THREAD: Why Do We Murder the Beautiful Friendships of Boys? An evergreen article I wrote five years ago about the work of Professor Niobe Way, who's research explores the isolating impact of our culture of masculinity on boys and men. https://link.medium.com/p7vtLs1hG6  /1

Way’s research shows us that in early adolescence, boys express deeply fulfilling emotional connection and love for each other, but by the time they reach adulthood, that sense of connection evaporates. This is a catastrophic loss — one that we assume men will simply adjust to /2

They do not. Millions of men are experiencing a sense of deep loss that haunts them even if they are engaged in fully realized romantic relationships, marriages, and families. /3

For men, Way’s book, Deep Secrets, Boy's Friendships and The Crisis of Connection, opens a deeply private door to our pasts. In the words of the boys themselves, we experience the heartfelt expression of male emotional intimacy that echoes the sunlit afternoons of our youth. /4

This passionate and loving boy-to-boy connection occurs across class, race, and culture. It is exclusive to neither white nor black, rich nor poor. Its universality is beautifully evident in the hundreds of interviews that Way conducted. /5

Boys in early adolescence declare freely the love they feel for their closest friends. They use the word “love” and they are proud to do so. Yet something happens to boys as they enter late adolescence. As boys enter manhood, they do, in fact, begin to talk less. /6

They begin to say that they don’t have time for their male friendships even though they continue to express strong desires for having such friendships. /7

In America, men perform masculinity within a narrow set of cultural rules often called the Man Box. One of the central tenets of the Man Box is the subjugation of women and, by extension, all things feminine. /8

Since we Americans hold emotional connection as a female trait, we reject it in our boys, demanding that they “man up” and adopt a strict regimen of emotional independence, even isolation, as proof they are “real men.” /9

Behind the message that real men are stoic and detached is the brutal fist of homophobia, ready to crush any boy who might show the wrong kind of emotion. And so, by late adolescence, boys routinely declare “no homo” following any intimate statement about their friends. /10

According to Way's research, boy's give up their close friendships, without which they once said they would "go crazy," in order to avoid being called "little kids, girly, or gay." And it is at this point that boys' suicide rates become four times that of girls. /11

It is a heartrending realization that even as men hunger for real connection in our male relationships, we have been trained away from embracing it. /12

Men have been trained to choose surface-level relationships, even isolation — to sleepwalk through our lives out of fear that we will not be viewed as real men. We lock away the loving impulses that once came so naturally to us. /13

This training runs so deep that we’re no longer even conscious of it. And we pass this training on, men and women alike, to generation after generation of bright-eyed, loving little boys. /14

The emotional burden we put on our romantic partners when we strip away a wider network of authentic friendship for men is often unsustainable
“An epidemic of loneliness generated by the misguided idea that romantic love is the only solution to loneliness.” --Alain de Botton /15

The entire article is much longer and is available on Medium. https://medium.com/remaking-manhood/why-do-we-murder-the-beautiful-friendships-of-boys-3ad722942755?source=friends_link&sk=a9c6d3e2233c47098756afa12c70b075 /16

The article is also a chapter in our book Remaking Manhood, available at Barnes & Noble Online and Amazon. Support our work and pick up a copy.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/remaking-manhood-mr-mark-c-greene/1123716758?ean=9781530817061

https://www.amazon.com/Remaking-Manhood-Stories-Front-Change/dp/1530817064

And thank you. /17