No. I don’t have a man-crush. I have meaningful friendships with other men. I am not so insecure as to need to come up with gimmicky language to pretend that friendships and emotions are anything other than absolutely normal and essential.

I do not mean to pre-judge this show; in all likelihood it will have something of substance to offer. But starting from the point of suggesting that men need to be prodded to explore bonding is simply a lazy manifestation of a tired gender stereotype. This already reminds me of the All Things Considered story form the other day where a reporter suggested that maybe men would accept waterless urinals if they were shaped like tree trunks, because, you know men, they’re barely housebroken and regard peeing as a game! Haha, hilarious NPR!

Homer Simpson is a funny cartoon character. He isn’t representative of men in general.

Hi Bill, Sam the producer here. I like your post; we’ll see if we can get our guests to respond to your points on air. I’m curious, do you think the idea that “men need to be prodded to explore bonding” is something that used to be true, but those days are past? Or do you think it was never an accurate generalization to begin with?

“I am not so insecure as to need to come up with gimmicky language to pretend that friendships and emotions are anything other than absolutely normal and essential.”

Amen Bill.

This sounds like a (book or movie) marketing department wagging the dog to me.

We seem to analyze and try to explain things that do not need one. In all world cultures men hang out together and it is the normal way of life. Only in America are men expected not to. I was born in Nigeria and never had an had a rude awakening after I came to the US and placed a hand on a guys shoulder in college during a conversation. you know the rest. I still don’t understand it.

Uhh…no the humor in I Love You Man comes from the fact that two guys treat each other like they’re in a romantic relationship it’s a funny bit but it has about as much realism as the church lady sketch.

I do meet male friends for lunch or a movie or even just to hang out quite often but unlike the characters in I Love You Man, I don’t get nervous about it and make blunders, feel a compulsion to discuss specific details about sexual intimacy with them or try to come up with gimmicky ways to show my affection for them.

FWIW I do agree though with conservative commentator Dennis Prager who has often said that men should actively search for friends the way they do for lovers.

Holmes and Watson
Huck and Jim
Starsky and Hutch

Yes I do wish they made urinals shaped like trees and put them outside where they would be easy to find, and if Seth Rogin (sp) and Paul Rude are in it, I’m guessing there might be some satire in it too, and they do satire good. Sure I’ll wait till the dvd comes out and watch it by myself.

stewart in peabody

This program is so typical of what – goes – wrong when Tom and Company try to be just too hip. The topic is contrived in the glossy magazine cover style,it is necessary to illustrate the ” key points ” with sound clips from a movie ( always a run away fast indicator ) in current release and honestly, is this topic top – of – mind with anyone? Let’s all run away, run away fast and read a good book.

Is this significantly different than how men and women relate to one another? Women want to talk about their feelings with the men in their lives, but men often find this excruciating. And men often “check out” in other ways — don’t know who their kids’ orthodontist is, when the next doctor’s appointment is . . . things are often on a need-to-know basis. And there are a lot of things men apparently don’t need to know.

Me and most of my women friends have come to accept this. And to be fair, our husbands and significant others are equally perplexed by our need or desire to connect so deeply with other women, so the communication gaps runs both ways.

I’m not just so sure this is a “man-on-man” condition.

“Seinfeld” took this up many years ago, with Jerry’s new-found relationship with Keith Hernandez. Jerry’s picking out just the right shirt, his being pressured into moving KH’s very heavy furniture, and most of all his feeling jealous of Elaine’s dating KH–it’s all there.

I think the idea of an intimate relationship between men and men or women and women is a great thing – I am a woman involved in a happy marriage, but I sometimes still meet someone who I find myself having a “crush” on. When this person is a guy, I feel guilty, so I find myself relieved and really enjoy it when it is a woman. I imagine that married guys have the same thing happen – when they find themselves with a “crush”, what a relief for them if it is a man rather than a woman.

I guess I have a ghost, since a post was going out under the name of John and was blocked.
I’d say the lens people are programmed to view each other wants to push every relationship into something sexual. Marriage blurs that lens somewhat. For a woman, one escapes the lens after many decades. Maybe men want to escape the lens. There should be allowed dynamic relationships, where there is a kind of dance, a back and forth, that has no other agenda than the dance itself. No intimacy needed.

I would love to get everyone’s thoughts on the relationship between the characters Denny Crane (william Shatner) and Alan Shore (James Spader)on the network TV show Boston Legal (sadly, now cancelled). To me, their relationship was the most interesting, meaningful male-male relationship on TV in recent memory. In some ways, I think the writers of this show may have started to explore the revolution in men’s relationships that today’s show is examining.

Adding to Stewart in Peabody’s “bromance” list: Samwise and Frodo. Is it just my perception, or do ALL male/male pair bonds involve/require a dominant and a submissive personality?

The French have language for this. While I was going to university in France, most of my French friends had two kinds of male friends: their buddies they called “mes copains”, but almost every French male friend I made also had an intimate (non-sexual) very best friend he referred to as “mon ami”.

Unfortunately I have found wives blocking relationships between men in order to control their husbands to focus on the kids and them. My husband has lost many a friends this way.

I have so many close male/male relationships that are incredibly close. In fact, this Saturday I’ll be flying from the east coast to New Mexico to surprise my close friend for his 50th birthday (his wife knows I’m coming, but he does not). This is a guy who is probably about as masculine as you can imagine, yet he tells me he loves me almost every time we talk. Times have changed, thankfully. I don’t know what I’d do without good male friends.

I think the “bromance” thing is rather gimmicky and unecessary. I do find it intersting how Jack and to an extent Tom seem to be mildly uncomfortable with the language and content of the topic.

Probably because I’m in my mid 20s I don’t have as much insecurity about having close guy friends as those in older generations.

I was just reminded of the Flight of the Conchords song “Bret you got it going on”, particularly the lines:

I said, Bret, you got it going on.
Not in a gay way, just in a “hey mate, I wanted to say that you’re looking okay, mate.”
Why can’t a heterosexual guy,
Tell a heterosexual guy that he thinks his booty is fly.
Not all the time, obviously, just when he’s got a problem with his self esteem.

Uh oh. The guest signed off by calling Tom “Jack”. Hope this doesn’t create a rift in their budding bromance.

This is all so new for me!
The first I ever heard of it was when I started the book “Team Of Rivals” The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln”
I couldn’t believe the very close relationships some of these men had with each other.
Doris Kearns Goodwin writes about it as though it was completely normal.
I do believe that it is a kind of understanding we should open up to once again.

My 62 year old brother goes to a local cafe every weekday morning to sit with 10-12 other guys and have coffee. I’ve seen this in just about every town I’ve been – the special section in the cafe where all the Guys in Ballcaps sit nursing a cup of coffee and talking. My brother told me it’s called The Table of Knowledge or the Table of Wisdom. I said that the conversations I could hear always sounded negative to me and he agreed. My sense was he needed the company and that was an acceptable way to meet with guys.

Have any of you seen Patrice Leconte’s “Mon Meilleur Ami” (My Best Friend). This seems to be a more serious treatment of the subject of male friendship.

I don’t think “bromance” has anything to do with the reality of male friendships. If a man romances another man, he is gay or bisexual. In today’s society, a gay man should be able to live as a gay man without hiding behind an ambiguous term. Why the need to come up with a term that confuses platonic friendship with romantic affairs? What’s the point?

I haven’t and probably won’t see “I love you man” but the kind of comedy I gather is in it is a type that often goes on in “The King Of Queens” sitcom. I view it as a way of making light fun at reflexive homophobia while at the same time making it palatable to the audiences homophobia to
acknowledge that friendships can have some of the same
dynamics as romances. In other words things like jealousy and insecurity between male friends is generally seen as innapropriate and possibly gay but happens at times. Male friendship can be difficult but I have never heard bromance used in a real conversation outside of the bit of on point i just heard.

Is it the sign of the downturn in economy that OP has started featuring movies on the show? It’s a win-win: promotion and publicity for the film and getting a wider audience for the program.

There is a whole community of straight females out there who write stories, and are almost cult-like in their devotion to “bromances” that they detect amongst celebrities. For example, the brothers from the show Supernatural, similar to the original “bromance”, Starsky and Hutch.

This quote from a woman regarding the bromance from Supernatural sums it up pretty well:

“I love how affectionate and comfy they are with one another, and how secure they are with themselves that they can be that affectionate, and totally adore each other, regardless of what anyone says, and have it not be about the gay thing. I like the idea that a real man exists somewhere out there, that doesn’t need to hit his friend hard on the back when he hugs him, just so that he can prove he’s still macho even though he just hugged a dude. A man who can rest his head on his friends shoulder because he wants to, and not care if he’s going to be ridiculed and called gay. A man who loves who he loves platonically or otherwise, without caring what the heteronormative society he lives in will say about it.”

Therefore, I think, in part, the term “bromance” has a lot to do with what women they think they want from men in a relationship, rather than what heterosexual men desire for themselves, and that is, basically, a man who is as emotionally available as a woman. Sometimes the fantasy is much better than the reality.

For example, the woman who called in to say she was in love with the man involved in a “bromance”.

Women want a man who can love platonically as well as sexually. So often with men, women feel relationships are all about the sex, and not so much about who they are as a person. A man who can love platonically in a bromance might be able to love a woman the same way, as well as sexually.

I also think, taken to the extreme, the term bromance offers a way for gay or bisexual men to cloak their relationships with other men in such a way that it can meet some of their needs within the context of the societal norm. I believe closeted Hollywood actors often hide behind bromances.

the woman caller who said her husband developed a bromance with a guy at the office should consider that he is gay or bisexual-curious at the least. seriously.

i would watch that. she said the other guy has opened her husband up…smh.

she needs to be careful.

Great show — as keeping to current trends in the media and culture. Is this somehow related to the notion of the old school gentlements clubs in the UK? The types of places where women are not allowed, and where men can go to escape so to speak, have a chat, a drink, some dinner? I particularly like the idea of a place where men can go to discuss their lives, politics, etc. Bromance is obviously the hollywood-ization of the term. I’m not for sure if we are meant to just have “meaningful” relationships with only women, why not with both sexes? Its nice to meet other fellas that have similar interests and thoughts — it is supporting and reflective of how people in general need outlets for their thoughts and ideas.

Why do we need to label friendships like this? “Bromance?” Isn’t that just another name for having a best friend? Are there that many people out there (men) who are too caught up in themselves that they are stunned to find that they are intimate (non-sexually) with other male members of society, and then have to call it something jingo-ey? Are they afraid of being judged negatively for having a male friendship? Does this reek of undercurrents of homophobia to anyone else like it does with me?

I’ve had a best friend, a male, for over 25 years, and yes, there is a level of love, respect, intimacy, and shared secrets that comes with a friendship of this length and magnitude. I guess it would be called “bromance,” but really, it’s just my acceptance of this person as a trusted member of my extended family or support network. I don’t need it named, and neither does he.

This discussion came around when we witnessed President Obama walking onto the public stage, and being willing to hug another man on camera. Tightly, and with purpose. I really think this is a discussion about the homophobia that is rampant in our culture. Call it what you will, but men who are afraid to be called anything but straight and masculine are really just not at ease with themselves, or are struggling to express their friendships in our hyper-sexual society. That’s the core of this discussion, and I hope, if it continues, that we can work at breaking down the walls that divide the straight and gay male communities in this country.

Gimmicky words are actually quite useful if you use google alot. I am so glad someone coined the word “bromance” for example, because it makes it easier for me to find information on that sort of entertainment option.

I like new words myself: makes me feel like the world is still evolving.