint.
