• Victor Villas@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    True male friendship is paradoxical, in that it is intimate without intimacy. Men neither touch each other physically nor discuss anything directly – what is said out loud is trivial and everything important is unspoken. If a subtext is identified, it’s quickly ignored before moving on, since no man wants to turn a subtext into an actual text over a few beers.

    Is that true male friendship, though? Taking that flaky relationship and labeling it true friendship might be a contributing factor to see them not surviving the many ebbs and flows of life. My best friendships, the ones that are alive and well, are exactly NOT like that.

    • CaptainFlintlockFinn@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      That’s a horse shit take on true friendship. I tell my close male friends that I love them, we bro hug, we’ve cried together. Maybe that take is true for a lot of men but that doesn’t make it any good.

    • spaduf@slrpnk.netOPM
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      1 year ago

      It’s certainly something people have been taught is true male friendship and it can be difficult to unteach. One major contributor to this that I feel like I’ve experienced in my own life is how much extra mental labor it seems to take to navigate the masculine expectations of any given male relationship. I feel like things are fairly easy when you know you’re on the same page with the other person but it can take a significant amount of time to suss that out. Until you do it can be difficult to feel like you can operate on a level where you are ALLOWED to make the subtext textual.